With only a little time left in 2013, we at Convergence Training wanted to wish you all a very happy New Year.
Don’t worry if you didn’t follow through on all those ambitious resolutions you set for yourself last year. You now have 365 days to come up with a whole set of new ones.
So whether you’re staying in to watch the ball drop or celebrating out with friends and family, have a safe and wonderful end to 2013, and an amazing start to 2014.
Cheers from Convergence Training!!!
Every so often, when we see some effective training material during our daily lives outside the office, or when we see something that explains things nicely, we like to share it here.
Some years ago, we found the video below from a story on the National Public Radio (NPR) website about an informational video that explained a physical process. The video was created by a college student named Dan Quinn. Mr. Quinn has a YouTube channel where he publishes videos he creates, and one is a really interesting piece on why wine “cries” in a glass.
We decided to write more about that video for our “things from everyday life that related to job training” series below.
For more articles in this series, check out this article on visual design and airline tickets and this article on humor in pre-flight safety videos.
We’ve got two new courses available in our training libraries!
The first, Chlorine Dioxide (ClO2) Awareness, is part of our ever-growing safety training library.
And the second title, Stress Management and Prevention, is a new addition to our Human Resources training library.
Check the videos below to see a sample of each new course. If you want more information or want to request a demo of the full courses, here’s how you can contact us.
[This is the the fifth in a series of posts about learning objectives. We’ve now compiled all the posts into a single downloadable guide to writing learning objectives if you want to check that out.]
As we mentioned in the last post about learning objectives, you can think about three different kinds of learning: learning about things you can “know,” learning about things you can “do,” and learning about things you “feel.” These are called the Cognitive domain, the Psychomotor domain, and the Affective domain. Because we try to avoid $25 words here at the Convergence Training blog, we will also refer to them as Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes. But we didn’t make that up–it’s a somewhat common way to think of this, and trainers often call these “KSAs” for short.
In this post, we’re going to consider the “knowledge” domain of learning more closely–things you can know. We’ll find that there are actually six different levels of knowledge, from simplest to most complex, and we will give a list of behaviors that learners must perform to show they’ve mastered each type of knowledge. This will help you pick the verb you’ll use when writing learning objectives dealing with knowledge. We’ll look at the Skills and Attitudes domains in following posts.
OSHA’s 1910.151(c) is the regulation requiring emergency safety showers and eye washes be placed in certain work areas. Specifically, it says:
Where the eyes or body of any person may be exposed to injurious corrosive materials, suitable facilities for quick drenching or flushing of the eyes and body shall be provided within the work area for immediate emergency use.
In addition to that brief passage, there are 11 standard interpretations for 1910.151(c). And, though it doesn’t have the power of law, ANSI Z358.1 is a good resource full of industry best practices and guidelines.
In addition to having emergency eyewash and safety showers on site when they are called for, it’s important to train your workers how to use them properly too. Our Safety Showers and Eyewashes training course, featuring 3-D animations, practice questions, and a scored test, is a valuable training tool to help you get your workers up to speed on safety showers and eyewashes. Check out a sample below, see all the titles in our safety training library here, and contact us if you have more questions.
[This is the fifth in a series of posts about learning objectives. We’ve now compiled all the posts into a single downloadable guide to writing learning objectives if you want to check that out.]
If you search the Internet for “learning objectives,” you’ll run into the name Benjamin Bloom quickly enough.
That’s because Bloom gave us a handy way to think of different kinds of learning and the learning objectives to write for each. It’s not the only way, and it’s been revised by his followers since he developed it originally, but it’s a help when you’re writing your objectives.
Before we begin explaining his theories to you (over the next four blog posts), take a moment and think of learning. Is all learning alike, or do we sometimes learn different “kinds” of things? For example, consider learning how materials flow through a machine, learning how to weld a metal seam, and learning why it’s important to follow safety rules. Are these the same kinds of learning, or are they different?
If you agree that we learn different types of things, you’re halfway to understanding Bloom’s three “domains” of learning and learning objectives.
