What did a waterpark and corporate learning have in common…? Frankly, I assumed, very little. So why I ask the question? Simply, the life-long learner in me was fascinated by a recent visit to a Florida theme (water) park, not named after Walt. My family and I went to Volcano Bay a Universal property and (I believe) the only park we hadn’t visited on at least one previous trip down south. I have to be honest, early reviews on the park did not seem especially promising. So, we

Last week I continued a discussion with part II on the importance of protecting your business’s privacy, with a focus on best practices for employees when using Email. This week I would like to conclude the discussion by offering some important tips around the use of common hardware seen in the workplace, and that is personal devices including a smartphone, tablet or laptop. As I mentioned last week, we take the protection of our customer’s privacy very seriously, so much s

Last week I started a discussion on the importance of protecting your business’s privacy, so this week I would like to offer a few tips that apply both to the organization and the individual employee. As I mentioned last week, we take the protection of our customer’s privacy very seriously, so much so that we have developed programs, both eLearning and instructor led, that cover all aspects of safeguarding customer privacy. So let’s get started by asking the question, what

Regardless of what your role within an organization is, we all have a responsibility to protect our customers’ privacy. The above statement may seem an odd way to open a blog, but I wanted to be sure the objective of this discussion is stated as clearly as possible, as I have discovered over my 25 years in training, that not everyone shares that same opinion. At Pathways Training and eLearning, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of client’s asking for customized

While the year is still relatively young, I have been somewhat surprised by the frequency of requests the Pathways Training & eLearning team has received has to develop eLearning programs or facilitate in-class programs about excellence in communication, customer service and Social Media training for several of our valuable clients. As a result the team has already logged a significant amount of travel as we visit the offices and meet with our clients so we can gain a bette

At Pathways Training & eLearning we develop several programs, both for eLearning and instructor led training, that provide the learner coaching tips on how to manage difficult situations in the workplace. Along this vein, a new program we will be offering shortly and is currently in development, looks at complaint management. Specifically, what our customers generally complain about (how these issues arise) and how the customer care teams should not only address the issue,

I have mentioned on a few occasions that one of my duties at Pathways Training & eLearning is facilitating courses for our luxury automotive clients. Today I was co-facilitating a Brand Awareness course and had an interesting conversation with my co-facilitator at lunch. The focus of the conversation was around facilitation techniques which led to being asked what strategies I use to engage and excite the students, specifically at the beginning of a program. To answer this

This week the Pathways team will be running an all-day workshop for one of our luxury automotive clients. While the objective for the workshop is essentially to allow groups within their organization to attain greater insight as to what their peers are doing, and as well to ascertain how they can work together in a more cohesive manner…much of the discussions will be focused on communication excellence for leaders. In thinking about the discussions we are preparing to have w

As I have stated on numerous occasions, one of the more common topics we at Pathways Training & eLearning are asked to train (through interactive eLearning modules) is Social Media. I have written in the past about the benefits, advantages and potential dangers of using Social Media, so this week I would like to keep things a bit lighter, and offer these fun and interesting facts, thanks to our friends at Statistics Canada. As I am sure we would all agree, one of the greate

One of the most common topics we are asked to address in training is Social Media awareness, which on the service seems reasonably straight forward, however as many of our clients have discovered…not all of their employees share this same understanding. By that I mean that while most of us are aware of the plentiful social media channels available to us to share our opinions, thoughts and life experiences, many still do not realize the impact, both good and bad, Social Media

Over these past few months Pathways Training and eLearning has been asked by several of our clients, to develop eLearning modules on the topic of social media awareness and usage. Considering the frequency of these recent eLearning requests, and as well the acknowledgement that social media is by no means a new phenomenon, this leads me to believe that more and more organizations have probably already realized the potential benefits of utilizing social media, and are onl

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.

Writing and creating effective tests for understanding is a crucial component of developing a good eLearning program, and sadly however something that is often overlooked. Think about it for a moment…. how many times have you ever reviewed an eLearning course by skimming through the material, not really reading all of the content, muting the audio portions at times and despite all that, still aced the quiz at the end? Assuming most of us do not possess an eidetic memory or

In the upcoming weeks, the Pathways Training and eLearning team will be starting a large project that will require a significant amount of “live action” filming, and by that, I mean filming actual people as opposed to creating an animated video. These types of “shoots” typically involve volunteers who are not used to being in front of the camera and are not always aware of the need to follow a tight schedule or the ramifications of not showing up at all.,. Considering these

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

This past week I spent some time facilitating management and brand courses for one of our valued Luxury automotive clients, and as we are like to do at times when we have a few extra minutes in the agenda, I asked the students what they would like to discuss. One of the more interesting suggestions came from a young Manager who wanted my opinion on the effectiveness of using social media programs such as LinkedIn, to find truly effective coaching and mentoring tips within th

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. Last week we looked at one of our popular ILT courses, Excellence in Management. This week I will be reviewing another popular program we offer, Social Media in the Workplace, which is provided to our customers (customized of course) through a 30 – 60-minute eLearning module. Social media allows us to communicat

Last week I reviewed a very successful project Pathways was a part of where we created Canada’s first 360 video eLearning video which provided the students the chance to experience a mass casualty situation in virtual reality. I ended the discussion by pointing out that, although the advantages of 360 video and virtual reality seem plentiful, we have yet to see a significant spike in the utilization of the technology. As such, I would like to continue the discussion by offe

A few months back the Pathways Training and eLearning team partnered with our friends at Saint John Ambulance to create one of Canada’s first 360 video eLearning modules. The program is intended for students participating in a first aid program, with this particular module dealing with best practices when responding to a mass casualty event. The virtual reality simulation allowed the students to “walk though” a mass casualty scene (using a virtual reality viewer such as G

Last week we started a discussion on the importance of interpersonal skills. This week we will continue along that theme, discussing the filters we use to interpret a message. 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 Words. Our choice of w