"Re usable learning objects " PDF

Sanjay Talukdar has used the word , ' Re usable Learning Objects' in Training.

I google searched the same phrase. It threw up a lot of links. One is a 21 page PDF on ' Re usable learning objects.'A comprehensive study.

Link is here :

http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/56/07879649/0787964956.pdf

Go to the home page of this web site and see what is there available.

Training take aways : Day 1 : 30.Nov.09. Kolkota

SAMIRAN LAHIRI
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Explain the advantages of Direct Short Term Gain versus indirect long term gain - of MLM selling.

Speak the common man languge of their father, mother and surroundings. Ensure that your smart guide is going to talk a little different from the rest of his people.

Asking some one Rs.50,000/- cheque, you are not respecting his other committments. He's not living, just to pay your insurance premiums. He has other things too .
If he is not ready at the point, ask for leads.



Do net search on ' Reverse Innovation'.

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SANJAY TALUKDAR
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" Every trainer has his own /her own challenge area - which , only he/she knows. What is yours ? This differs from trainer to trainer. "

" What is that one thing, if I can deliver, that the trainee is going to remember for the next 5 years ? And feel, it's been the most useful take away ? Strive to deliver that one thing, in every training, to every participant! "

DE BRIEF AFTER GROUP PRESENTATIONS
---------------------------------------------------------------------

In a group presentation, never focus your attention on one person, and switch off others.

No one goes and appreciates rural people. You be the one who goes and appreciates them, a genuine one, at every given chance.

MY OWN GROUP DE-BRIEF
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No one understands , how many zeros are there in Rs.16,000 crores. Avoid hard numbers. Instead, focus on their benefits.

" When ever you address a segement, always give living examples of that segement and their success stories. If the person is present, there is nothing like it. "

Understand the ' pain area' of each prospective segment. Pain area for house wife : Identity Crisis.

Do not present your company, in the way , your CEO presents it to share holders or venture capitalists.

People have I-POD LC - 6 types of fears.

I = illness.
P = Poverty.
O = Old Age.
D = Death.
L = Loss of Loved One.
C = Criticism.

Pain area of the urban teacher is - catching up with the Joneses.

Book recommendation : " Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid " by C.K.Prahlad.

* Net Search : Bloom's Taxanomy.

After every 40 minutes, public goes dull. Be aware of these blind spots.

* Net Search : " Re usable learning objects " .

What are the assests for a trainer ? Number of ice breakers, Energizers, training content modules that one has developed.

As a trainer, how many assets have you built for yourself, in the last 6 months ? None !

Do write faculty guide for your energizers, role plays and slides. This will become your assets in your future training sessions.

Session Plan : Copy all PPT s into JPG s. paste them into MS WORD. Then, write faculty guide.

3 types of Role plays : Show case role play (2 people), Triad Role Play ( 3 people) and group role play.

Your ' scoping for the program ' dircetly depends on the faculty notes you prepare.

Your style is unique as a trainer. Your faculty guide evolves with you, over a period of time.

Problem Solving Exrx : Reaction Envelops

Reaction Envelopes

Stephanie Ruder, one of our readers who is a coach and a trainer living in Switzerland, recently sent me an email about the importance of people taking personal responsibility. Here's an adaptation of the Envelopes framegame that Stephanie may find useful in helping her participants explore this important concept.

Purpose

To explore alternative reactions to everyday hassles.

Time

30-90 minutes

Supplies

• Hassle Envelopes. Write a common hassle on the front side of an envelope. (Example: Stuck in a traffic jam.) Prepare as many different envelopes as there are teams.
• Response cards. Four index cards for each team.
• Pens or pencils
• Timer
• Whistle

Flow

Organize participants. Divide participants into 4 to 6 teams of 3 to 7 members. Teams should be approximately the same size.

Brief participants. Explain the concept of taking personal responsibility. Although we cannot control what is happening in the real world, we can change our reactions to the event. For example, when we are stuck in a traffic jam with cars crawling at a very slow speed because of a highway accident, we can use the slowed-down pace to make telephone calls to our friends. The secret is to stop feeling like a victim and change our beliefs and assumptions and find some meaningful opportunity in the situation that confronts us.

Create some examples. Ask participants to brainstorm alternative reactions to getting stuck in traffic. Follow up by asking participants to give other examples of everyday hassles. Take one of them and challenge participants to generate positive reactions to these negative events.

Distribute the supplies. Give one hassle envelope and four index cards to each team.