Once you’ve read all this stuff on Bloom’s learning objectives for different types of learning, you may also find our Different Types of Training for Different Types of Learning article interesting.
We’re excited to announce the release of sixteen new Chinese language safety and workforce training courses for our industrial and manufacturing customers as part of our multilanguage e-learning training library.
These courses are designed to be used within a learning management system (LMS), which lets you assign, deliver, track completion, and run reports. Click here for more information about our learning management systems, or click here to contact us.
Here’s a sample from our new Chinese language Crane and Hoist Rigging course. The full list of new Chinese language titles is below the video–be sure to check that out, too.
Click the name of any course below to see a short sample video and get more details about the course (note that the sample will be in English but is also available in Chinese).
Confined Space Awareness
Crane and Hoist Rigging
Electrical Safety
Fall Prevention and Protection
Forklift Safety
Hand and Power Tools
Hazard Communication (1994)
Hot Work Safety
Hydraulic Fluid Safety
Ladder Safety
Lockout Tagout
Machine Guarding Safety
Overhead Industrial Crane Basics and Inspections
Overhead Industrial Crane Operational Safety
Pedestrian Safety
Personal Protective Equipment
[This is the fourth in a series of posts about learning objectives. We’ve now compiled all the posts into a single downloadable guide to writing learning objectives if you want to check that out.]
A simple way to make sure you’re building a useful learning objective is to use the ABCD method. Each letter in ABCD stands for a different part of your learning objective. These different parts answer four questions about your objective: who, what, how, and how well.
We’ll spell it all out for you below. Then you can use this information to create better learning activities as part of your workforce training program (or similar learning program).
[This is the the third in a series of posts about learning objectives. We’ve now compiled all the posts into a single downloadable guide to writing learning objectives if you want to check that out.]
As a kid, I loved the campy TV detective show “Get Smart.”
Now that I’m an adult and work as an instructional designer, I still like to get smart. Except now I get SMART when creating learning objectives. In learning and development circles, SMART is an acronym (fancy word!) that represents 5 different criteria to determine if you’ve got a good learning objective. According to the SMART method, your learning objectives should be:
As you probably know, OSHA publishes a list list of the ten most commonly cited standard violations every year. Here’s OSHA’s Top Ten Citations List for 2016. Machine Guarding, 1910.212, is #8 on the list for 2016, and so we’ve got some online machine guarding training resources for you in this article–plus more.
In many or most years, it’s the same standards on the list time and time again (the Machine Guarding standard is one of those that appears year after year). And as a result, we’ve pulled together a series of blogs to help you train your workers about each of the ten most cited standards. This blog is part of that series, and so we’ve got a bunch of materials to help with machine guarding. We’ve got a sample of our own online machine guarding training plus much, much more for you.
Let us know if you’ve got some other resources you’d suggest. The comments field awaits.
Before you dig into the information about machine guarding below, feel free to check out our short sample video that demonstrates a few highlights of our online safety and health courses.
We’re going to start this article assuming you know what a learning objective is. If you don’t, check out our What Is a Learning Objective? article or this free downloadable guide to writing learning objectives first.
And now that we’ve got that covered, in this article we will present some reasons why you should use learning objectives when you create training materials.
[This is the the first in a series of posts about learning objectives. We’ve now compiled all the posts into a single downloadable guide to writing learning objectives if you want to check that out.]
If you’re new to the learning and training world, you may not yet know what a learning objective is.
To put it simply, a learning objective describes what the learners should be able to do after they complete your training materials. In many cases, you’ll probably have a series of learning objectives instead of just one.
You should create your learning objectives before creating your training content. Use the information you gathered during the Training Needs Assessment and the Analysis (or first) phase of the ADDIE instructional design process to create your objectives.
We’ll explain more below and will provide links to even more information about learning objectives, including how to write them, tests to see if they’re written well, different types of learning objectives for different types of learning, and key thinkers in the development of the idea of learning objectives.
There’s even a great free guide to writing learning objectives at the bottom you can download.