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Learning and Teaching Have Changed Forever

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Learning and Teaching Have Changed Forever

For some time, the education world has been struggling to maintain itself in the face of the obvious need to make changes. Normally change is an evolution not a revolution. However, the competing interests feel very much comfortable with how things are operating. The Teachers Unions, The School Boards, the State Bureaucrats and the Federal Government were very much into the status quo. BUT. The Students and their Parents, who I believe are the customers of the education business were not.

Then came the Pandemic.

All of a sudden, the students and parents were in the same place at the same time and both parties could see how and what their children were being taught. The parents didn’t like what they heard and saw with the material and the methods with which their children were being taught. They then started to show up in larger numbers and more regularly at Parent Teacher Meetings and School Board meetings. And they made themselves heard. The School Boards didn’t like this one bit, imagine the parents interfering with what the Boards were doing. Their expertise and authority were being challenged by these unruly parents who were demanding answers.

Then the National School Board Association wrote a letter to the government of the United States complaining about these parents and even going so far as to call them terrorists. Imagine calling your customers terrorists? My intent is not to get into the weeds of politics with this introduction. It is simply to provide the background to a subject that I am very passionate about and want to discuss with you. Each person on the planet should be able to receive a good education.

Learning takes on what I believe are four major methods: classroom, webinar, internet-based and self-study.

The classroom will never go away. There is a real benefit to having a person who knows how to teach and has subject matter expertise sharing that knowledge with willing and able interested people. We have learned a lot about classroom learning. The fifty-minute class is changing. The material is being delivered in smaller chunks. Statistics are showing that this has an extremely positive impact on learning and retention.

The webinar is a tool that I am not particularly fond of as a teacher. I cannot see the students. I don’t get the feedback that I am used to in the classroom on each individual’s understanding about what I am talking about in the session. However, when it comes to product knowledge and other very specific learning, they are a terrific tool. I have always liked to have one of the employees conduct this training. The employee doesn’t want to be embarrassed in front of their peers. So, they really learn the material. Each session is done by a different employee and as a result we improve the skills and knowledge of the complete team of customer service employees.

The internet-based learning programs have become a serious and growing concern in a relatively short period of time. You can see that major United States Universities, Harvard and MIT and Georgia Tech to name a few, have their complete curriculum available for online learning. Specialty businesses have arrived from The Khan Academy to Coursera and many others there are learning opportunities online that will be here for the rest of time or until the next major disruption.

Self-Study will always be here as long as there are people who want to learn. Reading is one of my favorite hobbies and pastimes. You can transport yourself to any era and any area on any subject in the world and beyond between the covers of a book. We still have a Reading List on our Consulting Website until the end of this year at www.rjslee.com under the tab Reading List.

Katy Tynan, a principal analyst at Forrester Research recently made the following observations. “Prior to the Pandemic, there was an overemphasis on formal learning as a delivery mechanism. Formal, classroom-delivered training was easy to plan and deliver, but organizations didn’t always see the intended results.” Haven’t most of us felt that way at one time or another about classroom training?

Tracy Malcolm, a global future of work leading at the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson goes further. “Organizations are starting to pursue learning in new forms, and certainly at a new pace, where it’s much more frequent learning opportunities. The formal training itself is certainly bite-sized, so that it can be consumed more quickly. And the pace of learning increased.” At the same time, we are now flooded with a massive amount of student debt. The largest single debt in the country.

There are many voices starting to sound similar alarms.

When we started with Management Training at Quest, Learning Centers, we did the same thing as most other teaching or training business did. Our classes spanned two days in locations that were easily accessible to our client base. Sixteen hours of training. We built the classes to cover sales, operations, assets and leadership. Four hours for each of those areas and two subjects in each four-hour time block. The students would come in from their dealerships the day before and spend two nights in hotels and pay for their room and board as well as the tuition cost of the classes. We got very good response and also very good reviews of the content and the way we taught. We built eight such programs.

We started to notice a problem with our teaching, or more appropriately the learning and retention of our content that the students experienced. They would get back to the company and be caught up instantly in the old routines to the point that they were not able to implement any of what they had learned. We had too many people working in the business and too few people working on the business.

Our sponsors and clients were noticing similar things and wanted to approach the teaching from a different perspective. Thus, the webinar was born.

The webinar did not require people to travel or stay in hotels or eat meals in restaurants. It was cheaper. It also was shorter. The webinars that I conducted typically ran between forty-five minutes and an hour. The vehicle for teaching and by extension learning was changed. It is shortened, which leads to measurably more learning and better retention. Further, the employee was not taken away for two days at a time. But the teacher didn’t have the same tools to evaluate the learning of each student. We changed the delivery methods on our webinars and using a computer driven projector that I could operate remotely and turn off the slide presentation and walk in front of the camera and talk to the audience directly. They could see me and my antics. I was transitioning to Hawaii at the time so I started to wear Hawaiian Aloha Shirts. Many people have commented on those shirts in that they were annoyed when I wore the same shirt more than once.

We moved away from webinars in 2015 and converted all of our learning programs to the internet starting in 2016. It has been a much larger job that I had anticipated. With our two-day programs and the structures that we used, we had three separate programs; What it Looks Like When it is Right, Reaching Market Potential, and Performance Excellence. So, we had six discrete classes for each of the four disciplines. Twenty-four classes for parts, and service and product support selling and marketing.

