Here’s a quick announcement to let you know about two new courses we just added to our ever-growing libraries of 3-D animated, SCORM-compliant training courses for the pulp, paper, tissue, and box industries.
If you’d like to learn more about these courses or view them in a demo, click here.
Here’s a quick announcement to let you know about three new courses we just added to our ever-growing libraries of 3-D animated industrial and manufacturing training courses. You can read descriptions and view samples of the new courses below, or you can see all the titles and view samples of the courses in our e-learning libraries here.
If you’d like to learn more about these courses or view them in a demo, click here.
Course Description: This course explains the location and function of the major components of a typical table saw and provides safety guidelines to follow while working on and around a table saw. It includes explanations of how to adjust the blade height and blade tilt, how to square the blade, and how to set the cut width.
Course Description: This course explains the location and function of the major components of a typical table saw, provides safety guidelines to follow while working on and around a table saw, explains different cut types that can be performed with a table saw, and demonstrates the techniques used make those cuts. Understanding how table saws operate will allow you to use them properly and effectively, and will help you prevent injuries.
Course Description: When accidents happen, safety showers and eye washes can be used to rinse the targeted area and reduce the severity of an injury. This course describes different types of safety showers and eye washes, explains how to operate them, demonstrates how to help an accident victim use a safety shower or eye wash, and provides best practices for maintaining and testing them.
As you probably know, OSHA is revising its old Hazard Communication 1994 Standard and has created a new Hazard Communication 2012 Standard. The new HazCom 2012 Standard is “aligned” with the Globally Harmonized System, also known as GHS.
You may also know that employers have an obligation to train their employees about certain aspects of the new GHS-aligned HazCom 2012 Standard before December 1, 2013 (this year). This deadline is mentioned on OSHA’s website on a page titled Effective Dates. And it has also been the subject of one of our earlier blog posts explaining What to Know and Do for HazCom 2012/GHS During 2013.
But, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t know that OSHA recently published a Fact Sheet titled December 1st, 2013 Training Requirements for the Revised Hazard Communication Standard. That’s because it’s brand new. We just recently learned of it ourselves.
As a kid, one of my favorite villains on the Amazing Spiderman was Electro, a walking, talking electrical hazard. Creating Electro as an arch-villain seems appropriate, because electricity can present many hazards at home and at work. And apparently, some people are either not aware of these hazards or are not taking them seriously enough, because the Electrical, General Requirements standard often appears on OSHA’s list of most commonly cited violations.
In this post, we’ve got a fun word game that lets you test your knowledge of electrical terms related to 1910.303 (the words and definitions themselves come from 1910.399, where all definitions for the subpart are listed). Hope you enjoy this one!
On-the-job training programs, also known as OJT, have a long history in manufacturing. And many times, they’re quite effective. However, if they’re not well-designed, the results can be less impressive.
What’s the story at your workplace? Are you struggling to get better results from your on-the-job training (OJT) programs?
If so, here are some quick tips to keep in mind. Use the Comments section below to add your own or ask some questions, too.
What do you do when there’s a hazard?
As any horror movie aficionado will tell you, you lock the hazard out (although discriminating horror-movie watchers may remember that strategy didn’t work so well in The Shining).
But I digress. When it comes to hazardous energy, you definitely want to lock it out and tag it out before working on a machine or equipment. As we all know from OSHA’s Control of Hazardous Energy-Lockout/Tagout regulation (1910.147).
In this article, we’ve got a fun lockout/tagout word game to help you remember all that. You can play it online from this blog post as often as you want. We’ve even set up an option so you can download a free copy for yourself.
Good luck with the game. Or, as the French would say, bon chance!
Convergence Training is creating a series of ready-made, off-the-shelf training materials for the pulp, paper, tissue, and corrugated board industries.
When complete, the series will include 180 titles specifically focused on pulp, paper, tissue, and/or corrugated board production. In addition, another 30 courses will address related cultural issues (such as 5S Methodology), general skills (such as Process and Instrumentation Diagrams), hazardous materials (such as Hydrogen Sulfide Awareness), environmental issues (such as Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasures), and workforce training and mentoring (such as Adult Learning).
