Now, they are losing money. It’s not solely because of my leaving, but several other instructors left about the same time, for much the same reason.

And they have only themselves to blame.

OK, this is probably not one of my most concise posts.

The point is that ning.com’s tool might work well as part of a blended learning environment. The comment about 10-minute Success was a sidetrack that I found interesting.

My mind is not “wired” to go straight from point A to point B — I usually end up visiting D, Q, C and Z along the way. I try really hard to edit that out of my posts — sometimes I do better than others.

Glad you enjoyed the blog.

cheers, Ensnarement.

When there are a lot of possible training modules, it’s hard to QC all of them.

I’ve had some recent changes in my life (say, “Hello” to Mrs. Wino, everyone), which included a job change, as well. My previous job was solely training. My new job is not in training, at all. I am now a manager of a group of maintenance and project implementation groups for a large multi-national corporation.

I’ve been doing a review of some of the training they have available. It is scattered in many different areas, and is quite frankly hard to find. It is completely free, and fairly easy, but it is not well-utilized. Why is this? I don’t yet know, but I suspect several reasons:
* No one knows it is there
* The ones they know about are too basic
* The ones they know about require too much time
* They don’t see the value of it

I have not yet concluded what I’m going to do, but part of it is to correct some bad information in some “professional” modules, and to write some modules that are more directly derived from the day-to-day duties myself. This should correct the “no value” area, at least, and the corrections are just plain ol’ necessary.

On the last note, how can someone sell training that has incorrect information? Did no one review the information? Imagine a “professional” product that uses terminology incorrectly. It means that someone who is learning this basic information will have to relearn it later, correctly. That means unlearning the wrong information before one can learn the right information. What a waste of time!

I also like ning and have found it very easy to use and versatile. I haven’t used it for an online course yet but would be interested to hear about your experiences if you do.

What needs to change is the system that supports the manager in making poor decisions regarding their people and only supports operations and budget. And it needs to change at a point well above line management. In addition, current systems are well entrenched, so making that change will be REALLY DIFFICULT … maybe impossible.

Guess which one gets selected? The easy one that doesn’t do the job, but looks like the job is being addressed. Management is basically lazy, and almost always takes the easy, if incorrect, way. Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss is not far from the actuality of the real world.

One of the strangest classes I attended was a finance class presented by an experienced vendor, with 2 days of internal people doing death by powerpoint. The part of the class that was designed/delivered by the vendor was really interesting — she made the subject come alive and got us all involved, which really helped understanding. Then the internal controllers came in and bored us for 2 days — it ruined the class.

As an instructor (which I haven’t done as much), I’ve had to do the lecture presentations too — it was a horrible experience for me as well as the students!