The first order of business was to research and select a “Learning Management Software.” This was not easy nor were we very sophisticated or knowledgeable about what we wanted and needed. Needless to say, we are on our second LMS. We make mistakes like everyone else.

Then we had to determine how we wanted to build the classes. That is our wheelhouse. Caroline has a Master Degree in Education and I taught people how to teach at McGill University in Montreal. We built our classes to start with optional reading material, then a mandatory pretest to gauge the knowledge of the student before they start the class. The subject specific material we created covered in the range of 125 to 160 slides each one of them with audio tracks. We then embedded film clips to highlight key points and material. Further we added quizzes to break up the learning. We put about ten quizzes into each of the programs. Caroline then put all of this material, the slides, the audio tracks, the film clips and the quizzes into the form of a video. That allows the students to stop and start or go back and forth to review the material. We wanted the students to learn, to understand the material and become more knowledgeable as people both personally and professionally. Then we added a final assessment. This was a twenty-question assessment of the knowledge and skills of the students on that specific subject class. They had to obtain a score of 80% on this assessment in order to pass the class and earn their certificate. However, before the students can get their certificate, they have to provide us an evaluation of the class through a survey. Finally, they can print their certificate which will also show them how many CEU’s, Continuing Education Units.

We now have one hundred and eight subject specific classes, and we will continue to add classes as they are requested. Each class is reviewed monthly for adjustment based on the surveys and the assessments results. For instance, if a majority of the students get the same wrong answer to the same question, we review that section of the class to ensure that it is not our teaching that is at fault. If it is the material that is causing the problem, we make adjustments.

Another interesting aspect of our work is the feedback that we receive constantly about what our customers want and need. They tell us what they want. And we listen. Do we ever listen.

When we built the classroom material, we used voice recognition software and I dictated to the computer. It was like I was teaching in a classroom. In the nineties the voice recognition software was not at all at the same level as what it is today. I would talk to the computer and go away. Thirty minutes talking forty minutes doing something else while the computer continued to convert my voice to a word document. Once I had the classes built, I invited people for whom I had a lot of respect and asked them for their time in a classroom with me to see what I had created. I wanted their objective evaluation of what I had done. From that platform, my background and experience in the business and in teaching, complimented with the experience and knowledge of the very generous people who helped put the final touches on our work and created Quest, Learning Centers. I will never forget what those people did to help me. You know who you are and I thank you sincerely.

Over the years our twenty group facilitation businesses first with Insight, M&R, Institute in partnership with Malcolm Phares who started the “Twenty Group” concept when he was VP of Dealer Development for PACCAR, and now with The Capital Goods Sages, in partnership with Dale Hanna of Foresight Intelligence has provided invaluable discussions and debates with experienced executives on their dealerships. This provided learning opportunities for me that was also invaluable.

Since 1980 our consulting business has afforded me the opportunity to work with hundreds if not over a thousand dealerships around the world. I have been provided an opportunity in my business life that few others have been given. As I have said to many people over the years. “If you play two rounds of golf everyday for six months and you don’t get pretty good at it, well someone is trying to tell you something. I have learned something from each consulting engagement and each of the twenty group meetings and from a large number of very skilled people in our classes.

Over the past fifty-two years we have had over twenty-five thousand students either in a classroom or a webinar or an internet-based class. I have learned a lot from the interaction with all of these people.

Yet even with that background and experience we are in a constant state of looking to get better at what we do and how we do it. We offer blogs, podcasts, newsletters and audio learning on a complimentary basis as a means of transferring knowledge to interested people. We have a group of people as Contributors helping us. These people are an invaluable help to us. They are Thought Leaders who are challenging the status quo and the world in which we live as well as experienced executives and influencers. We are grateful to each of them for everything that they do for all the employees in the Product Support world.

One of the changes that we see being beneficial is to have training going on continuously for everyone. We advocate that each employee in the Product Support world who leads people or touches customers have one skill assessment tied to their job each year and take at least three classes each year to improve their skills and knowledge. “You need to have regular reinforcement of what you’ve been learning” so says Wayne Vascio, Professor of Management at the University of Colorado. He continues “You use it or you lose it.” “Simply doing it one-off or learning a skill one time and then not being able to practice and use it on the job, is a recipe for skill decay.”

Another thing Caroline is taking us to is the fact that passive learning is not sufficient anymore. She gets that from her continuous learning for her teaching job and her education. I am excited about it. She caused us to put the quizzes into all of our classes. She is pushing to have optional Zoom meetings with people who have taken the same class with either Caroline or me leading the meeting. We talk about the subject specific class that they took and provoke discussions in a group setting. We are exploring having chat rooms for people who have taken classes with us where they can reach out to others in the Product Support World. Even going so far as Gamification of the Learning Experience.

One of the other things that has become painfully clear. There is an expression “those that cannot do, they teach.” This has never been a good idea. Over the course of my career at two different CAT dealers I was a Parts Manager, a Service Manager, I established the first Product Support Selling function, I designed buildings and dealer facilities, I was a Data processing Manager. I have walked the walk I don’t just talk the talk. The teacher has to know what the employees do in their jobs. What are the challenges and the obstacles to the job? This is not an abstract experience. We are even exploring, in some cases, having the employees training each other. This is invaluable in other ways as well. Everyone finds out who the best is at a particular subject or task.