In some parts of the country, the mercury is already skyrocketing up the thermometer. A quick look at today’s weather map shows about half the country with temps in the 80s or 90s.
It’s important to be aware of hot weather because workers can suffer serious problems and even die when working in high temperatures. So what can you do as an employer or supervisor to protect your workers? Well, one thing you can do is be aware of the hazard and know how to lessen the risk.
It was the Star Trek character Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy who once said “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not an electrician!”
Actually, I don’t think he ever said that. But YOU might say something like that after trying your hand at this Convergence Word Game based on OSHA’s Electrical-Wiring Methods (1910.305) regulation.
We’ve got it set up for you so you can play the game right here from our blog as many times as you wish, or you can download a free copy and import it into your SCORM-compliant LMS and play it from the LMS. It’s all right below the red MORE button. 🙂
We’re excited to announce the availability of a new series of safety-focused “Toolbox Talk” videos, produced with the support of Caterpillar Inc. through Caterpillar Safety Services and Caterpillar University.
The new videos are derived from Caterpillar’s extensive library of Toolbox Talk discussion guides. They are designed to supplement the popular text-based documents.
Developed using Convergence Training’s signature combination of high-quality 3D graphics and animation, the courses deliver the greatest possible training experience in the limited time afforded by the Toolbox Talk format.
“Toolbox Talks are intended to be short,” says Randy Kohltfarber, General Manager of Convergence Training. “If you want to deliver effective training in a short amount of time, it has to be engaging, and it has to be easily recalled when people are actually out there on the job. High-quality audio-visual training content like ours is proven to be more effective at delivering a memorable training experience than your standard lecture or PowerPoint presentation, and I think that’s what makes us a great fit for this project.”
Keeping in spirit with the Toolbox Talk concept, Convergence Training developed each of the Caterpillar Toolbox Talk videos to be from 3-15 minutes long and to focus discussion around a single safety topic. The first seven videos are aligned with Caterpillar’s most popular Toolbox Talk guides:
Computer-based versions of the Toolbox Talk courses can be accessed through the Convergence LMS training management platform or at Caterpillar University. The Toolbox Talk DVDs are available for sale online at BuyBetterTraining.com and ShopCatSafety.com.
Convergence Training is a leading producer of occupational health and safety training videos, training management software, and regulatory compliance tools for general industry, manufacturing, pulp and paper, and mining.
For more information on Convergence Training’s safety training videos, compliance software, and online training services, please visit ConvergenceTraining.com or call 360-619-5010 x229.
If you Google “Training and ROI,” you’ll get lots of hits. About 50,100,000 in my case this morning.
And there’s a good reason for that: people want to know if the investment in workforce training is worth the cost. And they often have to justify the cost of that to their bosses.
But let’s take a step back. Instead of trying to set a specific dollar figure on the value of an job training, let’s consider some ways that training programs, including training programs delivered through a learning management system (LMS), can affect your bottom line by increasing production and efficiency and/or by cutting waste and costs.
All of these examples are drawn directly from discussions with new customers after they purchased an LMS and/or workforce training materials from Convergence Training.
Like you, the folks at Convergence Training are always trying to learn more and be better at our jobs. We take courses, go to conferences, read books, and prowl the web.
Yadda yadda yadda.
During a recent web prowl, I came across a fascinating and helpful discussion in LinkedIn’s “Instructional Design & E-Learning Professionals’” group (note: that link will probably only work if you’re a LinkedIn member and a member of that group).
Linda (Berberich) Ross, a Senior Principal Learning Architect at Oracle Corporation (and a former coworker of yours truly, by coincidence), began the thread, which was titled “Instructional Design Review Checklist.”
It was a great discussion and many people provided links to helpful instructional design checklists to use for course development.
We’ve summarized those checklists here, including the links so you can check ’em out yourself.
Thanks to all those who participated in the original discussion on LinkedIn, and to my former coworker Linda for starting it all up.