CEdMA-Europe Members' Newsletter - July 2005

04 October 2005 Workshop

"20th century Learning Systems for 21st Century learners - R we out of touch?"
 

The early autumn CEdMA Europe half-day Workshop will take place on 04 October 2005 1330-1700 UK time at SUN Camberley. The speaker will be Professor Steve Molyneux of the UK Learning Lab "where technology enables knowledge". As requested by you, the membership, this is a technologies in training update, with the following description:

"We have spent 100s of years becoming adept at boring students in the classroom in the hallowed name of Learning, with the advent of Learning Systems all we have done is re-invented boredom by boring students on screen. It is time for another revolution in learning. The technology is there, as is the infrastructure and customers. It's about time we moved outside of our comfort zone. This presentation will look at what we should be offering 21st century Learners."

Please let Mike know if you or any of your colleagues will be attending, so that we can make sure we have enough seats, coffee, biscuits, and so on.

Advance notice for 2006 Events
We now have dates for the workshops and conferences in 2006, so please have a look at this page and mark the dates in your 2006 planner!
http://cedma-europe.org/programme.html
 

10-11 November Conference

"Getting Ready for Business in the Future"

The CEdMA Europe Autumn Conference will take place on 10-11 November at the Initial Style Conference Centre in Horsley, Surrey, where the theme will be "Getting Ready for Business in the Future".

By popular demand, we have extended Pulse of the Industry to last all morning on the Thursday. This session is intended to help introduce everyone, and help with networking during the event, as individuals explain what their key interests are. It will also help to identify potential topics for future conferences. The new item for everyone to reveal is "What was the most important thing I learned in the last six months?".

Our personal development topic to help us get ready for business in the future is Building and Executing Strategy, where Mike Kean of ASK Training will lead the session.

Friday morning is dedicated to how we shall get ready for business. After a review of recent studies and surveys of training delivery and technologies, two well-known customers responsible for IT training provision will set out their needs and requirements. Then, Sue Vine will provide an update from the May conference on how IBM is progressing with its projects to execute a 21^st  century vision of learning.

After the break, we shall split into two groups to consider such things as which projects apply to your company; what individuals plan to do and to stop doing to get there; and what are the implications on such things as resources, business models, and so on.

On Friday afternoon, Phil Lawman will bring us up-to-date on how HP is progressing on increasing 'attach' rates before we discuss topics and venues for May 2006.

CEdMA Europe members have two places at this event at no charge. Additional places for members and places for non-members (prospects or colleagues of CEdMA USA members) are charged at £195 (exclusive of VAT). Overnight accomodation with breakfast costs £110 per night, payable to Style Conferences

For further information and booking (no forms required!), please visit:
http://www.cedma-europe.org/nov2005conf.html
 

Recent Articles from the Education and Training Press

The headings in this section have been changed slightly to reflect better the true contents covered.

Training Manager and Instructor Development

Ten Tips for new trainers/teachers (Jul 05)
“Just because you've used lots of software doesn't mean you can write code. Just because you've been in lots of buildings doesn't mean you can be an architect. And just because you've logged a million frequent flyer miles doesn't mean you can fly a plane. But if that's all ridiculously obvious, why do some people believe that just because they've taken classes, they can teach? (Or just because they've read lots of books, they can write one?) The problem isn't thinking that they can do it, the problem is thinking they can do it without having to learn, study, or practice”. From headrush.typepad.com.

Current Trends

Here you find articles which address the state of our industry. First, there is the article celebrating IBM as the number one (internal) training organisation in the USA for the second year running.  Then, there are two articles about the UK 2005 Top 50  (external) IT Training Companies which were listed last month. Finally, there is (UK) Industry News for July.

IBM Takes the Top Spot (Mar 05)
(USA) For the second year running, IBM has captured the top spot in the Training Top 100 ranking, and it's not surprising. Not only does the Armonk, N.Y., information technology giant boast an $825 million training budget and employ 1,367 training professionals, a belief in the value of learning is embedded in the very DNA of the company. ©2005 VNU eMedia Inc

2005 Top 50 IT Training Companies (Jul 05)
(UK) As the IT training market moves into growth at last, how have the sector’s leading players fared? Barrie Charles examines some of the providers that have made it into this year’s Top 50. ©Haymarket Professional Publications Ltd

2005 Top 50 Ones to watch (Jul 05)
(UK) Many of the providers who are now centre stage were once unknowns in the IT training world. Barrie Charles looks beyond the Top 50 to see which operators are currently waiting in the wings.
©Haymarket Professional Publications Ltd

Industry News from IT Skills Research (Jul 05)
What's going on in the world of IT training and skills.
© Copyright 1998-2005 IT Skills Research

Selling and Marketing Education

No articles this month.