Over the course of our fifty-two years in the industry, and the wonderful training I have received myself and the people from whom I have been able to learn from I am very humble and extremely grateful.

We will continue to keep you posted as we continue to change and adapt to the new realities in education and learning.

The Time is Now.

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A Pathway to Purpose Through Learning

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A Pathway to Purpose Through Learning

We are all consumed with plans and budgets and objectives. We do them predictably and rigorously at least once a year. Most of us have mission statements and vision statements posted on boards throughout the company. Yet I wonder how many of us have a purpose. Not only that, how many of us know how to find our purpose? I submit that you can find a pathway to your purpose through learning.

Let me start by explaining what I mean by a “sense of purpose.” A sense of purpose is the motivation that drives you toward a satisfying future. It also helps you get the most from the things that you do and achieve in the here and now. Alright that is reasonably clear but how to I get a sense of purpose? That is a problem. Only around 25% of American adults cite having a clear sense of purpose about what makes their lives meaningful, according to one analysis of the subject in the New York Times while 40% claim neutrality on the subject or say they don’t. A study in 2010 by Applied Psychology found that individuals with high levels of eudemonic well-being – which involves having a sense of purpose along with a sense of control and feeling like what you do is worthwhile – tend to live longer. A 2016 study in the Journal of Research and Personality found that individuals who feel a sense of purpose make more money than individuals who feel that their work lacks meaning. These studies and findings tell us you don’t have to worry about making money or being happy, just find your own sense of purpose and pursue it.

What is your purpose in life is a different kind of question isn’t it? It isn’t what do you do or how do you do it or even why you do it. It is what is your purpose. Now that is a real poser. How many of you ask your team members what they believe their purpose is in life? I don’t imagine any of you do. That is much too much of an invasion of what we determine is our “private” space. How are we supposed to know if any of our team are fulfilled in their job or is it “just” a job?

That has been on my mind recently as we slowly come out of the funk that this pandemic has put us in. I have written in the past that we need to push forward. We need to show resilience and strength and continue to serve our customer needs. After all they all struggled to make a living and make ends meet themselves. We need to be strong and present for them.

Recently I read a document about learning from Kinsey Consulting that got my attention. Unilever was the subject of the article and it dealt with creating “an engine of success which is fueled by continual learning.” They are trying to create an atmosphere “where purpose and skill travel the same path.” The consumer goods giant believes that the engine of success is fueled by continual learning. Part of reimagining organizations is the ability to create an atmosphere where purpose and skill travel on the same path.

At Unilever, that’s being accomplished through the company’s Future Fit initiative launched earlier this year, says Leena Nair, Unilever CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer). Every person in the company has this plan, which contains four elements, she says. Employees start by identifying their purpose. “We feel that people learn best in areas that they feel purposeful about,” Nair says.

From there, the plan addresses employees’ energy level and overall well-being, and how they can improve both; leadership training and areas of development; and, lastly, actual skills. Nair says Unilever has created a learning pathway for all positions within the company. “We think our approach is unique and well suited for the environment we’re in,” she says. “There’s too much noise right now about what to learn; there’s too much coming at employees.” Being actively involved in the process allows employees to take ownership of their career. “It’s not something being done to them,” she adds. “It’s them embracing the change they need, and the company needs, to move through and past this pandemic.”

This is the direct purpose of our job function skills assessments. Although there are many paths for business to follow there is no one path that is perfect for everyone. It seems to be quite clear, however, that there is a need for a clear purpose, a strategy that everyone is aware of and a strong emphasis on learning. That is what we are aiming to do at Learning Without Scars. Our purpose is to help employees think about and understand their individual potential. Then to provide each employee the learning tools, the assessments and classes, that will help them work towards achieving that potential. It is not an easy road to pursue. It is a path that requires a lot of self-discipline and hard work. It is a path that we are on with each and every one of our employee and business clients. Our purpose is clear. Who wants to join with us on this journey?

 

The time is now.

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Internet Learning

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Internet Learning

Over the past ninety days the planet has been suffering under a serious virus. Nearly everyone has been affected. Some of the results to the economy and societies are starting to come in with analysis on the longer-term impacts.

  • The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the US will see $7.9 Trillion in lost economic growth through the rest of the decade.
  • The World Bank predicts global domestic growth will shrink by 5.2% in 2020.
  • The World Bank expects 70 – 100 million people will be pushed to extreme poverty.

There are many statistics and forecasts being made now about the longer-term impact of this virus and shutting down the world’s economy.

And then we come to education.

There will be a wide variety of forecasts and statistics made here as there are some serious competing self-interests at play. Research conducted by McKinsey & Company shows that the shift to remote learning could set the average student back seven months academically. I suspect there are many reasons for that conclusion and many ways to overcome that difference.

Students and teachers alike struggled with the switch to remote learning after schools were shut down. By their midlife, people who graduate during a recession are also less likely to be married, more likely to be childless and face a higher chance of death than those who did not.

However, what this indicates is that we have to develop better tools for this new wave virtual teaching and schooling – from pre-school to high school. The Khan Academy programs, processes and courses are a good model to consider. They have provided free world-class education to 90 million learners since 2008.