Conduct the first round. Ask team members to discuss the hassle on the envelope they received and to identify how they could respond to it in several different positive ways. Tell team members to write short sentences describing these reactions on an index card. Announce a time limit of 3 minutes and encourage the teams to work rapidly. Explain that the teams' reaction cards will eventually be evaluated in terms of both the number and the quality of the positive alternatives.

Conclude the first round. After 3 minutes, blow the whistle and announce the end of the first round. Ask each team to place its reaction card (the index card with its positive alternatives) inside the envelope and pass the envelope, unsealed, to the next team. Warn the teams not to open the envelope they receive.

Conduct the second round. Ask teams to read the hassle on the envelope they received, but not to look at the alternatives listed on the reaction card inside. Tell the teams to list positive alternatives related to the hassle on a new reaction card. After 3 minutes, blow the whistle and ask teams to place the response card inside the envelope and pass it to the next team.

Conduct more rounds. Conduct two more rounds of the game using the same procedure.

Conduct the evaluation round. Start the fifth round just as you did the previous rounds. However, tell teams that they do not have to write any more positive alternatives to the hassle specified on the front of the card. Instead, teams must evaluate and synthesize the four reaction cards inside the envelope. They do this by reviewing the different cards, selecting the top five positive alternatives, and writing them on a flip chart paper.

Debrief the participants. Assemble participants back in their seats. Invite them to briefly comment on the patterns among the positive alternatives. Also ask them to discuss the similarities that can be found among positive alternatives related to different hassles. Ask the participants to identify the hassle for which it was the most difficult to come up with suitable alternatives.

Carry out follow-up activities. Collect all the envelopes and cards for use as examples during future sessions.

Adjustments

Not enough time? Announce tight time limits. For example, allow only two minutes for each round. Play only two rounds of the game before conducting the evaluation round. Eliminate the evaluation round. After evaluation, proceed directly to debriefing.

Too few players? Conduct the game among individual players. All you need is a group of three participants. If necessary, play the game twice, using two different sets of hassle envelopes.

Too many players? Divide the large group of participants into three or more subgroups. Have each subgroup divide itself into teams and play the game in a parallel fashion.

Questioning Technique ( TF)

Although providing employees with answers to their problems often may be the most efficient way to get things done, the short-term gain is overshadowed by long-term costs. By taking the expedient route, you impede direct reports' development, cheat yourself of access to some potentially fresh and powerful ideas, and place an undue burden on your own shoulders. When faced with an employee's problem, you can respond in a much more value-adding way: by asking the right questions, help her find the best solution herself. We aren't talking about asking just any questions but, rather, employing questions that inspire people to think in new ways, expand their range of vision, and enable them to contribute more to the organization.

Questions packing this kind of punch are usually open-ended — they're not looking for a specific answer. Often beginning with "Why," "How," or "What do you think about...," they are questions that set the stage for subordinates to discover their own solutions, increasing their competence, their confidence, and their ownership of results.

Here is a framework for asking the right questions at the right time to create clarity and agreement around issues and to empower your direct reports.

Ask the right kind of questions

The word "empower" gets bandied about so much that one could be forgiven for overlooking what it actually means: to imbue someone with power, to instill in the individual a sense of his own strength and efficacy. "When the boss asks for a subordinate' s ideas, he sends the message that they are good — perhaps better than his. The individual gains confidence and becomes more competent," says Michael J. Marquardt, a professor of human resources and international affairs at George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) and author of Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).

But an empowering question does more than convey respect for the person to whom it's posed. It actually encourages that person's development as a thinker and problem solver, thereby delivering both short-term and long-term value: the short-term value of generating a solution to the issue at hand and the long-term value of giving subordinates the tools to handle similar issues in the future independently.

A disempowering question, on the other hand, undercuts the confidence of the person to whom it's asked and sabotages her performance. Often, these types of questions focus on failure or betray that the questioner has an agenda.

The most effective and empowering questions create value in one or more of the following ways:


1. They create clarity: "Can you explain more about this situation?"
2. They construct better working relations: Instead of "Did you make your sales goal?" ask, "How have sales been going?"
3. They help people think analytically and critically: "What are the consequences of going this route?"
4. They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways: "Why did this work?"
5. They encourage breakthrough thinking: "Can that be done in any other way?"
6. They challenge assumptions: "What do you think you will lose if you start sharing responsibility for the implementation process?"
7. They create ownership of solutions: "Based on your experience, what do you suggest we do here?"


Create a culture that embraces questions

To foster a culture in which questions are widely used to create value, begin by letting direct reports know that you value their queries. "For example, tell them to bring their best questions into their performance appraisal," Marquardt says. These might be questions they posed in the past year that led to new ideas and solutions for the company or questions they would like to ask you during the review to boost their own effectiveness and that of the unit or team.

