U-Blog 6

In today's fast-moving world as new information escalates in every field and as more people have multiple careers during their lifetimes, lifelong learning is essential. Private employers spend $210 billion a year for training, while the government spends an additional $5 billion. Results revealed that adults can and do experience significant personal growth at mid-life. However, adult students grew significantly only in one type of learning environment; they tended not to grow or to regress in another type. What was the difference? The seven key factors found in learning programs that stimulated adult development are:

1. An environment where students feel safe and supported, where individual needs and uniqueness are honored, where abilities and life achievements are acknowledged and respected.

2. An environment that fosters intellectual freedom and encourages experimentation and creativity.

3. An environment where faculty treats adult students as peers--accepted and respected as intelligent experienced adults whose opinions are listened to, honored, appreciated. Such faculty members often comment that they learn as much from their students as the students learn from them.

4. Self-directed learning, where students take responsibility for their own learning. They work with faculty to design individual learning programs which address what each person needs and wants to learn in order to function optimally in their profession.

5. Pacing, or intellectual challenge. Optimal pacing is challenging people just beyond their present level of ability. If challenged too far beyond, people give up. If challenged too little, they become bored and learn little. Pacing can be compared to playing tennis with a slightly better player; your game tends to improve. But if the other player is far better and it's impossible to return a ball, you give up, overwhelmed. If the other player is less experienced and can return none of your balls, you learn little. Those adults who reported experiencing high levels of intellectual stimulation--to the point of feeling discomfort--grew more.

6. Active involvement in learning, as opposed to passively listening to lectures. Where students and instructors interact and dialogue, where students try out new ideas in the workplace, where exercises and experiences are used to bolster facts and theory, adults grow more.

7. Regular feedback mechanisms for students to tell faculty what works best for them and what they want and need to learn--and faculty who hear and make changes based on student input.

In contrast, in learning programs where students feel unsafe and threatened, where they are viewed as underlings, life achievements not honored, those students tend to regress developmentally, especially in self-esteem and self-confidence. These findings support the thinking of Malcolm Knowles, recognized as the father of adult learning; his trailblazing work underlies many of our most effective adult education programs. He reminded us that in optimal adult learning programs, where adults learn best, both students and faculty also have fun, for it is exhilarating to REALLY learn.

U Blog 5

Business owners are only as successful as their employees or team members. In this article we are going to discuss how to train team members when you are in networking marketing. There are a couple of ways you can do this training.

1. Training callsYou can set up training calls that you can do with your team.
2. In House trainingSet up training sessions in your home or at another location.
3. VideoProviding your training via video is a great way for your members to feel like they are in the same room as you.
4. PowerPointCreating a slide show via PowerPoint is another option for your training.
5. EbookCreating an ebook is a great way to do training with your team members.

Success is important to any business owner. When you set up training sessions for your team members, they will help you reach your success goals. Training sessions help raise moral and increase business. When you provide these training sessions everyone will have the ability to grow.

U-Blog 4

"The Changing Face of Corporate Training"

Corporate trainers are finding themselves under increasing pressure to minimise the time employees spend undergoing training "off the job", resulting in a decline in formal classroom training and a greater emphasis on e-learning. "Corporate training always evolves and adapts, and right now the challenge is to justify what we do in terms of quantifiable outcomes and contribution to the bottom line," said Novations Senior Vice President Rebecca Hefter. "Companies want training that's relevant and with exercises that closely simulate the way work is conducted on the job. Case studies where teams solve real work problems are very popular."

I think that e-learning is a really good idea. A common complaint is that training participants feel that they can not focus on the training because of distractions such as the phone ringing, other people interrupting with questions or concerns, or simply no one there to cover while they are in a training session. Companies want to extend the learning experience beyond the classroom, using learning logs, job aids, action plans and even printed reminders to make learning online more interesting.

U Blog 3

http://www.womackcompany.com/In_House_Seminars.html

This article is about workplace performance seminars. After college people never stop learning. In today's world we are at such a fast pace and new technologies and research is being done frequently to where we learn beyond school and learn in our jobs as well throughout life. Therefore we need good workplace performance in corporations. These paid seminars cover the basis of doing multiple tasks at once, focus on results, and performance management.

Doing multiple tasks at once focuses on collecting information and ideas, front-end decision making (work-related processing), managing delegated tasks and outcomes, maximizing calendars and to-do lists bunching tasks, and outcome reviews to increase efficiency

Focus on Results focuses on identifying mid and long-range strategic plans, mapping internal interests and strengths to professional objectives and goals, minimizing distractions and working smarter, not harder or longer, identifying and implementing a weekly debrief process

Performance management focuses on organizing in less than 10 minutes a day, eliminating procrastination, identifying and monitoring work habits, and tools to add & gear to use

If we learn all of these from this seminar then we as workers should be able to be successful in personal and work environment.

U Blog 2

http://www.newhorizons.org/neuro/markus.htm

This article is about arts learning and the creative economy. Professional development for the creative economy is one that embeds "arts learning" into the organization's "innovation infrastructure" along with brain-compatible, self-managed, team-driven, collaborations that draw upon the benefits of intrinsic motivation for shaping projects that sustain the creative vision of the organization. "Arts learning" can help dissolve the line between play and work, the line that often gets adults into systemic difficulties.

Creative learning keeps the learner fully engaged about what they are learning. Classrooms that connect art and technology into projects with other environments is where people are getting the most effect out of learning. I know from a personal stance that learning hands-on in a creative environment helps me learn things more quickly and it sticks with me longer through the years. If I just read or listen to lectures or the teacher just demonstrates what is going on I really do not grasp the concept of what I am trying to learn. In a working environment you have to work with every thing yourself and the teachers need to start doing that from the start.

U Blog 1

http://www.newhorizons.org/lifelong/workplace/billington.htm is an article about learning in the workplace. Because of the speedy change in both knowledge and technology we as adults can either keep on learning throughout life or just depend on our skills and knowledge and not worry about learning the new at all. This article explains seven important ways to keep people learning in the workplace starting when they are students. 1.) Make sure you have an environment were students feel safe and supported and where individual needs and uniqueness are honored. 2.) An environment that encourages intellectual freedom and experimentation and creativity. 3.) An environment that where faculty treats students as peers. 4.) Self-directed learning, where students take responsibility for their own learning and they work with faculty to design new learning programs. 5.) Pacing or intellectual challenge. Optimal pacing is challenging people just beyond their present level. 6.) Active involvement in learning instead of passive listening to lectures and 7.) regular feedback mechanisms about what works best for them and what they want and need to learn. By reading this article I gathered that if we start teaching these students at a younger age about learning and to keep on learning throughout life that they might take these techniques with them in to the workplace.

Trends In Workplace Learning

America's Workforce Needs in the 21st Century

Education and skills are more important in the new economy. In the new economy skill requirements are increasing in many industries, not just the so-called high-tech industries. The percentage of workers who use computers at work has risen from 25 percent in 1984, to 46 percent in 1993, to 75 percent today. More than half of the new jobs created between 1984 and 2005 will require some education beyond high school.

Companies Need To Do More to Provide Workers With Skills

Technology companies cannot simply rely on government and educational institutions to provide the skilled workers they need. Rather, companies must play a more central and engaged role in skill development. But just as importantly, public policy must be structured to encourage and facilitate such partnerships.