Over the next few weeks I will be facilitating two of the popular programs offered by Pathways Training & eLearning which are Introduction to Project Management and Applied Project Management. The intent of these courses is to provide professional planners with the basic knowledge and skills in managing various sized projects in all areas of urban and rural community development, urban design, environment, transportation, health and social services, housing, and economic deve

In the next few weeks I will be facilitating another of the popular programs offered by Pathways Training & eLearning, Introduction to Project Management. The intent of this course is to provide professional planners with the basic knowledge and skills in managing various sized projects in all areas of urban and rural community development, urban design, environment, transportation, health and social services, housing, and economic development. As you can imagine the course f

This week I am in Vancouver working with one of our valued luxury automotive clients, facilitating a popular course offered by Pathways Training and eLearning that focuses on managing the business and people. One of the more popular topics that is covered over the 3-day program revolves around decision making, more specifically, when to utilize a team effort versus deciding on your own. As I am sure you can imagine this can be a lively topic of conversation as some managers

Over the past month I have been spending most of my time in the classroom, leading a few of the many courses Pathways Training & eLearning offers related to excellence in team management, professionalism in the workplace and project management. As such I thought it would be interesting to discuss this week and next, one of my favorite topics that is part of our management training, and that is “What type of leader are you”? Next week I will spend more time discussing why thi

In the world of training development this happens all too often. A customer has created materials that they feel are well written, clearly stated and effectively meets the learning objectives, but when these are provided to an eLearning vendor so that the words can be turned in to eLearning training, the meaning gets lost in translation to the point the customer is dissatisfied with the end result and feel their work and time have been wasted. The reason’s as to the cause

This week I have been speaking at a conference that Pathways Training and eLearning was asked to be a part of and was asked an interesting question… ” How do you make the decision to use eLearning or instructor led training when you can develop only one of those choices"? Making the determination between using eLearning or instructor led training is simple, and often done for you before development starts. For example, consider geographic location of the intended audience.

In the next few weeks a few members of the Pathways Training and eLearning team will be speaking at a conference hosted by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute. At the conference, we will be facilitating engaging sessions on a variety of topics which I have listed below, along with a brief summary. While the focus of the Pathways Training and eLearning team tends to be more on the eLearning side of the training business, this conference is an excellent reminder of wha

Over the next couple of weeks, I thought it would be interesting to hi-light some of the great courses offered by Pathways Training and eLearning, both ILT and WBT. For this week, we will look at one of our more popular instructor led courses, Excellence in Team Management. This full day course focusses on first ascertaining the level of managing experience of each participant, and as well their personal comfort level with the responsibilities of the role, hi-lighting what t

This past week I met a former co-worker who was very curious as to why I am always so enthusiastic when discussing my organization, Pathways Training and eLearning, and what we do. This is not the first time I have been asked this question so I answered by replying with an old proverb… ” Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Simply stated, the point of this proverb is that training is a good thing that can lead

These past few days the team has been tasked with creating an eLearning module with the goal of grabbing the learner's attention immediately...or so was the task we were assigned. When thinking about this, a co-worker asked me what strategies I use to engage and excite the students, specifically at the beginning of a program. To answer this I started by quoting the Italian poet and author Cesare Pavese, who said some 60 years ago, …” We do not remember days…. we remember m

Ideal for Millennials: There has been a significant amount of research completed around the habits, motivations and needs of the largest age group in the workplace today, the Millennials. As a result, it has been concluded that the millennial student not only responds better to innovative training, but in fact almost demands it, assuming you want your training to be successful. Understanding that, virtual reality training is an ideal fit for the millennial, as they are off

Last week I started a conversation around a training program I regularly facilitate titled “Managing People and Yourself”. At Pathways Training and eLearning,, we offer a full suite of leadership training programs through a variety of training opportunities including in class training, one on one coaching and mentoring, video blogs and of course through interactive eLearning training. This course in particular is intended for senior leaders and managers within an organizat

This week I have been facilitating a program for one of our valued automotive clients, titled “Managing People and Yourself” More often than not, the class includes some lively debate as the Managers discuss best practices for managing their people, relative to particular scenarios that are brought up. One topic that always drives good conversation are discussions on can the Manager demonstrate impartiality and objectives that could have a negative impact on themselves. For

.This week I had a discussion with a fellow training professional that afterwards, left me feeling very thankful our relationship was a casual one, in that we did not work together or for the same organization The reason for this was his lack of understanding or appreciation for all of the work that went in to creating a training program. In this particular instance a 2-day instructor led course that he had facilitated and had been developed by his team, and that he spent

For the past few weeks we have been discussing the importance of interpersonal skills, with the most recent discussion on the filters we use to interpret a message. As previously mentioned, the first thing to recognize is that messages are not sent directly from your brain to the receiver’s brain. As you deliver your message, it goes through a set of filters that can impact its meaning. These filters are Words, Tone and Body Language. This week, we will focus on Tone. Look

Recently a client was asking me about best practices for facilitator training and certification… and subsequently asked what processes do we follow at Pathways Training and eLearning, to ensure our facilitators maintain excellence in the classroom. I told them this was an excellent question, as this is something I am most passionate about. Pathways Training and eLearning employs only professional facilitators, who combined have spent more than 50,000 hours in the classroom, l

Recently I was shopping at a local department store when I came across something I thought was a bit out of the ordinary. A man who looked to be in his late 40’s, early 50’s, was admiring himself in a full-length mirror, swiveling his hips left and right in what I assume was an attempt to determine the fit of the pair of Blue Jeans he had on. What I thought was a bit odd was the fact the jeans looked so tight I can’t believe the gentleman had any blood flowing below the wa

Recently a few folks from the Pathways team, including myself, flew to Vancouver to shoot a 360 video in partnership with St. Johns Ambulance. While I will be writing about that experience in the next few weeks as it was certainly an exciting project to be a part of…for today I would like to talk about a discussion I had with my seat mate on the flight over. About halfway through the flight my seatmate and I got in to a brief discussion about what we each did for a living.

Of the many projects we work on at Pathways, one that continues to provide unique challenges and opportunities is a new system launch initiative for which we will be developing and delivering all of the training. (eLearning, ILT, job aids, video, etc.…). This training will be provided to employees all over Canada in each province so while there have been a few unique challenges as I mentioned above, overall it has been exciting! After several weeks of conferences, focus gr

Two weeks ago, I provided an introduction as part of a review of some of the exciting projects we worked on in 2016, so for the next few weeks I am going to go in to a bit more detail, with the focus this week on a project that involved eLearning, facilitation and one on one coaching. One of our clients is a luxury automotive company that, while they are already an industry leader when it comes to the “car buying” journey, continue to look for ways they can improve the custom