Similarly, EdX, a non-profit created by Harvard and MIT, offers MOOC’s (massive open online courses) and interactive classes in law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health, and artificial intelligence. During this economic shutdown “Every faculty member is going to be delivering education online. Every student is going to be receiving education on line. And the resistance to online education is going to go away as a practical matter.” James N Bradley, chief information officer at Texas’s Trinity University. Goldie Blumenstyk, from “The Chronicle of Higher Education” suggests this is more than a Black Swan moment it is “more of a catalyst for online education and other ed-tech tools than decades of punditry and self-serving corporate exhortations.” Going further she says “It seems safe to say that this will be not only enormously disruptive but also paradigm changing. The “Black Swan”, that unforeseen event that changes everything is upon us.

Unfortunately, this will not all be good news. A lot of professors will simply video-conference lectures supplemented by emailed assessments. In truth it will be some time before we can draw any conclusions on what forms of learning the education elite will adopt. Will this rapid disruption produce better results? Only time will tell.

In the Industries, I serve dealers who have not been strong advocates of employee development. They have typically believed that they hired the skills and that was all that was needed. That ship has sailed. With the rapid advances in all aspects of engineering and manufacturing, of materials and ceramics, and computerization and telematics it has become very evident that the skills required to stay current have expanded and changed rapidly. That means adult education is something that equipment dealers are going to have to embrace going forward. The Associated Equipment Distributors Foundation published a goal for the Industry of 80 hours of training for each employee each year. Very few dealers meet that goal. I believe it should be 160 hours.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about how to assign your time each day at work. I started from a position put forward by Dirk Beveridge, he was presented to a sales meeting at a client of mine and he got my attention in simplifying my life in how I manage time. Time was, is now and will be forever, the enemy. The older I get the more this becomes true.

I look at time in blocks – to be precise five blocks.

  • Review Results
  • Working with people to improve performance
  • Communications
  • Process reviews
  • Personal growth.

The personal growth item is the one that I have to fight with every day. There is always something that I view to be more important that self-improvement. It is not that I don’t need improvement, I really do, it is that that other thing always seems more important. It is like exercise. How many of us actually invest our daily time on our health and self-improvement? We all know the answer. So, what are you going to do about it? This “shutdown” has allowed a lot more introspection than normal times. I hope this is a subject that you are thinking about. Your employees need the same push to improve themselves. That is where Learning Without Scars fits in to the employee’s life. It is at the time of their choosing, it can take as little as two and a half hours, and you can measure the improvement in their skills. And on top of that it is $125.00/course or assessment. If you don’t invest in your own personal development and you don’t encourage your employees to improve theirs, how long do you think it will take before your customers notice.

The Time is Now. If not now when?

The Evolution in Learning which is fast becoming a Revolution

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The Evolution in Learning which is fast becoming a Revolution

From my grandmother who taught in a one room schoolhouse, to today we have seen a lot of change in education.

I want to go back a little further than that today. Socrates, our logo, and one of the fathers of teaching, distrusted learning from books. Students reading words would gain only shadows of the original authors’ insight and worse would not understand the difference. Of course, there were not many books back then.

In his book “The End of College, Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere” Kevin Carey puts forward some interesting statistics.

  • Less than 40% of students enrolling for the first time at a four-year college actually graduate in four years. Fewer than 66% within six years.
  • There are almost thirty-three million college dropouts in America over the age of twenty-five. Many with large student loans.
  • Fourteen percent of college graduates scored at the basic level of literacy. That makes them good enough to read grade school books.

Richard Arum in his book “Academically Adrift, Limited Learning on College Campuses” said, “American higher education is characterized by limited to no learning for a large proportion of students.”

The purpose of post high school learning according to educators was practical training, research, and a liberal arts education. In 1869 Harvard University hired thirty-five-year-old Charles William Eliot to lead the school. One of the many things he did was replace the mandatory curriculum with an elective system. This exploded the courses offered, increased the faculty dramatically and caused expansion of facilities to accommodate the increased student body. The rest is history.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, (NCES) part of the Department of Education, there were 4,726 degree-granting institutions at the peak in 2012. That consisted of 3,206 four-year institutions and 1,700 two-year institutions. The enrollment in these institutions peaked at just over 21,500,000 students in 2010.

The final straw was when the Federal Guaranteed Student Loans and tuitions exploded upward. The average debt is estimated to be $37,172 per student in 2016. The total outstanding student loans in the United States reached an all time high of $1.41 trillion in 2019. Amazing isn’t it?

Today as noted in previous blogs surveys indicate that nearly 75% of three hundred professionals prefer internet-based learning instead of classroom learning.

There is one other critical factor to consider. Teaching and Learning has made a radical and very dramatic shift. We have shifted from “passive” learning to “active” learning.

With passive learning the teacher is responsible for improving the skills of the student. With active learning it is the student that has the responsibility for their own learning.

Creative thinking, collaboration and interpersonal skills show great improvement with active learning methodologies. Businesses need to pay attention. One of the main challenges in the coming decades is going to be in the area of personnel. Attracting, Recruiting, Hiring, Developing, Appraising, and Retaining talent will be a huge challenge. I believe to the core of my being that with the right people in your business you will prevail in whatever it is that you want to do. Without them you will fail.

