February 19, 2003

It is really an exciting time for trainers. With new challenges facing companies, there are countless rewards for the adept and agile. Your organization is counting on you to show them the way.

WorkplaceXpert has partnered with industry notables including: InFocus, Encounter Collaborative, The Bob Pike Group, Training Magazine and Conference, HRD Press, LearningWare and SMART Technologies to create the TrainingXpert Sweepstakes and Webcast. Enter to win an Interactive Classroom and register to attend "Creative Training and Presentation Techniques: 17 Ways to Increase the Impact and Results of Your Meetings" by Bob Pike, brought to you live via webcast, from the Training 2003 Trade Show on February 25, in Atlanta, Georgia!

Articles in this issue:

The Workforce is Changing the Way We Do Business

Five Ways to Invite Intuition to Your Training Session

Where oh Where is Plug & Play?

20 Best Practices for Using Application Sharing

Enough Already! Getting Off the ROI Bandwagon

We are delighted to continue to offer training and HR professionals this newsletter free of charge. (WorkplaceXpert is not a Website - although it acts like one.) You have to subscribe to continue to receive WorkplaceXpert! If you have not yet signed up, please click here and submit the registration form. If you have subscribed, please forward this to an associate who would value the content.

As always, thank you for your involvement and continued dedication to training!

-  John Quincy, Editor

The Workforce is Changing the Way We Do Business
By Roger E. Herman, CSP, CMC

The changing workforce is influencing the way companies do business, suggesting that workforce stability will be an employer's competitive edge. The workforce is changing. The way we work is changing. The way we do business is changing.

Employers who want to be in business--successfully--five years from now must begin to do things differently. The entire employment environment is on the verge of dramatic upheaval, and the consequences will be far-reaching. (LEARN MORE)

Five Ways To Invite Intuition To Your Training Session
By Arupa Tesolin

Take advantage of uncertain times in the business environment to introduce the prospect of increasing intuitive skills with your training participants. This can be done by introducing intuitive intelligence as a novel and creative approach to obtain solutions not normally achieved through logic and fact. Having a more intuitive workforce can add high value for the company by anticipating solutions at early stages of problem identification, improving client satisfaction and even increasing workforce retention. The secret for you as a trainer is to know when and how to introduce this kind of thinking in a relevant way. (LEARN MORE)

Where oh Where is Plug & Play?
By Jack Gordon

In the long, hard battle to achieve common technology standards for e-learning content and administration systems, the first major goal is to achieve plug-and-play interoperability. That doesn't sound very sexy, as human aspirations go, but Sheldon Ellis falls asleep every night wishing that the industry would hurry up.

He would find it ever so much easier to deliver technology-based training to employees around the world if he could buy courseware from any vendor he chooses, then run and administer it with his LMS without spending thousands of dollars and untold amounts of time on integration work. That's what plug-and-play interoperability should mean. A layman reading the sales literature from major suppliers of e-learning courseware, authoring tools, and LMS systems might be excused for assuming the industry already has arrived at plug-and-play. (LEARN MORE)

20 Best Practices for Using Application Sharing
By Margaret Driscoll

Organizations that have purchased e-learning software for the live virtual classroom start off by simply using the system to show PowerPoint^TM slides and deliver lectures. While this may be a starting point, many organizations find that application sharing is the must-have feature when they start to teach information technology topics.

What many people don't realize is that application sharing offers more functionality than simply a one-to-many presentation. Using application sharing the instructor broadcasts an image of his or her application (screen) to learners. In addition, this feature allows the instructor to give learners permission to interact with an application. For example, if the instructor is sharing an Excel^TM application, she can give a learner permission to enter sales figures into the spreadsheet cells and see the impact of a ten percent increase in sales. (LEARN MORE)

What’s New? 

Participate in the Live Webcast from the Training 2003 Conference and Expo.  Bob Pike's session "Creative Training and Presentation Techniques: 17 Ways to Increase the Impact and Results of Your Meetings," will be broadcast on February 25 at 2:00 ET. All registrants will be entered into the TrainingXpert Sweepstakes in addition to a free 3-month trial subscription to Training magazine, (new subscribers only).

Learn everything you ever wanted to know about e-learning! Regardless of your role in your organization's transformation to e-learning, ASTD's E-Learning Series has the targeted, comprehensive, and ready-to-use information you need to succeed. Take advantage of this special package to get all seven of these practical books NOW and save more than 15% off the member or nonmember price.

NEXT MONTH - We are constantly searching our industry resources for other practical ideas to help you be an effective workplace expert! If you have topics you wish explored, or resources to share, for future editions, please forward them to me. JQ