Conference 2005 >
Track 1
| Coaching for success
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Jonathan Kettleborough, Managing Director, Corollis. |
For many attendees at this year's show, the focus will be on delivering effectiveness within an organisation by making the workforce better, or more effective at what they do. Maybe it's typing faster or gaining access to the latest help in systems and processes, it may even be the manner in which you record and measure success, yet for most the focus will be on others and not themselves.
Well this is a different session. It is a session for you. It is a session to make you better at what you do. And as a result it will not only increase your effectiveness, but also increase the effectiveness of your organisation. Interested? To some people it's hype, to others it's no more than dirty words, yet to an increasing number of people coaching and mentoring has transformed their ability to deliver effective results within the workplace and their private lives.
Yet behind the hype lie some exceptionally useful approaches and interventions, which can have a dramatic effect on both individuals and organisations. According to the CIPD, 96% of respondents to a recent survey agreed that coaching and mentoring can deliver tangible benefits. But for many, the concept of coaching and mentoring is aimed at the poor performer - though this should not be the key focus.
In this session, Jonathan Kettleborough will outline the benefits of coaching and mentoring and the impact it can have on the managers and leaders within the training and development function. Put simply, if the people who run training and development departments can become more effective at what they do, then the benefit to the individual and the organisation can be immense. In this session, Jonathan will concentrate on how the managers and leaders in the industry can and should take advantage of coaching and mentoring to deliver effective and lasting results within their organisation.
He will give practical examples of coaching and mentoring and help all attendees to begin identifying ways in which they can begin to increase their effectiveness. This is a session for you. This is a session to make you better at what you do, to allow you to achieve many of your goals. This is not hype, this is reality. Don't miss out on the opportunity which could have a lasting effect on you. |
| Learning to help learners
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John Salt, IT Learning Manager, DLA LLP |
A huge wealth of training goes to waste: people learn, but they often don't put that learning to use. Consider your own facilitated learning, e.g. the courses you've been on and the conferences you've attended; what proportion of that learning have you truly put into use?
One of the primary causes of this transfer of learning failure is that our training practices are still rooted in behaviourism, an understanding of how people learn and a set of practices for facilitating it. Unfortunately for us and our learners, however, behaviourism isn't terribly effective. Admittedly our behaviourist practices mean that we able to help people to learn such that by the end of a course or learning programme, they are able to pass tests and feel like they've learnt a great deal.
But follow up on those learners a week, a month or perhaps a year later, and many will never have put the learning into use - and are likely to say that they have forgotten it. This is the case even where undertaking the learning was entirely voluntary and the learners truly wanted to change. The problem is that behaviourism leads us to try to push learning into people's heads.
We might indeed succeed, but once the training is over and the learners attempt to apply the learning to their own work, they find that the real world isn't precisely the same as it was in the training, and as soon as they hit a problem, they become stuck and/or lose motivation. Why are they unable to overcome such obstacles, even when apparently small? Because the source of their knowledge was the trainer; and the trainer isn't around any more to provide the new knowledge required to overcome the hurdle. In short, what the learner was able to achieve in training, he or she is unable to achieve in the real world.
So how might we help people to learn such that they are best able to then apply the learning? John Salt talks about how at DLA Piper, the world's 3rd largest law firm, he has helped his department to take lessons from the advancements made in andragogy - the science and art of how people learn - and the theory of constructivism in particular, to maximise people's ability to learn and be better learners. |
| The realities of blended learning
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David Wilson, Managing Director eLearnity Ltd. |
Blended Learning has become one of the buzzwords of the training industry. Whether at learning conferences or in learning and development presentations, the term blended is used with increasing frequency, but with what purpose?
Scratch beneath the talk of blended learning and what do you find? Blended learning is positioned as something new and innovative, but frequently turns out to be something rather disappointing. Crude combinations of ill-fitting e-learning and classroom training might decrease cost, but do they do so at the price of decreased educational effectiveness?
Blended learning generates many questions. How do you design blended programmes that really work? How do you evaluate the effectiveness of the blend itself, as well as overall effectiveness of the programme? Who can actually create and manage the blend? How do you work with suppliers that just want to sell you, or just sell you classroom workshops? How do you make blended programmes deliver stronger outcomes than workshop-only equivalents?
What is the economics of blended delivery in scale? In the second half of 2004, eLearnity ran a unique collaborative research project with major companies including BP, Reuters, Royal Bank of Scotland and Unilever to explore these issues and questions in more detail, and to discover the realities of corporate blended learning.
David Wilson, eLearnity's Managing Director and leader for the project, will be presenting, for the first time publicly, analysis from the research project including: Current practices and real experiences around blended learning Critical analysis of current research and market best practices, including emerging methods of blending Key challenges and issues with blending for real Key elements of a framework for successful blended learning in a corporate environment |
| The new IT training
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Clive Shepherd, e-Learning Director, The Training Foundation. |
In the first phase of IT user training the obvious priority was to overcome the remnants of technophobia and to introduce everyone to the joys of using a PC. While clearly this phase is not yet complete, it is rapidly coming to a close as, with or without training, almost everybody of employable age is coming into regular contact with computers.
The priority in the second phase of IT user training was to help users to operate the applications on their PCs efficiently, to get routine tasks accomplished with the minimum of fuss. This phase is ongoing, although a high proportion of users have had the necessary skills for some time.
So what do IT trainers do in phase three, to justify their continuing existence and, more importantly, to help their organizations exploit the true potential of computers? There are two main options: (1) to teach users all the advanced features of a wide variety of PC applications, so they can carry out those specialist tasks that might be needed every now and then; or (2) teach their users to be more effective in how they employ PC applications in their everyday tasks. In this session, Clive Shepherd argues that the new IT training should concentrate on option two above, to teach users to do the right things in the right way.
To make his point, Clive will be narrating two parables of our time: The Emperor's New Slide Show, which demonstrates the misuse of PowerPoint as a tool for the delivery of visual aids; and Cinderella and the written proposal, which shows how the features of Word can be similarly abused. In between, Clive will explain: Why you can expect to see a rapid decline in demand for conventional IT user training. Why feature-based IT training reaps such meagre returns.
Why IT users so often fail to exploit the potential of technology to support business communications. Why soft skills trainers make such a poor job of demonstrating the power of technology to support communication skills. How IT trainers can deliver the new IT training and transform communications in their organisations. |