Companies must set up a proactive learning environment to motivate their workforce.

At Learning Without Scars, we start with JOB FUNCTION SKILLS ASSESSMENTS to determine the knowledge and skill categories of individuals. From the skill category of an individual we can customize their learning experience. We can direct them to the applicable subject specific classes available for their personal progression through the skill categories; Basic, Core, Advanced and Expert.

If individuals want to take a subject specific class(es) we can tailor that as well that into five specific areas; Customer Service, Selling, Operations, Finance and Leadership. The individual can select from an array of classes choices in each of those disciplines.

This is all aimed at allowing the individual employee to design their own learning path with JOB FUNCTION SKILL ASSESSMENTS in place to monitor their progress. This is our contribution to “active” learning where the individual employee takes control of their own destiny at work. They can grow their skills and in so doing increase the likelihood of earning more money and taking on more challenging and rewarding work assignments.

As R.C. Sproul, the founder of Ligonier Ministries, said “Our problem as people is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.” And if we want to go further with him, he says “If you’re not accountable in your life that means ultimately that your life doesn’t much count.”

You have a choice to make. To be on a path of constant exploration and learning or to do nothing. The choice is YOURS to make.

The Time is Now.

Learning and Knowledge Retention

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Learning and Knowledge Retention.

Since my early days in teaching athletics first in a Country Club setting and then at University, I have always been intrigued by how people learn. In the earliest form of learning, as a parent or a preschool teacher, the tried and true methodology: – Show – Tell – Show – Try. We start by showing you what we are going to teach you. Then we will tell you what we just showed you. Telling a story is usually the best method here. Then we will show you again. Finally, you will try it yourself. Depending on risk and degree of difficulty we might even get into a “with assistance” – “to assistance” – “solo” type of structure.

It works. It has always worked. But today we have a lot more knowledge and examples of learning methods to draw upon. And they really help, if we design the learning experience properly.

Some points to start with and consider: – Chanty Hyder, an intern at Survey Anyplace provides us six high level results of their surveys.

  1. The storage capacity of the human brain is virtually unlimited.
  2. The mind needs to be exercised like any other muscle in the body.
  3. Our attention spans are getting shorter. We are bombarded with more things online.
  4. You are never too old to learn
  5. After one hour, people retain less than 50% of the information presented
  6. To learn. The brain builds on existing knowledge

I started teaching in a classroom at a very prestigious University. I was teaching students in the Physical Education Majors how to coach and teach water sports. We used seventy-five-minute lectures, followed by seventy-five minute “in the water” case examples of the lecture content. Two and a Half hours, three days a week. Tough duty. I had a class size of between 16 and 32 students, with one sometimes two teaching assistants.

At Learning Without Scars we started with a three-day classroom format, eight hours each day. That evolved to a two-day, fifteen-hour format. Within that structure we had four blocks of specific operations learning.

Then webinars arrived when everyone tried to reduce the cost of learning for equipment dealers. The webinars were first seventy-five minutes which we then shortened to one hour. I really didn’t like the webinar approach as a teacher as I could not see the students. As a teacher I rely on visual signals, facial or body language, to determine actual learning and comprehension.

Then we used a 3D camera and we broke the learning sessions down to ten to fifteen-minute increments, sometimes these increments were as short as five minutes BUT never more than fifteen minutes. At those breaks I would turn off the audio-visual presentation and appear in camera and talk to the group of students.

Today, we have Skype, and Zoom, and Microsoft with Teams and Google providing software that allows us to see each other and share screens and emulate a classroom type of experience. This has helped in the learning process.

That still requires a schedule that the students and the teachers have to fit in to their daily lives. That is where internet-based learning takes over. Learning is available when you want it and where you want it. You can fit the learning into your life and your schedule.

So back to Ms. Hyder and her points in the paper “7 Facts You Didn’t Know About Your Memory and Knowledge Retention” I referenced above. This is how we have designed and continue to refine our classes.

Each class follows a similar format. We have a Pretest to ascertain the understanding each student has about the course content before they start the class. Then we will assign reading materials, then they enter a slide show with embedded audio tracks. This segment will end or sometimes will have a film clip inserted into the segment. Then there is a short quiz. Then another segment sometimes with a quiz or perhaps a short survey or a short essay. Each segment is approximately ten to fifteen minutes in length and a class consists of eight to ten segments. Finally, there is an assessment of the learning of each student at the end of the class. We require a score of 80% in order to pass out of each class and go on to another. The student can repeat the class as many times as they want, however, they can only take the final assessment three times before we block them if they haven’t achieved the 80% score.

This is in keeping with the current “learning and retention” theory in use today. At Learning Without Scars we are constantly researching and adapting. As new techniques and methods are identified that provide better results, we adjust our programs.

I believe, more than ever, that in today’s work environment the dealership must be more involved in training. This training has to be in the most effective and efficient method possible. That way they will be able to attract more talented and motivated employees. One of my Core Beliefs is that Passionate People Perform. Your employees will make or break your business. With talented people you will prevail and provide long lasting high levels of customer service and loyal customers. Without them you won’t. It is as simple as that.

The Time is Now.   

Who Are You?

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Who are you?

 One of the networks I follow poses questions often. The most recent question was “What’s the #1 thing you have learned this year?

