To introduce its live webinar training series, DTR Inc. is having a free preview on Friday, November 28th at 11:00 AM. The live webinar will last about one hour, and the specific topic will be “Ethics in the Workplace”. To find out more information about the webinars, and to request a free ticket to the preview, go to www.workready.org/dtr.htm or send an email to jay@workready.org. After requesting a free ticket, you will be sent an email with the web address for the webinar, login instructions, a user name and a password.
The topics of the webinars will range from work readiness to customer service to sales skills to supervisor skills to entrepreneurship. DTR Inc.’s CEO, Jay Goldberg created a work readiness training program called the best in the country by the National Skills Standard Board, is the author of the book, “How to Get Keep and Be Well Paid in a Job”, is a former Service Director for Citibank, and, in conjunction with staff at the Palm Beach County Resource Center, developed what has been called a “revolutionary” entrepreneurship training program.
The intended audience for the free preview is human resource, training and management personnel who would like to sample DTR Inc.’s product offering to determine if they want to sign up their employees for future events. Business owners are also welcomed since entrepreneurship courses will be available in December.
With training budgets and staff being cut, it may be up to individuals to improve their value to their employers on their own. Therefore, individuals can also request a ticket to the free preview since the pay-per-view webinars are priced so that individuals looking to improve their value to their employer by taking work readiness or supervisor development courses can afford to attend them.
In my previous blog I wrote why live events are much more effective than pre-recorded events. If you have not done so yet, please read that blog.
The success of my training webinars will be based on the positive impact seen in the workplace. Therefore, the webinars are designed with that goal in mind. The vast majority of other workplace training programs measure success by how well the participants do on assessment tests, and are structured accordingly. However, doing well on an assessment test does not mean that workplace attitudes and behaviors were changed. In fact, many workers will answer the assessment questions by thinking, “What would my boss want”, not, “What do I think is the correct answer”.
That’s all for now, hope to see you in the free preview.
Showing posts with label webinar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label webinar. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
THE FUTURE OF TRAINING: LIVE WEBINARS
One of the results of the bad economy is the negative impact on training. The more people I speak to in large companies, the more I hear about training staffs being cut.
While there will always be a place for “hard skills” training, even if it takes the form of on the job training, the days of “soft skills” training in large and small companies alike, are growing short.
Based on my experience, training from videos and pre-recorded material on-line doesn’t work very well. When individuals know they can watch again, when there is nothing live going on that requires immediate attention, when there is no interaction between instructor and participant, there is a tremendous amount of inattentiveness on the part of the individuals watching the training.
I know what some of you are saying, “That’s why we have the participants take a test after they watch the training, to ensure that they pay attention.”
Well, if you read my previous blog, “THERE IS A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG WAY TO TEACH WORK READINESS”, you already know that basing the success of “soft skills” training on the results of assessments tests is a mistake. The goal of “soft skill” training is not to provide knowledge; it is to have the participants practice good work readiness behaviors and improve their job performance after they complete the training. The key to getting someone to improve/change is for them to understand why a behavior is important to their employer. Often that fact is driven home by using real life analogies. That is the approach I took in my work readiness book, “How to Get, Keep and Be Well Paid in a Job”. Click here to find out more about my book which received a five-star review from the Midwest Book Review.
Therefore, I will go so far as to say, err write, requiring that the viewers of a video training session take an assessment test often results in the most important parts of the video training being ignored by the viewers. Having an assessment test after the video for “soft skills” training only ensures that viewers concentrate on the facts and take good notes so they can pass the test. Instead you want them to be paying attention to the entire lecture so that they come away understanding not only the facts, but why those skills/behaviors are important, so that the training can result in positive changes in your workplace.
So if taped/pre-recorded training sessions do not work, and training staff and budgets are shrinking what is the answer?
Live webinars are an excellent solution. In live webinars, viewers must pay attention the whole time or they will miss information. There is no fallback to rewind or replay the taped session. In addition, with a real-time chat room, and live polling questions with instantaneous results, the audience can be kept involved. In fact, when used right, the polling questions serve as feedback for the instructor to know when to stay with a topic that the group is not grasping a little longer. A good instructor does this all the time in live, in-person, classrooms. This can not be done, obviously, in taped and pre-recorded training media.
Finally, another trend that could arise, especially out of a poor economy, is that “soft skill” training falls on the shoulders of individuals, to improve their value, rather than on businesses, that are struggling to keep costs low. In these cases, live webinar training is very assessable, and affordable to individuals. Taking live workplace, self-improvement webinars, will not only improve a worker’s performance, but the initiative will impress the boss; whether yours, or someone with whom you are interviewing to get a job.
Towards that end, I am in the process of changing how I deliver my training programs. I have invested in a webinar product, and will be rolling out a series of affordable webinar training sessions in late November, or early December. Check back here for more information in a couple of weeks.
While there will always be a place for “hard skills” training, even if it takes the form of on the job training, the days of “soft skills” training in large and small companies alike, are growing short.
Based on my experience, training from videos and pre-recorded material on-line doesn’t work very well. When individuals know they can watch again, when there is nothing live going on that requires immediate attention, when there is no interaction between instructor and participant, there is a tremendous amount of inattentiveness on the part of the individuals watching the training.
I know what some of you are saying, “That’s why we have the participants take a test after they watch the training, to ensure that they pay attention.”
Well, if you read my previous blog, “THERE IS A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG WAY TO TEACH WORK READINESS”, you already know that basing the success of “soft skills” training on the results of assessments tests is a mistake. The goal of “soft skill” training is not to provide knowledge; it is to have the participants practice good work readiness behaviors and improve their job performance after they complete the training. The key to getting someone to improve/change is for them to understand why a behavior is important to their employer. Often that fact is driven home by using real life analogies. That is the approach I took in my work readiness book, “How to Get, Keep and Be Well Paid in a Job”. Click here to find out more about my book which received a five-star review from the Midwest Book Review.
Therefore, I will go so far as to say, err write, requiring that the viewers of a video training session take an assessment test often results in the most important parts of the video training being ignored by the viewers. Having an assessment test after the video for “soft skills” training only ensures that viewers concentrate on the facts and take good notes so they can pass the test. Instead you want them to be paying attention to the entire lecture so that they come away understanding not only the facts, but why those skills/behaviors are important, so that the training can result in positive changes in your workplace.
So if taped/pre-recorded training sessions do not work, and training staff and budgets are shrinking what is the answer?
Live webinars are an excellent solution. In live webinars, viewers must pay attention the whole time or they will miss information. There is no fallback to rewind or replay the taped session. In addition, with a real-time chat room, and live polling questions with instantaneous results, the audience can be kept involved. In fact, when used right, the polling questions serve as feedback for the instructor to know when to stay with a topic that the group is not grasping a little longer. A good instructor does this all the time in live, in-person, classrooms. This can not be done, obviously, in taped and pre-recorded training media.
Finally, another trend that could arise, especially out of a poor economy, is that “soft skill” training falls on the shoulders of individuals, to improve their value, rather than on businesses, that are struggling to keep costs low. In these cases, live webinar training is very assessable, and affordable to individuals. Taking live workplace, self-improvement webinars, will not only improve a worker’s performance, but the initiative will impress the boss; whether yours, or someone with whom you are interviewing to get a job.
Towards that end, I am in the process of changing how I deliver my training programs. I have invested in a webinar product, and will be rolling out a series of affordable webinar training sessions in late November, or early December. Check back here for more information in a couple of weeks.
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