Just as important, it is up to you as the leader to model the question-asking approach so that your team, in turn, will employ it with their own reports. For example, you can track how well the team is working together by asking questions like:


* We've been working together for three hours today; what did we do best as a team?

* What enabled us to be successful in coming up with an innovative strategy?

* How can we ask better questions?

* How can we apply what we are learning to other parts of our work?

* What leadership skills helped us succeed today?


What you get by asking
While going into your team or one-on-one meetings with a list of questions rather than points to be made takes some thoughtful planning, the payoff can be huge. Marquardt experienced this himself when he was executive director of the former Arlington, Va.–based World Center for Development and Training.

He asked each of his direct reports, "What one idea and/or strategy that we are not currently implementing do you believe would best contribute to the success of our company?" The responses this question generated were amazing, he says. "We came up with a marketing strategy that I had never considered before and added a couple of new services for our customers," including a short-term certificate program and courses that blended classroom and online learning. As a result of his query, the group also examined new markets in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia and developed local partners in those regions. And because these were their ideas, Marquardt's direct reports were committed to putting them into action. "They accepted responsibility in designing, marketing, and implementing the new programs," he says.

By leading your team meetings with questions, you will also help eliminate ambiguity and create alignment around issues. "Most groups are not aligned when they come together," Marquardt says. "When a leader goes into a group and states a problem, everyone assumes that they understand the problem in the same way. In reality, that is false." If, for example, a product isn't selling, you may assume that it's because of a flawed marketing program. But what if others think it's a flawed product? You won't learn that without asking, "What do you think the issue is?" Without consensus on the problem, you can't define a strategy to address it. Asking such questions enables team members to understand one another's perspectives and agree on what they are dealing with.

What not to ask

Marquardt points out that, contrary to the business truism "There are no bad questions," several types of questions can have a negative effect on subordinates.

Questions focused on why a person did not or cannot succeed force subordinates to take a defensive or reactive stance and strip them of their power. Such questions shut down opportunities for success and do not allow people to clarify misunderstandings or achieve goals. These questions include:


* Why are you behind schedule?

* What's the problem with this project?

* Who isn't keeping up?

* Don't you know any better than that?


Leading questions seek a specific answer, one that puts the person being asked the question in a negative light, pushes through the questioner's agenda, or exerts social pressure to force agreement. Among their many downsides, leading questions such as the following inhibit direct reports from answering candidly and stifle honest discussion:


* You wanted to do it by yourself, didn't you?

* Don't you agree that John is the problem here?

* Everyone else on the team thinks John is the problem. What about you?


While closed questions, which require specific answers, can be a good way to open and close a conversation, a whole string of them in a row, such as the following, will make subordinates feel they are being interrogated:


* Is this a good time to talk?

* What time is the meeting?

* How many people are coming?

* Who else will be there?

* When will the report be ready?


Their success is your success

As you strive to lead by asking rather than telling, remember that leaders are only as successful as the people who report to them. By asking your direct reports the right questions, you can help them develop their ability to solve problems, their creativity, and their resourcefulness. Not only will their greater strength in these areas reflect well on you, but it also will enable them to better help you and the whole unit when fresh challenges arise.

"You don't have to have the answer to ask a great question," says Marquardt. "A great question will ultimately get an answer."

Telling Ain't Training- int with Harold Stolovitch

An Interview with Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps

by George Hall

Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps share a common passion - developing people.

Their latest book, Telling Ain't Training, tackles the three universal
and persistent questions of the profession - how do learners learn, why
do learners learn, and how do you make sure learning sticks? The
authors describe the practices they have found most effective and offer
a universal model that can provide instructors with instantly
successful learning sessions. The book, published in 2002 with the
International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), is ASTD's
best-selling publication to date.
George Hall (GH): What role should trainers play in the learning process?

Harold
Stolovitch (HS): Unfortunately, many trainers see themselves as "high
priests of content," and that their mission is to be sure that their
content is presented in a pure manner. This role is very different from
the role we advocate - the trainer as the learner's coach, the catalyst
for change within the learner. The key to training, developing, and
growing someone is not just an information transmission of accurate
content - that is insufficient. It is much more and much greater. The
key idea in our book is that you are transforming a person, and as a
result of the intervention you make, they no longer are who they were
before you started.

GH: How did the "high priest of content" role become so common?

HS:
It is based on the Master/Apprentice model. In other words, the belief
that people who know something are able to form those who do not know
something. In business and industry, trainers are often selected
because they are masters of a craft or content; they are experts. The
assumption is that if they know how to do it, they can train others to
become proficient. So, their respect and authority come from the
content, from what they know and know how to do. They focus on
transmitting this to novices.