 The problem I have with the question is that I am continually learning. I am a very curious man and not a big fan of the status quo. However, over my seventy plus years, I have learned a few things that I would like to highlight. 

I would like to think that I am continually learning. I am a very curious man and not a big fan of the status quo. I have learned a few things that I would like to highlight. 

First, from a book by Edith Hall called “Aristotle’s Way,” is a reminder. This is not something that is new for me, but it is an important one. Aristotle suggested that we have a personal responsibility to ourselves to be happy. I have had as a foundation stone in my life, the philosophy “Before you can be of any value to anyone else you have to be of value to yourself.” The two ideas are tied together, aren’t they?

​More recently I obtained a book by Simon Sinek called “The Infinite Game.” This picks up the theme from “Finite and Infinite Games” a book written by James P. Carse. This is also reinforcing strong beliefs that I have had for most of my life. Life is not about winning and losing. We must be focused more on our lifetimes than individual events. I grew up swimming competitively and had a tough time. I didn’t lose many races and had national records for age groups consistently. That was the result, the pathway was another thing altogether. I would be sick before I left my home to go to a swimming meet, I would be sick changing into my bathing suit, and if there was anything left, I would be sick before going out to the start of the race. Not much fun. As you might imagine, this always bothered me. What was the matter with me? Did I need to win that much or was I afraid to lose. You see I didn’t lose very often so I never really got an answer that was clear. What finally penetrated my mind was that those two outcomes – needing to win or fear of losing – are the same. You see, if you take one of your attributes to its full extent you reach the direct opposite. So, when taken to the extreme, needing to win and fear of losing are the same thing. That brought me peace. What was more important and remains another foundation stone for my life is that you are not competing with the other swimmers in the race. You are competing with yourself. That is a much more serious competitor. You are trying to improve your own individual performance constantly. I believe this is a critical element in life. You are never finished. You can continually get better. To some degree it means never being satisfied with your situation or performance.

​For the close today I will move to my life as a teacher. I come from a long line of teachers. I love to teach. I love to see the lights go on in people’s eyes when they “get it.”  That truly turns my crank: it excites me, and it motivates me.

​There have been many books written about self-improvement. I will reference you here to one called “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.” 

 There are far too many truly amazing points in this book to pick out only one. Let me do it this way. In our own “progression of learning” (my view of learning) we need to be “testing” ourselves frequently. It has been proven scientifically that assessments, both formative and summative, when taken during the learning process significantly improve the retention of the knowledge. By retaining knowledge, we will be able to apply our knowledge to the challenges we face in our lives.

Learning is a lifelong activity. It is a truly rewarding activity as well. Genetics determines our brain power. Learning is what is required if you are to reach your personal potential.

Think about these points. They are important and I believe that they will help you as a person.

The TIME IS NOW.  

e-Learning

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e-Learning

Twenty years ago, in 1999, John Chambers, then CEO of CISCO Systems said, “Education over the internet is going to make email usage look like a rounding error.” The renowned Clairmont Professor and business guru thought that “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”

As those of you who read this blog know we are serious proponents of providing tools for employees whereby they can reach their potential. Learning to me is a lifelong pursuit. You really only start to learn once you leave the structured education system that we have in place. Too many people, however, act as if that is the end of their education.

We are extremely pleased to be in the final stages of certification by the IACET, the International Association of Continuous Education and Training. They have a very rigorous certification process that we have completed and are in the final review process. You will hear more on this in the near future when we get all of the documentation completed.

This is the final step in our platform for training in the Heavy Equipment, Light Industrial, Material Handling, Trailer, and Ground Water Industries with which we are associated. We will be the only certified company in these Industries in the world.

We ran a brief review of our offerings within the past month and it is quite substantial. We currently have around 90 people taking classes on line every day. We have enrolled over 600 people in the past two years. It is starting to take hold.

What we offer is an employee development structure for each job function in the Parts and Service world. We assist dealers and distributors and some manufacturers now in creating a learning path for specific jobs. A career path if you will. We are in the final stages of announcing our “badge” program.

The Physical Universities and Vocational Schools are the only ones who can provide a “parchment” that says University Degree. The internet-based learning world is “not allowed” to offer degrees. We offer and provide badges. In our programs the badges cover; Operations, leadership, Sales, and Finance. Each class earns a badge and after accumulating Badges taking classes there are four levels of achievement; Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Each student can share their learning results from us with their prospective employers which provides, we believe, a much more complete picture of the knowledge of each individual who has followed our programs.

A study done in 1000 by WR Hambrecht + Co called “Exploring a New Frontier” provided the following list of factors driving e-Learning:

• Rapid obsolescence of knowledge and training
• Internet access if standard at home and at work
• The need for just in time training.
• Technological advances enable interactive and media rich content.
• Efficient means to train a global or national work force
• Increasing bandwidth allowing more streamed content
• Increases in skills gap and demographic changes
• Growing selection of e-learning products and services
• Demand for flexibility for lifelong learning
• New standards to facilitate compatibility, usability of e-learning product
• Wide variety of topics addressing business objectives
• HR, Management, Customer Service and Compliance Topics
• Simple access point and integrated data
• AICC and SCORM standards for inter-operability

I believe that e-Learning is now starting to hit its stride. All of the above points are even more pronounced today.

