Learning Management Systems (LMSs) for Online Safety Training

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
LMS for Online Safety Training Image

Many companies are interested in adding an online component to their current safety/EHS training.

It makes sense. We already do so many things online, and we know that putting stuff online can make things easier, more efficient, less costly, more convenient, and more effective.

Why can’t the same be true with safety training? Well, it can be and it is, my friend.

Not only is it possible, by now we all probably have at least some familiarity with online safety training. Maybe you’ve seen and have been impressed by an online safety training course. Or maybe you’ve seen how online systems can keep track of and automate training assignments that workers must complete recurrently (such as every year for HazCom training). Or maybe you know how efficiently and effortlessly online training systems can create and store records of completed training and even auto-generate reports on that training and deliver them to your email inbox automatically.

So in this article, we’ll take a look at one tool you can use in an online safety training solution: the learning management system, or LMS. If you already know what an LMS is and how it relates to online safety training, you may learn some new stuff here. If you’re not aware of what an LMS is or how it’s related to online safety training, this may be really eye-opening and very welcome news.

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eLearning Courses for Online Safety Training

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
eLearning Courses for Online Safety Training Image

Online safety training can come in many forms. For example, it may mean watching a one-time, “live” webinar or a recorded, on-demand version of that webinar. Or it may mean watching a video online.

But another thing it may mean is watching and completing one or more elearning courses.

eLearning courses are unique animals because they allow for a lot more interactivity, including but not limited to online practice quizzes and scored online tests, than you can get with an online video or a recorded webinar, for example.

Another aspect of an eLearning course is that they’re delivered through a learning management system, also known as an LMS. That combination of eLearning courses and an LMS gives a lot of additional power and flexibility.

We’ve already written about LMSs for safety training, so in this article, we’ll focus on eLearning for safety training.

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How Can an LMS Improve the ROI of My Health and Safety Training Program?

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
LMS & ROI of Job Training Image

In other articles, we’ve explained what an LMS is and demonstrated how you can use an LMS to improve your EHS training program and your new employee safety onboarding, and we’ve even given a free LMS Buyer’s Guide checklist to help you get the right LMS for your company the first time.

Hopefully you’ve read those articles and enjoyed them (although it’s not necessary to read those articles before you read this one). And maybe you even learned a thing or two.

But maybe your thoughts are stuck on a single point, one that is often relevant in our society: the almighty dollar and your return on investment (ROI).

Specifically, maybe you’re wondering if an LMS would be “worth it?” Is it just a shiny new toy that you can’t afford and that will never help you recover its purchase price? Or is it one of those things that you will purchase and have it save you so much money you come out looking like a genius and smelling like roses?

Well, we’ve got some thoughts about that in the article below. Read on and reap the profits (ha ha!).

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How an LMS Can Simplify New Employee Safety Onboarding

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
New Employee Safety Onboarding and LMSs Image

If you’re in Safety or EHS, you know it’s important to deliver safety onboarding training to new hires. And that’s true if an experienced worker is moving to a new site, work area, or into a new role as well.

But you also probably know that delivering safety onboarding comes with a number of challenges. It’s hard to have time available every time a new worker is hired, and that doesn’t even account for having time every time someone moves from Site A to Site B, or from Production to Warehouse, or from Forklift Operator to Machine Tender.

Plus you’ve got to create all the appropriate safety training materials for new employees, and in addition for site-specific safety training, work area-specific safety training, job-role specific safety training, and special task-specific safety training too.

And of course you’ve got to actually KNOW that a new employee has been hired, or that someone has been transferred from Topeka to your site in Memphis, or from Converting to Production. We may all like to say that communications where we work are perfect, and that we’re all informed of events like these, but I’m pretty sure you’d quickly agree that’s not always the case.

So, in a nutshell, there are lots of reasons why it’s difficult to provide safety onboarding for new hires and job transfers.

That’s where an online system that includes a learning management system (LMS) can pay dividends. You can think of an LMS as an automated assistant that can coordinate all this stuff for you. Kind of a safety onboarding auto-pilot system.

So if you’re in the market for an LMS, and want to be able to use it for safety onboarding along with other safety/EHS training, we’ll give you an idea of some of the features you should want.

NOTE: This article will focus on providing safety training as part of an onboarding process. For a fuller discussion of onboarding as a whole, please see our companion article Onboarding New Employees: Why and How to Do It.
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The 70/20/10 Model for Workforce Learning & Development: How to Help Workers Improve Learning & Performance at Your Work

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
70/20/10 Workplace Learning Model Image

Have you heard of the 70/20/10 model as it’s used in workforce learning & development? It’s also sometimes called the 3 E’s (for Experience, Exposure, and Education), and two of the three parts of 70/20/10 (the 70 and 20) are often combined and referred to as informal learning.

Quite a few of you probably have heard of this idea–it’s a buzzword in L&D these days–but it’s possible that others haven’t.

In this post, we’ll briefly explain what the 70/20/10 model is, give you some ideas of how to use it, and explain a few reasons why.

We’re also curious to hear your own experiences and thoughts (as always), so don’t forget to leave your comments below.
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How to Write Better Smile Sheets: What’s Wrong With Traditional Training Evaluation Forms and How to Make Them Better

Jeffrey Dalto 2 Comments

Smile-Sheet-GraphicIf you’re in training, you’re probably familiar with the sheets that trainers pass out to learners after a training session, asking the learners to evaluate the training session and the trainer.

These are known by a variety of names. Maybe you call them training-evaluation forms, or student-response forms, or trainee-reaction forms. But they’re also commonly–maybe most commonly–known as smile sheets.