Learning Media

Trainers do it for themselves (Jul 05)
Clive Shepherd takes another look at the arguments for developing e-learning in-house or outsourcing. © Haymarket Professional Publications Ltd 2005

Making Rapid e-Learning Work (Jul 05)

Rapid e-learning is emerging as the fastest-growing category of online training. It is generally defined as Web-based training that can be created in weeks and is typically authored by subject-matter experts (SMEs). Bersin & Associates research indicates that the category has grown 80 percent in just the past year and will likely reach a market value of $410 million by 2006. Rapid e-learning projects account for more than one-third of all current training-related projects and likely will comprise half of all e-learning initiatives within the next three years. ©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

Change and Stasis in Learning Delivery (Jul 05)
The early days of e-learning adoption are behind us, and it is now in the mainstream. With new tools and methods so readily available, it is important to understand how, where and under what circumstances they are best applied. Despite new tools, the classroom setting has not vanished and, in some cases, is the leading choice for particular types of learning. There’s also a surprising twist in terms of movement between synchronous and asynchronous delivery. ©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

e-Learning’s Greatest Legacy (Jul 05)
Lately there have been quite a few discussions about how well e-learning has been working. Organizations seem to be over the hump of adoption and are experiencing measurable results and uptake. For many, it’s been a long, hard road: We seem to be coming down from the just-in-time promise and being overly impressed by potential savings. Utilization numbers are still not as high as many would want, but there definitely seems to be a turnaround.
©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

e-Learning - The new e-xperts (Jul 05)

The growth in demand for e-learning has highlighted the need for trained in-house practitioners, whether they use bespoke or off-the-shelf material. By Janine Milne, ©Haymarket Professional Publications Ltd

e-Learning Standards Update (Jul 05)
Here’s a non-technical look at evolving e-learning standards, what the standards intend to achieve, the key players involved in developing the standards, and some implications for the future. ©Learning Circuits 2005

Making e-Learning a viable business tool (Jul 05)
Early adopters of e-learning faced many problems: poor uptake of courses, low completion rates, complaints about low levels of interactivity, difficulty of access to courses, and so on. While the situation has improved, there are still many challenges ahead. Piers Lea and Patrick Dunn, from LINE Communications Group, believe that for the e-learning industry to continue on its upward path, it must be more business-like: literally. © 2001 - 2005 The Training Foundation 

Rapid Knowledge Transfer and Training (Jul 05)

In this Larstan business report, you'll learn how important it is for organizations to rapidly transfer knowledge throughout the enterprise. You'll hear how the Pharmaceutical sector is solving these problems with online collaboration and virtual classroom technologies. ©2005 Larstan Business Reports

Education Projects

No articles this month.

Measuring Education Value
 

Technological Considerations in Learning Analytics (Jul 05)
Learning analytics technology is an enabling tool that can significantly assist learning organizations to understand how to better educate and develop employees, partners and customers. The building blocks of learning analytics technologies include the way analytic data is collected, stored, processed and reported. Mapping out the points of automation for each of these is helpful when designing a learning analytics tool. ©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

Generating Creativity through Benchmarking (Jul 05)
Toyota practices Kaizen: Everything it does is never good enough. Everything is viewed as an experiment, and people are empowered to make the next best improvement. Whether it’s training design, delivery or discovering client needs, Toyota can get better. That’s why benchmarking is so important—it sparks creativity. ©MediaTec Publishing Inc 2005

Managing Costs/Outsourcing

The Training Investment Model - How do you decide where to invest (Feb 04)
One of the biggest strategic decisions you must make as a training executive or manager is where to invest your limited dollars. Unless you are running training as a revenue-generating business, your budget is viewed as an expense. Expense items are rationed - you cannot keep asking for money whenever you need a new program. You must make resource allocation decisions.  We believe that these resource allocation decisions are the most important decisions you make - even more important than content quality itself. You must decide which programs to focus on. This article will give you a methodology and approach to decide how to allocate training resources. Copyright © 2004 Bersin & Associates

Offshoring E-Learning - what works (Jul 05)
There seems to be a stampede of US companies rushing to outsource their operations to offshore companies, dramatically expanding the economies of India and China. What is fueling the trend is the desire to gain access to lower cost, high quality labor. Top business functions for offshoring include customer service, IT and technology services, and now corporate training.  This article highlights some of the findings from our upcoming research study, Offshoring E-Learning: What Works, which will be available next month. Copyright © 2005 Bersin & Associates

Instructor Resourcing
No articles this month.

Education Administration

No articles this month.

Skills Gap/Technical Certification

Certification - Collaboration, the name of the game (Jul 05)
Working away from the office is a growing trend, but it’s not easy to manage. The key is in skilling both workers and management before the teleworking process even begins, argues Alan Bellinger.
©Haymarket Professional Publications Ltd
 

And, Finally.....

While transporting some unfortunate mental patients from one secure place to another, the newly appointed bus driver stopped at a roadside restaurant for natural break. On his return to the bus, all twenty patients were gone. Being a resourceful fellow and fearing the consequences of his negligence, he drove to the next bus stop, where he claimed to be a replacement for the usual service. Allowing twenty people aboard, the driver made straight for his destination, where he warned staff at the gates that the 'patients' were deluded and extremely volatile. The angry 'patients' were duly removed, sedated and incarcerated, and remained in detention for three days, until staff were able to check the records and confirm their true identities. The actual patients were never found.

A new hotel employee was asked to clean the elevators and report back to the supervisor when the task was completed. When the employee failed to appear at the end of the day the supervisor assumed that like many others he had simply not liked the job and left. However, after four days the supervisor bumped into the new employee. He was cleaning in one of the elevators. "You surely haven't been cleaning these elevators for four days, have you?" asked the supervisor, accusingly. "Yes sir," said the employee, "This is a big job and I've not finished yet - do you realise there are over forty of them, two on each floor, and sometimes they are not even there...."
 

Feedback, please!

Once again, I would really like to get input from you, the readers. I am also trying to create a library of useful articles on the website, all of which will appear first in a newsletter. If you have any article to contribute, please send it.

Have a great summer holiday!!!

Mike Dowsey

Business Development Manager

CEdMA-Europe

mike@dowsey.net