We are hitting our stride as well:

 We have created our platform – the learning management system
 We have developed the products – over 112 different programs
 We are in the final stage of accreditation – IACET
 We are finalizing the recognition programs with our badges

Now it is time to sell the program and get more people learning on a daily basis.

We highlighted a quote from Peter Drucker at the outset of this blog “knowledge has to be constantly improving or else it vanishes.”

Where are you in your learning?

 Are you reading books and taking classes constantly?
 Or is your knowledge becoming dated and no longer current?

I think we all can do much more in our lives and in our careers. In fact, with the rapid rate of change in the world around us I believe it is absolutely critical for us to continue to learn. What do you think?

The Time is NOW.

Learning #MondayBlogs

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Education has undergone many changes over the years.

From the 1800’s to now learning has changed dramatically. From the days of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, the heroes of teaching and learning we have been on an interesting road. The quality of education has appeared to be based on the number of PhD’s on the faculty. Nobody talked abut the quality of the TEACHING. That has been one of the flaws of the education system.

In the 1960’s Clark Kerr gave a series of lectures at Harvard that were put into a book called “The Uses of the University.” Harvard had created the “elective” system whereby the student chose the curriculum. This resulted in a lot of people who graduated with very little “learning.” Kerr developed the California system with the UC system on the top, then private Universities, then Junior Colleges. The UC system for the ‘smarter” students to the others at the private to the lower skilled to the Junior Colleges or Technical schools. Imagine.

Yet there still exists a HUGE hole.

Who is it that qualifies the teachers?

How do we measure learning?

Today we have HUGE student loan debt.

How did we get here? When I went to University I paid less than $500.00/year plus books and lab fees. Today we are talking about more than $25,000/year plus, plus, and I am being very gentle. This level of tuition inflation is becoming ridiculous.

There was something else going on at the same time. Parents in the US had been convinced that their children would be better served if they went to a University. They would make more money over their lifetime. As a result, less than 10% of the population had a bachelor’s degree in 1960. That passed 20% in 1970 then 25% in the 1990’s and over 33% today. At the same time, it is said that 50% of the technical schools in America closed for lack of attendance. Quite a commentary isn’t it?

Many ideas of how people think and learn are a mystery to most people. However, at a few Universities learning scientists and computer engineers came together and started to develop educational tools that could be far more effective in teaching and learning. Mark Kamlet, the provost of Carnegie Mellon University, opines that 25 to 50 Universities are the total of the Universities that will survive over the coming decades. That is because teaching and learning are changing. The current universities are creating their own destruction. They are conducting research and they are trying to make things better.

In 1955 Herbert Simon attended a conference at Dartmouth where he and a small group of scientists gave a name to a new field of research called “Artificial Intelligence.” Learning is not a matter of accessing information but rather a matter of organizing and making sense of it. Cognitive scientists started asking the fundamental question. “How do people think and learn?” It is clear that our brain is a very complicated tool. The importance of thinking patterns and expertise means that learning needs to be looked at in different ways. The trouble with this is that this making developing courses very difficult. It is not easy to simulate working environments. Believe me we are in that business. But that is where as a society we are going. The University of Everywhere is here now and will become even more significant going forward.

We are perpetuating the class society with our education system.

Clark Kerr institutionalized this within the California system. If you have access to money you can get into a different school. Not a good approach to anything.

The new barriers of entry should be based exclusively on ability. Wouldn’t that be a nice change? That is where learning Management Software is taking us. That is where non-traditional teachers are coming from. We have to be extremely alert to the changes in learning.

We are mindful of these changes and watch the result of the student assessments from our online programs, not just to evaluate the student but also to evaluate our ability to transfer information. That is where we all have to go. Making learning easier and more effective.

The Time is NOW.

The More Things Change #MondayBlogs

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News from Learning Without Scars.

We have been busy around here for the past six months or so and you have been able to enjoy a rest from my incessant blabbering on about something or other.

I will bore you with some of the details that have interrupted the nice flow of life.

I suspect the thing of most interest is that Marlene and I have finally moved to Hawaii. We have been planning this for what seems like forever and have finally done it. As of December 29, 2016, we became residents of Hawaii. We didn’t have to move furniture as we purchased a furnished apartment. However, there was a lot of housekeeping with closing businesses in California and opening them in Hawaii. Getting banks set up and post offices and accountants and lawyers. You know the drill. Thankfully Marlene is the professional at these items and I don’t have to worry too much about them at all. But it is a lot of pressure on Marlene.

That is the positive side of things and of course there is a negative side as well. The Yin and Yang of life continues. Our daughter Caroline, her spouse Joanna, and our grandchildren are still in California. Not being able to see them on impulse is not so much fun. We miss them and their growing up and life experiences and their energy. We have to adjust our approaches as a family when we are together and really take advantage of every minute we are able to be together.

Another thing that happened is that I have completely stopped soliciting consulting work. I have clients, to be sure, that continue want to work with me in the businesses. I am blessed with wonderful clients. We started the consulting business in June 1980 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada not too far from where I was born in Mannville, Alberta.

I am not sure but I think winding down the business has been more traumatic for me than starting it was in the first place. One was hard work, while the other is emotional work. You have an identity as a worker that to some degree defines who you are and when you stop doing the work you have the potential to lose who you are. I am sure someone could say that much more eloquently than I, perhaps Caroline.

