1. It's March Madness with Design-a-Course

Purchase any Design-a-Course license in March and receive at no charge either of MindIQ's HR e-Learning courses; Sexual Harassment or Managing Conflict. Both of these great courses can be tailored with your organization's look-and-feel, including graphics, logos etc.

Click here to see the courses and try a sample: http://www.mindiq.com/elearning/solutions

To remain competitive, today's businesses must increase productivity -- do more with less. When it comes to training and customer support this same rule applies. To meet the ever-increasing demand for training and to hold the line on costs, many companies are moving quickly to implement an e-learning capability.

Generally, this makes a great deal of sense. But, before your company jumps on the e-learning bandwagon be sure you're prepared. How do you A-N-S-W-E-R the question, "Are You Ready for e-Learning?" -- by objectively assessing your company, or department, in these six critical areas:

1. Attitudes - Does the organizational culture, at all levels, embrace change and believe in the value of training?
2. Needs - Are there compelling business reasons for implementing an e-learning system?
3. Systems -- Are computer systems, course development/management software and IT support in place and ready to meet the demand for the new services?
4. Willingness - Do employees and/or customers have the desire, time and necessary computer skills to participate in online courses?
5. Expectations - Do you want to be able to measure learning outcomes, track participation or integrate results into your employee performance appraisal system?
6. Resources - Have roles, responsibilities, personnel and a budget been assigned to the e-learning initiative?

So, are you really ready for e-Learning?

Bill Spencer. President - W. G. Spencer Group
billspencer@wgspencergroup.com or visit www.wgspencergroup.com

Come to a Design-a-Course Training Webinar. Every week MindIQ delivers no-charge training on Design-a-Course.
It's a great way to evaluate Design-a-Course or just increase the depth of your knowledge.

To register simply go to http://www.mindiq.com/elearning/ilt

I recently heard - again! - a comment, from a Training Director, that people do not attend courses to be entertained and should realize that learning is not always fun. This clearly demonstrates the gap between training and creativity.

Most creative people do not work in the Training industry. A few of them have crossed over to the computer industry, to work with animation and special effects in movies. The others are still working with pens and paintbrushes. Although there are a few creative people in the Training industry, they rarely have the chance to show their creativity because of the tools, time constraints and technical limitations.

Being creative with a computer usually requires advanced technical skills. But the emergence of tools such as Design-a-Course provides us with a simpler way of producing creative training material. All one needs to do is go the little extra distance needed to make the material really interesting.

We tend to think that producing animated and dynamic training material is a new concept and that we are "not there yet". But the first time that animation was used to train people was in 1942. It happened by a fortuitous set of circumstances and was realized by the Disney Studio for the U.S. Navy. From then on, the U.S. Defense has always been a leader in that way and they are responsible for most of the standards we now have in the e-Learning industry.

A good example of contemporary interesting learning material, accessible for free to everyone, is found on the www.apple.com Web site. Apple makes learning a pure pleasure! This is probably one of the reasons Mac owners are so loyal to the brand: how many people can say they have fun using and learning Windows?

To all people involved in producing training material who think "boring learning" is normal, you don't have an excuse anymore! Go out there and look at the interesting stuff and how it's done! Start having fun when producing learning material. If you have fun doing it, learners will have fun using it! And let's give the opportunity to creative training people to produce interesting material with the proper tools!

Danielle Vallée
www.daniellevallee.com

Now any professional with expert knowledge and experience can share their know-how...simply, quickly and profitably. That's because every professional is now eligible to receive a free Independent Developers Design-a-Course account from MindIQ.

Click here for more information: http://www.mindiq.com/elearning/idp

For those of interested in reselling Design-a-Course, we have a program for you. MindIQ is looking for quality partner companies to resell our Design-a-Course e-Learning software. e-Learning is a rapidly growing market and may be an additional revenue stream for your company. Design-a-Course is an end-to-end e-Learning application (with both an authoring tool and Learning Management System), that runs on both Windows and Linux. We have a very aggressive discount and incentive program including a Design-a-Course HTML page you can customize and use on your website. We will insert your phone number and partner code for tracking purposes. You will also receive a nightly email report of who has come to your site to download Design-a-Course, so you can follow up with them directly. Free training Webinars are held every Thursday at 1:00 Eastern Standard Time.

6. E-learning continues to grow!

See how you can use e-Learning to your advantage in the recent TechLINKS article,
"Distance Education gives companies competitive edge."

Click here to view the article: http://www.mindiq.com/elearning/dac/reviews

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