Customer service is incredibly important to me. Frankly, it’s more important to me than the product or service itself. It is actually possible for those two sentences, to be my blog’s beginning, middle and end. But that wouldn’t be very much fun would it? Every time I “enjoy” a poor customer service experience, I recoil and remember, just how important it really is. I have made more decisions than I care to admit, exclusively because the service was so poor, I could not conti

Last week we hosted a client appreciation event, and we had many of our customers join us at a box, for the Raptors game. It was wonderful chance to see so many of our loyal clients in person, and to catch up in a non-business setting (and it sure didn’t hurt that the was a Raptors win as well). Many of our clients commented on how impressed they were with the brands we work with and what a wide range of clients we had from so many different industries. Pathways has had the

Normally, I balk at having conversations in the gym. Definitely, while doing anything that smacks of cardio. In part, because I really love the few minutes of uninterrupted TV time I get. But mostly, it’s because I’ve never been especially adept at talking and running (at least not without sounding like my lungs are seconds from bursting from my chest). However, today I had a delightful impromptu conversation with a member. A chat that began before I actually got on the equip

Lately we have had a lot of clients who are new to eLearning. For many of us who have been in the training industry for the last 5-10 years, we have been accustomed to most people using eLearning as the predominant method of training and it always comes as a bit of a surprise to us to encounter an organization that has not used eLearning at all (due to various reasons such as not having an internal Learning Management System (LMS) or for other reasons such as employees prefe

For a Learning and Development professional to truly become a Trusted Business Advisor, it is critical to demonstrate business impact through learning interventions. I will now talk about a model of measuring learning impact that cuts across learning formats-the Kirkpatrick's model. The Kirkpatrick model has 4 levels of evaluating learning impact: - -Level 1-Reaction/Satisfaction Levels -Level 2-Change in the level of Knowledge -Level 3-Change in Behaviour -Level 4-Results/Bu

When designing mobile learning the amount of space you have to display learning content and add interactivity is limited. When designing eLearning for mobile devices this can be challenging and it is important to ensure that your content is both mobile friendly and still delivers the key content your learners need. Here are some techniques that can help you design and develop mobile learning effectively. 1. Progressive Disclosure When designing pages for your eLearning there

The concept of responsive learning is that eLearning and web-based training should operate and act similarly regardless of which device it is being accessed on. Having content that can adapt and look good on a range of devices is becoming more important as learners are increase accessing training on the go. Below are four things to consider when developing responsive eLearning: 1. Multi-Platform Learners expect to take eLearning on a number of devices including laptops, table

When developing eLearning it is important to consider what type of experience the learner will have and how they will interact with your digital training. Having a poor UI (User Interface) or poor UX (User Experience) can be the difference between a learner losing focus, getting frustrated and giving up or being kept engaged, focused and interested. Below are some UI/UX trends you can implement to improve your eLearning and web-based training: Gamification Gamification is an

The new year came with a wave of very low temperatures here in Canada, but also brought a wave of very interesting and challenging requests from our clients. One of them, specifically, requested a modification to an eLearning course, that consisted in tracking some values out of it, but without hosting it in a LMS, meaning that they wanted to distribute the course as a web page (kind of). So, without an LMS, how do you track values, for example, when a learner answers a speci

Here at Pathways, we offer an impressive array of products and services, from traditional eLearning modules, to classroom training sessions. Among those products and services we offer the production of training videos, and the process goes from scripting, planning, location scouting, to production and post-production, and as the stages of the training video projects have an incredible amount of work associated with them, so does the aftermath of the project itself. A few days

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

Lately, I have been working in Adobe Captivate to create / modify eLearning courses for different clients and even though I started my journey with this software, I stopped using due to the high demand of eLearning modules produced in Articulate Storyline. I won’t get into any comparisons right now, since I have done it in previous posts, and I want to focus my effort for this blog post on a very important (in my opinion) feature in Adobe Captivate: Timing. When you create a

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

Last week I continued a discussion on 360 video and virtual reality training, focusing on the possible “unseen” advantages of using Virtual Reality as part of your training. This week I would like to continue the discussion and look at two of the industries that have embraced Virtual Reality, and then conclude the discussion next week by looking at where the remaining opportunities still exist. As mentioned above, there exist today many industries that have completely embrac

It is always difficult to coordinate efforts on large teams of programmers, especially when it comes to version control when developing several eLearning modules in a project. Let’s suppose you have a team of five programmers and 3 of them are invested in one project, while the others are assigned to a different project or act as a backup, in case any issues arise for any of the main 3 programmers of the project. One option is to have a shared drive internally in the office w

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

In my humble opinion, I think social learning is one of those topics that seems to come and go in our industry. I remember this being more of a "thing" when people of all ages became more comfortable with the various social platforms that extended beyond just Facebook. Back then, I always thought it would be so cool to integrate social technologies in corporate training, and was often told things like "Michelle, cool doesn't cut it.", or "it's not a learning thing, Michelle,

As some of you may know, a couple of weeks ago, Pathways Training and eLearning presented the Virtual Reality eLearning module at the I4PL Learnfest in Toronto. While the outcome of our presentation was really good, I have to admit that it took a lot of work for us to have a successful presentation, from preparing graphical assets, to creating strategies to mitigate any technological issues. Here is a brief description of some of the things we prepared for our presentation at

I was recently in Vancouver and met with our west coast team, and as my hotel was on the waterfront I decided to investigate Canada Place. This beautiful iconic building is devoted to all things Canada, and of course like the rest of our beautiful country, it is paying tribute to Canada’s 150 years. What surprised me as I walked through this building was the number of interactive displays available to learn about Canada’s history. TV monitors where you could click on variou