Gina Abudi » Training

Are You Reinforcing Learning?

Gina — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:30:47 +0000

Are you reinforcing the learning you provide for your employees? Simply having employees sit through a workshop isn’t sufficient. The learning starts there but certainly does not end in the classroom.

My clients are increasingly interest in ways to reinforce and continue the learning from the workshops I provide to their employees (whether face-to-face [...]

Stacking firewood, and learning about learning

David K — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:30:36 +0000

It’s late September, and that means it’s time to order up some firewood and begin stacking it for when the cold weather hits. This weekend, I had my wood delivered, and my father happened to be in town as well. He pitched in and helped me stack up my wood into a corral [...]

Quick Tips: Planning Contingencies for Your Training Programs

Gina — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:30:27 +0000

The best laid plans for running your training program frequently go astray. Things happen! Participants may arrive late to the workshop due to traffic or miscommunications, activities run longer than planned, discussions are going great and you don’t want to cut them short, brainstorming sessions are productive – no doubt you’ve experienced some of [...]

Best Practices for Writing Training Objectives

Gina — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:30:23 +0000

Training objectives describe what the participant in the workshop should be able to do when the training is complete. Training objectives seem to be easy to write, but they take considerable thought and practice to get right each time. For any workshop I’m developing, I don’t write training objectives once and forget about them. [...]

Performing Needs Assessments

Gina — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:30:24 +0000

Prior to Developing the Training Content

Too often trainers who develop content for their clients forget about the importance of the needs assessment. A needs assessment helps you to evaluate skills gaps (the needs of those attending the training) so that you can develop training to specifically meet the needs of the participants in [...]

Kick off the Workshop Right: A Training Best Practice

Gina — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:30:40 +0000

Get them excited about learning immediately

Too often facilitators get into the classroom and immediately start off the workshop session by having participants introduce themselves and then getting started on the curriculum. Not necessarily the worst approach you can take. But how about trying this the next time you walk into the classroom to [...]

Best Practices in Facilitating Discussions during Workshops

Gina — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:30:33 +0000

One activity in workshops that takes significant facilitation skills are discussions. I have found that discussions are a great way to get the workshop participants to apply their past experiences, work through case studies and solve problems; not to mention build their skills in working in a team environment. However, unless well facilitated, discussions [...]

Using Learning Styles Effectively in Developing Workshops

Gina — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:30:36 +0000

Learning styles include perceptual learning differences, learning time differences, and information process differences. For this article, we are going to focus on perceptual learning differences which is most common.

Perceptual learning differences include:

Visual learners: learn by reading and viewing, visually oriented Auditory learners: learn by hearing and speaking, need to clarify what they [...]

Use a Community of Practice to Enhance the Learning from Training Programs

Gina — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:30:23 +0000

It’s a great way to keep the learning going and engage individuals in their own development

Creating a Community of Practice enables you to enhance the learning that participants receive from training programs. Let’s look at an example of a client who utilized a Community of Practice (CoP) to enhance the learning from a [...]

Effective Questioning Techniques for Trainers

Gina — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:30:42 +0000

Key importance for all trainers is how to ask the right questions to ensure that participants in a training program understand the concepts presented. There are a variety of techniques to use and certainly some combination of all should be used in every training program you teach.

Here are some to consider:

Recall: I [...]

Training is an Investment – Part II

Gina — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:30:28 +0000

Gather data to show how investing in training can help meet company goals

Read Part I of this post, where we introduced a company that wanted to find a way to prove to leadership that the training budget should be expanded upon to provide training necessary so employees can help the company meets its [...]

Helping Learners Build Confidence

Gina — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:30:26 +0000

A few months ago I was meeting with a client for lunch and we were discussing challenges he was having within the training department. He told me that his biggest challenge is getting the employees who take training to apply the skills back on the job. And it wasn’t the usual problem – managers [...]

Training is an Investment

Gina — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:30:40 +0000

So start looking at it as one

In a recent conversation with a colleague over coffee, she mentioned that it was becoming increasingly difficult to convince her customers that training was an investment – in every employee – not just a “select few.” She asked if I was seeing the same problem with my [...]

Teaching Adults to Learn

Gina — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:30:43 +0000

What works for me…

Teaching adults to learn requires some unique skills on the part of the facilitator and an understanding of how adults learn. In many cases, adults attend professional development programs to learn something new that will help them solve a problem and/or get ahead in their career. Certainly there are those [...]

10 Ways to Make the Training More Active for the Attendees

Gina — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:30:15 +0000

Attendees want to participate in their learning – make it easy for them!

Too often trainers don’t think about how to make the training more active, so that participants can fully engage and be part of the learning. There are many ways to make your training programs more active. And you’ll find that by [...]

Make vs. Buy Curriculum – How Do You Choose?

Gina — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:30:48 +0000

For internal training departments, a key question is whether or not to “make” or “buy” curriculum for their internal offerings. There are certainly pros and cons to each decision and the choice you make is depending on a variety of factors including:

Do you have people who can develop the curriculum? Do [...]

One Company – Two Business Units

Gina — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:30:53 +0000

Two Distinct Results for the Same Training Program! A Mini Case Study

Just recently, I was having lunch with a friend who works for a large organization based in Boston. She heads up the Learning & Development (L&D) group and was working with two business units to deliver a training program for improving [...]

Training vs. Education – What’s the Difference???

Gina — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:30:49 +0000

I often hear clients use the terms “training” and “education” interchangeably. But they aren’t the same at all. Companies may offer both training and education – depending on their goals – to their employees.

Let’s define each term. According to Wikipedia,training “refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies as a result [...]

Using a Learning Council:Case Study-Part II

Gina — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:30:28 +0000

Case Study: Using a Learning Council to Ease the Move from a Decentralized to a Centralized Learning and Development Group – Part II

Part I of this post covered the case study background and up to the one year mark. We continue Part II with one year later and ongoing use of a Learning [...]

Using a Learning Council: Case Study-Part I

Gina — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:30:47 +0000

Case Study: Using a Learning Council to Ease the Move from a Decentralized to a Centralized Learning and Development Group – Part I

To read about how to create and launch a learning council, see a previous post, Best Practices: Creating and Launching a Learning Council.

This post will focus on a [...]