Then we created Learning Without Scars in 2015. Well it is now a Hawaii Corporation and the California business was closed as of December 2016. While that was going on Caroline was doing the yeoman’s work in converting all of our learning products to an internet based Learning Management System, and getting all this material fresh copyrights and trademarks. Our training business started with Quest Learning Centers. We started with Classroom courses with three levels and four modules per level. These management training programs were created in the early 1990’s. We took that material and compressed it into Webinars starting in the early 2000’s. But as a teacher, I wasn’t happy with the format of a slide show with a voice talking – so we changed things and used a high definition camera and injected me walking into the camera frame and talking to the learners on their computers. Those of you that know me know I like to talk. With the internet option, we had to convert these webinars, of which we had developed over ninety different programs, to the Learning Management Software. This meant a heavy learning curve for Caroline and a lot of work for me. Everything had to be redone. The text content all had to be updated and upgraded. Then we needed to create audio files to go with the text. Then we had to run prototypes so we could have input from actual learners. Those learners wanted to inject me into the program like we had in the webinars so we are working with a Professional, Paul Baumann, from XFINIGEN Media, and creating Vimeo files which we will insert into the learning products.

We have the new website created by Brian Shanahan, who did a wonderful job in presenting us to the world. Brian has upgraded on R.J. Slee site so that the “look and feel” is similar.

And finally, I think, Caroline is working with the IACET, The International Association of Continuous Education Training to have all of our learning programs certified so that they will earn CEU’s, Continuous Education Units credits that would apply to Colleges, Universities and Junior Colleges across the world. That, too, is a big task but one that will bring us, we believe, nice results.

We have been, and continue to be, busy. Life is good.

I don’t know how many of you know that my mother was a teacher, a well-recognized teacher in her day as one of the pioneer teachers of the Pittman reading program, which accelerated the ability of very young children to read. Kindergarten and Grade One specifically were reading newspapers and comprehending. My grandmother was a teacher. She received her Master’s Degree from the University of Manitoba in 1913. Granny, or “Granny the Great” as Caroline called her, taught in a one room school house and I had the pleasure of meeting several of her students when they attended her eightieth birthday party. I suspect she had an impact on them, don’t you?

Well I started as a teacher, first at a country club in the Laurentians, north of Montreal, teaching summer sports. Then moving to an instructor position with McGill University, which morphed in two programs within the Department of Physical Education from Teaching students how to teach swimming and also how to Coach the Swimming discipline. I am quite pleased that several of my students went on to coach at the national level for men and women in the Olympics and Commonwealth games. I had to give up the McGill teaching when I started at the caterpillar dealer in Quebec, Hewitt Equipment. My daughter Caroline is a teacher. She teaches in the California School System. We must have some teaching chops in the genes. I know I get excited when I see the lights go on in peoples’ eyes when they “GET” something.

But one thing I can tell you is that Learning is HARD. I know we have been told how to learn over and over again. It is repetition. Do it over and over again ad nausea. That never really worked for me so that is not how I taught. I wanted to people to understand something so that they would remember it. Not memorize it so they could forget it.

It turns out that the instructions from schools and teachers about highlighting and underlining and sustained reading and rereading notes and texts are not that appropriate. Endel Tulving, a psychologist, at the University of Toronto challenged this traditional model of learning and remembering through a series of investigations starting in the mid-1960’s. Tulving found that the learning curves were statistically indistinguishable between the tried and true learning pattern recommended above and random learning models that were not based on repetition. Well that is how we have designed the internet learning programs. We want you to Learn and to Know, not to memorize.

I am excited about this new venture and we are busy releasing new programs every month. We have the first two years of the management and supervision in the market now. We also have the first program for a specific job function, the first of many, which we released in March. It is for the Telephone and Counter sales personnel in the Parts Business. More on the product side in future blogs.

Well that is it. I hope you understand better now what has been happening and why there has been such a gap in my communicating with you.

The last time I wrote here was when I introduced “Socrates” our mascot. Talk to you soon.

The time is now.

Friday Filosophy #2016-1

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Today, in our Friday Filosophy #2016-1 I want to focus first on learning. We are undergoing a complete makeover, a radical one, in our learning business. We are converting everything to internet based learning.

We are creating programs we call Learning: On Demand which will cover 60 plus internet based self-study programs on specific subjects. These programs will replace our live webinars.

We are also in the process of developing the Virtual Classroom programs. These programs will replace the actual classroom seminars we have been conducting for the past twenty years. 2016 will be the last year we offer the live classroom as a learning format. The Virtual Classroom will offer 14 plus specific learning products. They will all have CEU available.

Let me start then with some quotes on Education and Learning.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Nelson Mandela

 

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

Martin Luther King

 

Education is wasted on the young.

Albert Schweitzer

 

The tools of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet.

Aristotle.

 

Education is the movement from darkness to light.

Allan Bloom

 

Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.

David J Boorstin

 

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.

Anthony J D’Angelo

 

And now for our Friday Filosophy.

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves keep intact your roots.

Victor Hugo

 

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

Eric Hoffer

 

It is not enough to take steps which may someday lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

 

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.

Indira Gandhi.

 

The time is now