The Solution to Obesity

Peregryn suggests to use financial incentives offered by the government to solve the problem of obesity.

Whenever you show up [in a government sponsered gyn] you sign a form or swipe an ID card which will then entitle you to that day's payment on your tax return.

I suggest we look to the East and copy their solution.

For schools, each day would start with a morning assembly/exercise where everybody gather in the playground and do 45 minutes of exercise.

For workplace (white collar workers in particular), ditto.

The key is to include *everyone*, no exception. Managers and executives should lead by examples.

cross posted to Random Walk in Learning  ¶ 11:09 AM 0 comments

Dress code of tele-worker

There are increasing people working from home (like me) and attend teleconference regularly.

One of the thing I like about working from home is the freedom of dress. I enjoy my Tees and boxers. With increasing video-conference need, this is what you can do. Get a
Businessbibs.

See a flickr show here  ¶ 10:54 AM 0 comments

SCO fetcher

Warwick Bailey of Icodeon Ltd from United Kingdom sent me an email today asking me to comment on one implementation issue of my SCO fetcher solution for overcoming the cross-domain issue when delivering content within a SCORM environment. [see my other papers on SCORM here.]

In particular, it is related to the linked javascript files. In Warwick's solution, after fetching the SCO, the LMS will parse the incoming HTML and add a BASE tag to the SCO. By doing this, all referenced images, CSS (as long as their paths were relatively) will be displayed correctly in the client. However, linked javascripts, originating from a different domain will NOT be able to interact with javascript from the LMS domain. This is a browser implemented SECURITY and should NOT be broken.

Here is a minor details - albeit a very important one in the SCO-fetcher solution.

The original model is based on using multiple content management systems at the same time. ALL assets are stored in some CMS and we allowed multiple CMS support for a single SCO. That is, a SCO will consist of its base HTML (say stored in CMS-1), plus other assets such as images, CSS, animations etc sources from other CMSes (say CMS-2, ... CMS-n). Hence, we implemented absolute referencing to the resources.

As SCO, it is necessary to have javascript (at a minimum, javascript is needed to establish the connection to the LMS). In the original implementatin, all javascripts were embedded within the SCO and hence post no cross-domain scripting violation.

In Warwick's situation, if the javascript is linked in, the BASE tag will point the javascript to its original domain and hence the browser will block any communication of the loaded javascript with the javascript from the LMS.

As far as I can remember, the SCORM specification does not specify how the SCO should implement the javascript (whether embedded or linked) and I understand it is much easier to use a linked solution.

A little intelligence can easily overcome the problem - but is NOT the best solution. In Warwick's case, since the LMS is parsing the incoming HTML anyway, it is just a matter of locating the javascripts, fetching them and sending the javascript from the LMS domain (or embedding the javascript into the SCO).

A better solution would be to extend the SCORM specification slightly, including the two scenarios (embedded and linked javascripts) to describe a unified way of handling the situation. As an extra, this work will also open up the opportunity of defining a mechanism for overcoming the Mosaic Effect of Multi-use SCOs. [I am aware of other works in customising the look and feel of SCO, but I still believe my solution is a better fit to the development workflow of current SCORM content development efforts.]

I am in the private sector and have a family to feed. That means I cannot put public good before my responsibility of provding for my family. :-) I am happy to put in the effort to do this work if someone can sponsor my time and any associated costs.

cross-posted to Random Walk in Learning  ¶ 12:00 PM 0 comments

2 hrs of Mandated training

Jay Cross is passing around a letter:

We understand that the Fair Employment & Housing Commission is drafting regulations for Assembly Bill 1825 dealing with sexual harassment and requiring “employers with 50 or more employees to provide 2 hours of training and education to all supervisory employees….”
The specification of two hours appears to be drawn directly from a Connecticut statute, Sexual Harassment and Training Requirements, which became law fifteen years ago, long before the advent and widespread adoption of networked learning (“eLearning”). Times have changed.

He correctly pointed out that "The classroom hour is an increasingly poor measure of learning.", however he recommends the Fair Employment & Housing Commission to interpret the two hours in AB 1825 to mean the possession of knowledge at least equivalent to what would have been acquired by the average learner by attending a two-hour instructorled course and to measure that by proficiency test rather than two hours time on task.

I believe that once a mandated training hour is imposed (even explicitly stating that it should be interprreted as minimum training required) will become the defacto and becomes the maximum amount of training. Stating requirement in time, instead of learning outcomes, given all business are engaged in cost reduction, will result in 2-hour of online training.

