marc

FUN = enjoyment, amusement, or light-hearted pleasure.

OLOGY = subject of study; a branch of knowledge.

FUNOLOGY = A study of (learning) enjoyment!

marc

Hi folks, it has been just over 12 months since my last post. In that time I have had what could be described as a forgettable year in 2015. After a heart attack in February, I took a sabbatical to recover and to be fully focused on my health. Despite the obvious need to do this and the signals my body was giving me to slow down, this was a tremendously difficult thing to do. I felt that I wasn’t making the contributions that I should have been and this had a really negative effect on my mental state.

marc

Aside from building subject-matter knowledge, timing would be the next biggest challenge for new trainers and trainers of new material. It is often difficult to accurately ascertain how long material will take to cover and equally problematic to identify appropriate timeframes for learner activity. As such, trainers need to work strategies into their planning that will give them some flexibility when delivering and enable them to do more with the time they have.

marc

There are a plethora of articles out there focused on helping the classroom trainer to engage with their audiences. However, there seems to be a real dearth of content to support the virtual trainer. Given the explosion of webinars as a virtual facilitation tool in recent years we owe it to these participants to identify ways to strengthen their learning experience. Rather than trying to take our classroom resources and make them fit the online space, we need to underpin the journey with sound andragogy.

marc

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is used across many industries all over the world and is considered the primary means by which professionals maintain and enhance their knowledge and skills. With the ever-changing face of VET, on-going CPD is essential to support practitioners in their current roles and assist them in maintaining a pathway of career progression.

marc

Yes and No. In a sense the traditional concept of “teacher” is one which has diminishing impact. The notion of what a teacher is and does is changing and being increasingly replaced and extended by the role of guide and mentor. More than “redundant”, teachers are at risk of becoming irrelevant. No longer are teachers the bastions of knowledge and harbingers of a single, right way of doing things. Moreover, learners are not looking for that structured, linear style of learning either. In a Post-Google world, learners are wired to use networks and search engines to find answers quickly.

marc
One of the most common challenges for trainers is getting the group to refocus and return to their seats after an activity, particularly when this activity has been noisy or ends in bursts of laughter.  Similarly, a lot of time can be lost to the trainer when their group does not return in a timely fashion after a break.  A few months ago we went to our brains trust of training colleagues and former students with the simple question: How do you get your participants back on time? Below is a summary of the best tips we collected: 1. Tune them in!
marc

I continue to be amazed at how little preparation seems to go into presentations. Outside of our training and assessment space, I do get an opportunity to see a range of presentations via conferences and workshops and whilst the presenters tend to have good subject matter knowledge they seem to lack an ability to plan for an effective transfer of this. Therefore, I thought it was timely to share my seven easy steps for success when session planning.

marc

As I sit silently in a self-made lock down to complete my latest book about training games, I thought I would take a break and consider the wider process of becoming published.

More and more, educational institutions are asking for staff to contribute to their professional development through scholarly activities such as conducting research, presenting papers at conferences or having articles accepted for publication. The question we get a lot from our students is “how do we get ourselves published, the first time?”

Here are some hints:

marc

Even experienced trainers with the latest resources and most interesting training material can be thrown off course by the behaviours of difficult participants. Therefore, it is important to load the kit bag with a variety of tools and techniques to overcome the dilemmas presented by some students.

Pages