This
sort of "transmitting" is simply insufficient. When you just provide
information, you lose the feedback loop. Transmitting is like a radio
play. Our hearing is very selective. We hear partially and learn
partially and often inaccurately. Our hearing is biased by our prior
knowledge. So, transmission ends up as a confused, one-way street. When
we assume the "high priest" of our content or work role, there is no
way we can know what, if anything, has been acquired and to what extent
it has been assimilated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~
Learner Centered and Performance- Based
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~
GH: What are the most important practices that empower the instructional process?

HS:
The most important practices can be summed up in two terms:
learner-centered and performance- based. What we do has to be focused on
and wrapped around the learner; otherwise it doesn't make any sense.
The fact that you gave the learner something has little value if they
can't do what is required with what you gave them. Performance- based
implies that they have to be able to do it and demonstrate that they
can do it. That's why our mantra for training is learner-centered and
performance- based.

Erica
Keeps (EK): In our research and practice, we have found much of the
training you see in organizations today is instructor-centered and
content-based. This type of training employs the "high priest" analogy
that Harold referred to earlier. We advocate a model that is really a
flip from the instructor being the center of the universe to the
learner being the center. We focus on "performance- based" as compared
to "what is the content."

GH: What beliefs or practices harm
the instructional process?

HS:
One counter-productive belief is "I told you, therefore you know." The
fact that I told you doesn't mean that you know; yet we often use this
with our children. The emphasis here is more on the stimulus rather
than the response. With many of the so-called "Professional Training
Courses," the emphasis is placed on the technique the instructor uses.
Techniques are supposed to "trigger" learning. A heavily
instructor-centered approach, however, places too much focus on what I,
as a trainer, should do rather than what the learner should do.

Telling
alone has never been satisfactory, unless you scream FIRE and point to
the door. In other words, learners will learn from anything if the
"heat" is great enough. There will always be a few avid learners - the
ones who sit at the front and take notes and are very excited. Avid
learners can learn despite the instructor. But under normal
circumstances, and particularly in a workplace setting where people who
do jobs have to train, it never makes sense just to pour content into
their heads.

EK:
Another counter-productive belief focuses attention on the somewhat
natural separation between the learner and the instructor instead of
focusing on the inter-relationships between the two. Oddly enough, many
people have been taught to present while standing in a 9-foot square
box, the instructor's area. Learners are taught to remain in their
area. There is almost a magic line that should not be crossed. We
believe that the "magic line" approach is counter-productive to the way
we want to engage our learners and have a continuing dialogue with
them.

HS: When I went to secondary school, for
example, I had Masters who wore black gowns and were on a stage. There
was a very great separation between the learner and the instructor.
When the Master stepped away from that "separate" role, interesting
things began to happen. For example, to excite us about Latin poetry,
our teacher said that if we translated all the poetry, he would let us
read "naughty" Latin poems. All of a sudden - we all wanted to read.
So, after this barrier was broken down, there was an initiation of real
dialogue - "Ooo, what does this mean?" "What does that mean?" We all
wanted to learn then. We drove the teacher.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~
Compensating for Learner Deficiencies
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~
GH:
In your book, you mentioned, that "Three major factors influence how
much and how well we learn: ability, prior knowledge, and motivation.
How can trainers compensate for learner deficiencies in these areas?

EK:
Let's start with ability. We compensate for the lack of ability by
simplifying and then providing the opportunity to practice in a
supportive manner. We provide lots of feedback, give them
reinforcement, and where necessary, corrective feedback that gets them
back on track.

If
motivation is lacking, we add value to the learning task. In other
words, we build a positive environment that affects the mood; we
modulate confidence, making sure they understand the impact of what
they are learning, and the perceived value. We try to keep it at just
the right level - mood and confidence level. If people are
over-confident, negative things can happen: they can screen out or
tune out or think, "I've done that." In contrast, if learners are
under-confident, they may be too fearful or even freeze up.

Finally,
to compensate for the lack of prior knowledge, we can provide
prerequisite training, use meaningful analogies, and build in concrete
examples to which learners can easily relate. These ideas represent
just some of the many possibilities.

GH: How can trainers apply the learner-centered model you
recommend?

EK:
To adopt a learner-centered model, you need a continuous dialogue and
conversation with your learners. You begin by asking questions of the
learners and raising questions in them. Either draw on their needs or
create needs that they didn't even realize that they had. This
is part of establishing that "rationale" and the "readiness" to learn.
Next, you focus on meeting those needs. You provide a constant stream
of challenging activities, continually verify performance, and provide
feedback. Your measure of success is your learner's success. Success,
in this context, is not about you or a "magic" number of hours learners
spend in training.