Why smile sheets? Because it’s common for the learners attending training to give the training/trainer high scores that make everyone smile. But the common assumption is that the trainees do that politely, kindly, quickly, uncritically, and without giving any great thought. And so the term smile sheet is generally used somewhat dismissively, with the assumption that the information they contain doesn’t really provide a lot of value. Or, they’re assumed to hold much valuable information, even if that’s not really true due to poor design.

And yet, quite a few trainers continue to use smile sheets, and many of those trainers do nothing to improve them. Maybe they’ve never even thought of improving their smile sheets. It’s all become a bit of a habit to them, one they don’t think about because there’s so much else to think about, worry about, and to do.

I recently read a very good book called Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form by Dr. Will Thalheimer. The book explains some of the common problems with smile sheets, but also gives some very helpful tips to help make them better. We definitely suggest that you buy and read the book, and we’ve included a bunch of information to help you do that at the bottom of this article.

But for now, let’s look at some of the general points Thalheimer makes in his book and see what we can learn from them.

If you’re extra curious on this topic, I recommend you check out our interview with Dr. Thalheimer on smile sheets after you read this introduction.
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Convergence Training Updates MSHA Compliance Course Catalog

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online-courses-for-MSHA-46If you’ve worked at a surface mine, or performed work in an MSHA-regulated site, there’s a good chance you’ve seen our MSHA Surface Miner Training. Back in 2008 Convergence Training developed the original library of MSHA Part 46-compliant mine safety courses. And since then, our courses have been used in hundreds of MSHA training programs all across North America and viewed by thousands of mine employees and contractors.

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On-Demand Webinar: Developing Effective Safety Training

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
Developing Effective Safety Training Webinar Image

Want to know the hidden secret to developing effective safety training materials?

Actually, there’s no hidden secret. But there ARE some well-known, tried-and-true methods, and they’re documented in ANSI Z490.1, the national standard of Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health, and Environmental Training.

In this 30-minute, recorded, on-demand webinar, we introduce you to ANSI Z490.1, and focus on four aspects of developing effective EHS training that Z490.1 calls out:

  • Writing learning objectives that pass the ABCD and SMART tests
  • Using a blended learning solution for safety training and selecting training delivery methods based on the need for “adequate feedback”
  • Tips for developing effective safety training, including using credible information sources and following some best practices of instructional design
  • Evaluating safety training using Kirkpatrick’s four-level evaluation method

You can listen to our free, recorded webinar on Effective Safety Training at our Webinars page. 

And we’ve got a LOT more information for you about safety training if you keep on reading below.

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Helping Workers Acquire Basic Job Skills and Perform Standard Procedures

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
Teaching Workers Basic Job Skills and Procedures Image

In every job, there’s a set of basic skills and simple procedures that a worker filling that job has to learn to perform.

For an organization to perform at peak efficiency, it’s important that the workers in each job role know how to perform each of these skills and procedures.

But how does a company go about teaching those basic skills and procedures? How can employers help workers develop these skills and knowledge quickly and efficiently? And how does the company know if the workers can perform those procedures?

That’s what we’re going to look at in this article.
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Free Surface Mine Physical Environment Interactive Glossary

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

We’ve been revamping our mining safety training e-learning library, in case you didn’t know.

What does that mean? Well, we’ve added a BUNCH of new courses, for one thing. We’ve spruced up older titles, adding new information when relevant and improving our graphics (our 3D animation capabilities become more and more impressive every year). And we’ve broken some of the courses up into shorter, more “bite-sized” learning activities to make them easier to watch and more effective learning experiences.

One of the courses we’ve updated is our General Physical Characteristics of Surface Mines (great for Part 46 New Miner and Annual Refresher, by the way). To show that off a bit and give you a free training resource, we’ve taken some of the terms, definitions, and images from that course and made the free interactive glossary below.

There are two ways you can enjoy this free resource. The first is to just play it here from our blog. You can do that any time you wish. The second is to download your own free copy and then import it into your SCORM-compliant LMS. We’ve included more information about that second option below.
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Training that Helps Employees Learn Basic Job Knowledge

Jeffrey Dalto 2 Comments
Training for Basic Job Knowledge Image

As a producer of learning management systems (LMSs) that are designed to let you to use a variety of different training delivery methods in a blended learning solution, we give a lot of thought to how employers can create the “best” blend.

Actually, we don’t think there’s any one simple answer to that question that you can apply every time. There are various ways to look at it, and each make sense in different circumstances.

However, one idea that we’re big fans of when creating a blended learning solution is to select the training delivery method (example–e-learning, written, video, field-based OJT, instructor-led classroom training, etc.) by considering the type of training material (the information) that you’re trying to convey, and/or the employee’s need for practice and feedback during training.

We’ve introduced that method of creating a blended learning solution in an earlier article. In this article, we’re going to take a deeper look at one aspect of the blend–training that’s designed to help employees acquire base-level, foundational knowledge that doesn’t require a lot of practice or feedback.

In other related articles, we’ve addressed training to help employees learn to basic job skills and procedures and training to help employees develop advanced job skills.
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How to Write Multiple-Choice Questions for Workforce Training

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

writing-mc-test-questions-for-online-training-activities-imageA lot of you write test questions for online training. Or even paper-based tests you’re still delivering the old-fashioned way (good on you!).

Maybe you’re doing it with an eLearning authoring tool, such as the ones from Articulate, Adobe, or Lectora.  Or maybe the learning management system (LMS) you use at work has a built in tool for creating online quizzes.

No matter how you’re writing tests for training, you may sometimes find yourself wondering about the best practices for writing standard question types. (By the way, instructional designers often use the wonky phrases “assessment” for a test and “assessment item” for a question within a test.)

We’ve got a few of those best practices for you below. Hope this helps you with your question writin’. 🙂
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