Clarity Learning & Development Blog
Perspectives on the continuous evolution of workplace training, learning and leadership development.
A Training Manager’s Tale
The day started out like any other. Trina Trainer walked into her office, laptop bag on her shoulder, balancing her Venti Caramel Macchiato while texting on her smart phone. Five minutes later, the Vice President of Sales rushed into her office, having just returned from an Educational Technology conference. “I know what I want for our New Hire Sales Training,” he breathlessly exclaimed. “It needs more video examples and gamification. Gamification is really hot right now.”
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June 17, 2013
Are American Graduates Really Ready to Work?
Reading, writing, and arithmetic may have done it for our parents or even ourselves, but knowledge of those core subjects alone is no longer sufficient to prepare American high school and college graduates to work and compete in the global 21st century economy. Several major employers, including Cisco, Apple, and Intel, experienced such frustration with finding workers with the necessary knowledge and skills that they joined forces to close the gap. Enlisting the National Education Association as a partner, representatives from those major companies and others went directly to the U.S. Department of Education to voice their concerns. Then, they took action.
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April 11, 2013
Continuous Learning for L&D Professionals
We’re all doing more with less nowadays, and sometimes we forget to take care of our own professional development. A smarter strategy is to weave our professional development into our daily routines as much as possible. Here are some ideas on how to make personal learning a habit.
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April 11, 2013
12 Reasons to Support Teleworking
The recent announcement by Yahoo!’s CEO Marissa Mayer to curb teleworking has sparked a heated debate online about the pros and cons of telework. According to the TeleworkResearchNetwork.com, there were 3.1 million teleworkers in the U.S. in 2011, and by 2016, that number is expected to reach 4.9 million. Larger companies (Yahoo! notwithstanding) are more likely to allow telecommuting than smaller ones.
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March 18, 2013
Designing Information
Edward Tufte fans and design lovers, listen up. You’re going to want to add Joel Katz’s new book, Designing Information: Human Factors and Common Sense in Information Design, to your wish list. Katz, an information designer who teaches at The University of the Arts and Philadelphia University, has assembled a visual feast of information design do’s and don’ts that are useful for those of us who communicate for a living.
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March 6, 2013
Book Review: Content Strategy for Mobile
Did you know that by 2015, more Americans will access the Internet through mobile devices than through desktop computers? This prediction by the International Data Corporation underscores the importance of getting content right for mobile devices.
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January 22, 2013
Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Tin Can (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Lately there’s been a lot of talk about Tin Can and how this API (application programming interface) will revolutionize how we access information and how we learn. We asked Andy Whitaker, Tin Can API Strategist of Rustici Software, to explain exactly what Tin Can API is and how it can benefit Learning and Development professionals. Although the questions are geared toward applications for L&D, there are also implications for Technical Documentation.
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January 22, 2013
Launching the Start-Up of You
I recently read, The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha. Hoffman, the cofounder and chairman of LinkedIn, suggests you think of yourself as “an entrepreneur of your career.”
The reason for the new way of thinking, he explains, is because there’s been a seismic shift in the job market:
For the past 60 years, the job market worked like an escalator. After graduating from college, you landed a job at a firm such as IBM or GE and were groomed and mentored there.
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November 26, 2012
Year’s End: Time for a Career Tune-Up
Many L&D professionals shine at helping others in their career development, but true to the saying, “the cobbler’s children have no shoes,” they tend to neglect their own development. The ultimate captain of your career is you, and Reid Hoffman, cofounder and chairman of LinkedIn, suggests you think of yourself as “an entrepreneur of your career.” Reid recently wrote The Start-Up of You with Ben Casnocha.
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November 20, 2012
Poor Writing Is No Laughing Matter
The title of Lynne Truss’ runaway bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Gotham Books, 2003) illustrates the impact of a wayward comma:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air.
“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
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November 20, 2012
Habits of Mind
Why do we do what we do, over and over? New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg was curious about how we form habits and how we might circumvent these patterns, and so he researched and wrote, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. The book examines science’s new understanding of the neurology of habit formation and how this research plays out in real world examples.
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October 17, 2012
How to Create an Online Portfolio
You may not be currently looking for a job, but it never hurts to have an up-to-date online portfolio of your work. And if your work samples are gathering dust in a folder somewhere, all the more reason to get your expertise displayed electronically.
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October 17, 2012
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