Sexual harrassment requires changing of attitude and belief. I don't believe it can be done in 2 hours anyway.

cross posted to Random Walk of Learning  ¶ 8:26 AM 0 comments

Why (Most) Training is Useless

by David Maister 2006

Quoting from the article:

• training and other kinds of meetings and conferences are too often organized as stand-alone events, with a life of their own, disconnected from the firm’s progress.


• Companies train people in new areas but then send them back to their operating groups, subject to the same measures and management approaches as before. People can detect immediately a lack of alignment between what they are being trained in and how they are being managed. When they do detect it, little, if any, of what has been discussed or ‘trained’ ever gets implemented.


• Companies want a speech that is entertaining, informative, stimulating, or motivating. What they don’t seem to want is anything that specifically addresses the way they run their firms or the real-world changes they are really trying to make.


• No amount of understanding, knowledge or intelligence will help if you are not able to interact with people and get the response you desire.


• To help people develop as managers doesn’t mean discussing management (or, even worse, leadership) but rather requires putting people through a set of processes where they have to experience it, try it out, and develop their emotional self-control and interactive styles.


• There is no point putting on skills training if there is no incentive for the behavior; the people don’t believe in it and they don’t yet know exactly what it is they are supposed to be good at!


• The best training is usually done by the firm’s own practitioners. Although often seen as an expensive use of high-priced practitioners’ time, the greater credibility obtained when the firm’s own people do the training results in much higher acceptance and subsequent application of the training. Outsiders should be used only to help develop programs and “train-the-trainers.”

  ¶ 1:27 PM 0 comments

Free games for trainers

Training games by Thiagi

140 proven games. Cannot miss this!

businessballs.com

a very long list of ice breaker games.

Gamesbygrube.com

The Grube Method of Instruction first debuted in 1984 at The University of Michigan and was refined in Michigan Public School Districts. This teaching and learning methodology has nine sequential, game design steps.
1. Assemble-A-Bibliography - Collect Game Resources
2. Write-A-Book - Identify Useful Information
3. Create-A-Deck - Design Playing Cards
4. Design-A-Gameboard - Create Artistic Work
5. Learn-A-Set - Evaluate Game Principles
6. Pen-A-Page - Write Game Questions
7. Master-A-Theory - Apply Experiential Learning
8. Play-A-Game - Test and Refine
9. Teach-A-Method - Master the Methodology

Learnativity

Learn-a-tivity is the notion that individual and organizational effectiveness depends on learning better, faster, smarter and through the consistent application of learning, combined with creativity, flexibility, and paying close attention to the right things.

  ¶ 9:52 AM 0 comments

Forced Ranking: Making Performance Management Work

by Dick Grote

I read this article with unease. It is just intuitively not right.

I cannot argue against statistics and controlled experiments and the conclusion of the article may be right for the industrial age companies. I cannot see how my companies (if they ever grow enough to require these kind of strategies) will adopt such a measure.

As I have explained elsewhere, the jobs available in the near future, at least in developed countries would be very different from what are available today. Repetitive jobs would be replaced by computer-driven processes, or completely replaced by computers. Human workers are here to tackle "exceptions", those situations that the computers cannot handle correctly or appropriately. It is likely that workers are assembled in short notices in order to solve problem with extremely compressed time because the rest of the business is moving at light speed.

Definitely, companies will need talent more than ever in order to survive. Maintaining a highly effective talent pool is critical.

However, a forced ranking system, given the inherent nature of human bias, will only make your talent pool worse to cope with diverse situations.

Firstly, forced ranking implies measuring scales which are uniformly applicable across a diverse group. Such scale typically will remove diversity which is critically important to "tiger-teams".

Secondly, any organisation, when grow to a certain respectable size, will have internal politics. Such politics create associations and will influence the application of any measuring scales.

Thirdly, such a brutal system will harbour bribery. People use extreme tactics under extreme situation. When the job security is gone, those in power will extract maximum personal return while they can.

Anyway, I have a thousand more reasons not to implement forced ranking in my companies....  ¶ 8:19 PM 2 comments

Peter Drucker and the "knowledge manager"

This is a special collection from McKinsey Quarterly in memory of the man who coined "knowledge worker" 50 years ago. Before 21st November, 2005, you can access the articles free.  ¶ 6:29 PM 0 comments