HS:
I'm writing a chapter for a book, right now, in which we talk about
this very issue. In practice, companies establish training groups to
get people to be able to learn and perform. Once you have a training
group that has been around for a long time, however, its prime mission
becomes one of "survival." So, what they do is produce more training.
They "train" their management to accept this as their measure of
success: How many people did we train? How many hours?

GH: Are these types of trainers trapped by their own metrics? Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

HS:
Trapped, yes, and to a certain extent, they may like it that way. In
automotive dealerships, for example, you are often dealing with
anywhere from 75 to 400 percent annual turnover in salespeople. Such
high rates of turnover, however, create a wonderful "market" or demand
for training. Consequently, your job as trainer is now secure. What is
the incentive for "trainers" to solve the turn-over problem? You might
put yourself out of business.

EK:
This is the same industry that often measures what we do for them in
terms of the number of units we produce, because that's the only way
they know how to measure success. For example, you can build a job aid
that may only take up one page, but it replaces a technical manual that
might be 37 pages. However, when management looks at the two, it
appears as if you had accomplished more work with the longer one.
Management may reject the tool that will enable people to perform
effectively and efficiently and prefer a technical manual, which nobody
will ever read. It should be the other way around. It should be that
truly helpful things are brilliantly simple rather than weighty and
complex.

The "Universals" of Learning

GH: Can you describe the universal model in your book, which can be used to structure any learning session?

HS:
The five-step model comes out of research on learning. There is a lot
of research on learning but in our model, we have extracted what I call
the "universals. " They are simple. If learners know why they are
learning something, and that "why" rationale is credible and meaningful
and valued by them, then the probability of learning increases. If they
know "what" is required of them, the same is true. If learners have
opportunities to respond, to engage (particularly mentally) with the
learning content and to receive feedback (directly confirming or
correcting their responses and are rewarded for it), the probability of
learning will often be increased.

What is nice about this model is that it is
versatile - you can apply it to new situations or even "retrofit" it to
an existing course by breaking the existing course into viable chunks
or modules. For example, if an existing course or one of its modules is
missing a rationale, you provide it; an objective, you give it; if it
is missing the practice components or response opportunities, you add
it, etc. It is a universal model because you can use it with any type
or age of learner population, with any number of learners, with any
content, any context, and with any medium. It is absolutely applicable
to e-learning.

GH: The "guiding principles" of your
book include - (1) Start with the learner and never lose focus; (2)
Provide training sessions that are structured on learning research by
developing conversational dialogues, fun exercises, and challenges.
What inspired you to adopt these as your guiding principles?

HS:
We adopted these principles simply because they work. We are dedicated
to the principles derived from learning research rather than hype and
enthusiasm. You know all the hype and enthusiasm that there has been
over delivery methods, particularly with e-learning. Before e-learning,
video based training was all the rage. In reality, both of these
approaches do not necessarily lead trainers to focus squarely on the
learner. "Learner-centered and performance- based" is our guiding
mantra, regardless of delivery means. Many organizations are caught up
in the hype and enthusiasm, and it is our job to remain dedicated to
our guiding principles, to keep people focused on what the requirements
are, and to get the right results.

EK:
Exactly. Learning is an intelligent and enjoyable conversation using
the application of what we have presented in Telling Ain't Training. We
view training as being like an accordion - expand or contract the
application of various elements, depending on how much time you have,
the relative importance, the impact of what you are training people to
do, the size of your group, and a number of other variables.

For
example, a learner analysis may just consist of a phone call with a
couple of learners from your target population, or it could be a
comprehensive, across-the-board learner analysis. What is important is
that there are certain steps that we never skip. In other words, we are
bound and determined to uphold our process, our values, and our guiding
principles.

Harold D. Stolovitch is Professor
Emeritus of Instructional and Performance Technology at the Université
de Montréal and Clinical Professor of Human Performance at Work at the
University of Southern California. He has written almost 200 articles,
research reports, book chapters and books. Stolovitch is past president
of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI). Harold
D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps are principals of HSA Learning and
Performance Solutions LLC. Keeps was a corporate training director for
two large American organizations and was a faculty member ofUniversity
of Michgan's Executive Education Center. Keeps and Stolovitch are
co-editors of the award-winning Handbook of Human Performance
Technology.

Interviewer

George Hall is an MBA graduate of the Marshall School of Business at
the University of Southern California. He teaches in the College of
Business Administration at the University of Central Florida and the
University of Phoenix. He can he reached at geohall@eudoramail. com.