Dear readers,

It is August and it is HOT! The yard is brown and the kids are bored and ready for school. With the end of summer approaching, many companies use the time to finalize plans and budgets for the fast approaching new year.

This month's issue of WPX focuses on a number of issues integral to the planning, design and implementation of training. The articles we selected this month address these fundamental needs of workplace experts like yourselves.

Shaking It Up: A Blended Approach to Learning
By Lisa Hunter and Peggy Albrecht

Training professionals have long recognized that training and development is integral to an organization's success. A highly skilled workforce is productive and innovative, propelling an organization forward even in the most difficult of business climates. Continuous learning to maintain alignment between the workforce and organizational goals is widely recognized as fundamental to an organization's ability to create sustainable competitive advantage. (LEARN MORE)



Learning by Design

Learning design is an ill-structured domain. Only reflective experimentation can reveal what works and what does not. Even then, what works in one situation may not work in another. But insights gleaned from such experiments do find their way into common practice, making it more robust and more attuned to meet current requirements.  (LEARN MORE)



Want to Increase Performance? Look at Your Culture

And we don't mean plan a pizza party. In our current and relentlessly difficult business environment, executives continue to rack their brains, do more with less and push through every performance initiative they can think of. And still, lackluster performance. Maybe it's time to examine whether the company's culture is helping or hindering the effort. (LEARN MORE)



Training the E-trainer
By Clive Shepherd

Perhaps not surprisingly, the virtual classroom appears tantalizingly similar to its bricks and mortar equivalent and trainers can justifiably expect to make use of many of their existing skills. However, there is a difference in working with an audience that could be thousands of miles away and which, to all intents and purposes, is invisible. This article explores what it is that the e-trainer needs to do differently to make a success of virtual classroom training and realize the benefits that synchronous online communication can bring to just about any organization with a distributed workforce. (LEARN MORE)



A Performance Appraisal That's Better Than Ratings and Rankings

By Gary B. Brumback
Around the third or fourth century, the Chinese philosopher Sin Yu complained that the Imperial Rater of the Royal Court was showing favoritism in his ratings. It has been an uphill battle ever since. 

Most people throughout history have despised appraising or being appraised at work. What's despised isn't so much the idea of a performance appraisal. Judging other people's performance, after all, is almost instinctive, and most of us probably sense the need for performance appraisals in organizations. What's despised is the way it's done, which is usually badly. (LEARN MORE)



What's New?

TOP 100: CALL FOR ENTRIES
Is your company known for its training and development initiatives? Does it excel at  harnessing human capital? If so, you should apply for Training magazine's 2004 Training Top 100. To apply, visit  Training magazine and click the Top 100 logo in the right column or  click here for the link to the application form. Deadline is October 31, 2003.