MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

Meet your new teacher: MindLeaders launches much-anticipated TalentGuides™

 
It’s a big day in the world of talent management! Amidst the sunshine and excitement surrounding IMPACT 2011 in St. Petersburg, FL, MindLeaders has announced the availability of the MindLeaders TalentGuide™ system for employees, managers and HR professionals!

Why the excitement? Using content from the industry’s leading research provider (and host of IMPACT 2011), Bersin & Associates, TalentGuides were built to aid and improve users’ ability to execute their daily responsibilities, including goal setting, development planning, giving and receiving feedback, succession management, and a wealth of other topics.

TalentGuides are concise (3-5 minutes long) multimedia development presentations that can be launched online from your learning management system. When synched with the MindLeaders Talent Development Solution, the system will actually suggest TalentGuides for the user based on where he or she is in the Talent Development process.

Aside from the depth of content and subject-matter, TalentGuides are truly unique in that they can be accessed to help users as they’re working. For example, if a manager needs to provide some less-than-positive feedback for a performance evaluation, he can watch a quick TalentGuide about offering negative feedback in a constructive manner. Because users are accessing this information as they need it, they are more likely to retain and implement the knowledge they are gaining in the future, leading to improved long-term performance.

Check out the press release for more details!

New courses and easier bookmarking

MindLeaders has updated four series with additional courses:

• Dreamweaver CS4
• Flash CS4
• Microsoft .NET 3.5 ASP.NET Apps MCTS 70-562
• Photoshop CS4

Seventeen courses have been added to these four series. If you have a subscription that includes these series, you already have these new courses available to you!

We've also made a change to the courses so that you no longer have to use the "Exit" button or specify that you want your progress in the course saved: if you close the browser window, your place will be saved, the same way it is if you use the "Exit" button. The next time you enter the course, you'll pick up where you left off.

More updates will be coming soon; we'll always have the latest here!

Check out our new Reference Library titles

Need some reading material for the Labor Day weekend? Take a look at the 100 new titles in our Reference Library of over 1,800 complete electronic books. These titles are the latest (a few even time-travelled to us from 2011!) bookstore releases from the technical, software, and business shelves.

Just a taste of some of the new titles:

• Beginning ASP.NET 4: in C# and VB (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) by Imar Spaanjaars
• Excel 2010 Visual Quick Tips by Paul McFedries
• Improve Your Communication Skills by Alan Barker
• The Portable MBA Fifth Edition by Kenneth M. Eades, Timothy M. Laseter, Ian Skurnik, and Peter L. Rodriguez
• Roar! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle: A Business Fable by Kevin Daum and Daniel A. Turner
• Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop CS5 by Mike Wooldridge

If you have a Reference Library subscription, these titles are available now. Drop me a comment if you'd like a complete list of the new titles. If you'd like more information about our Reference Library, please visit our Reference Library information page or give us a call at 1-800-223-3732.

Taking talent management to the next step: introducing the Talent Development Solution

Today's the day that we can finally announce a project that has been over a year in the making: MindLeaders has introduced at the SHRM 2010 Annual Conference our new Talent Development Solution, a talent management platform that goes way beyond filling out forms and managing administrative tasks.

The Talent Development Solution integrates performance development, learning, and succession management with a focus throughout every step on helping you to execute on your business goals.

Other companies who are experts in code-writing and platform-building have offered administrative platforms. We're a learning & development company who has put together a tool that works hand-in-hand with your efforts to direct your workforce at your targets for business success.

This new product doesn't mean we're leaving our award-winning elearning! We will continue to produce the best elearning and development products in the industry. Now we've expanded our reach to also help you with the tactical work of integrating that development into the larger company picture.

Check out our new Talent Development Solution, and try out a performance review "work lib" to see what you don't want your review process to look like. Please drop us a comment with any questions or thoughts you have!

New Adobe and Microsoft courses released

It's time for our new courses to appear on a learning platform near you! Seventy new courses are now available, all of them focusing on Adobe and Microsoft software, operating systems (1 operating system, anyway), and certifications.

The new courses are in the following series titles:

• Dreamweaver CS4
• Flash CS4
• Internet Explorer 8
• Microsoft .NET 3.5 ASP.NET Apps MCPD 70-564
• Microsoft .NET 3.5 Enterprise Apps MCPD 70-565
• Microsoft .NET 3.5 Forms Development MCTS 70-505
• Photoshop CS4
• Windows 7 Configuration MCTS 70-680
• Windows 7 Upgrade
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Admin MCITP 70-647
• Windows Server 2008 Server Admin MCITP 70-646

These courses are already available for everyone with MindLeaders subscriptions. Got a topic you'd like to see us develop in the future? Please drop a line in the comments and let us know!

It's never enough to just present the facts

Scientists are facing a problem. They're releasing study after study about things like climate change and evolution, and yet to their shock the public are not always blindly accepting their findings and acting on them.

Wired Magazine published a great article in this month's issue about what it calls the need for science to "Step Up Its PR Game." For those of us in the learning field, it's another example of the importance of not simply presenting facts to our audience, but leading with why they should care and what they can do about it.

It's a great read to see yet another angle on "Touch the heart to teach the mind." Check it out for today's reminder that people have to know why something's important first before they'll be motivated to learn and act.

Reference Library expands with 109 new online books

Our Reference Library, an online resource of over 1,700 complete electronic books available for searching and reading anytime 24/7, got its quarterly boost this week with 109 new titles.

These books are all selected from the latest technical, software, and business sections of the bookstore shelves. We have leadership, Cisco study guides, customer service, and lots more. Some examples include:

• Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones, Joseph Jaffe
• Joomla! Bible, Ric Shreves
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Administration Instant Reference, Ken St. Cyr
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition, David Meerman Scott
• Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity, Avinash Kaushik

If you have a Reference Library subscription, these new titles are already in your libraries and ready for you to start using. If you'd like more information about our Reference Library, please visit our Reference Library information page or give us a call at 1-800-223-3732.

The top 5 corporate training needs

It's been a while since I've shared the top training topic needs that MindLeaders sees across all of our clients and individual users. Curious about what corporate employees need training about the most? Here's what we're seeing:

The top five most-used courses at MindLeaders, presented Letterman-style from 5 to 1. Some courses/topics appear multiple times in the top 5, so I've condensed them together to give a slightly-expanded top 5 list:

#5: Word 2007: Getting Started

#4: Basics of Business Math: Fractions

#3: Customer Service: Defining Service
(Also Customer Service: Communicating)

#2: Excel 2007: Creating a Worksheet
(Also Excel 2007: Getting Started and Excel 2003: Getting Started)

and #1: CompTIA A+ Essentials 220-601: Networks

Is Excel that complicated, or do we just use it that much? From personal experience, I'm thinking it's a little of both.

And here are the five topics that people search for and request from us the most.

#5: Project Management and PMP Project Management Professional

#4: Excel

#3: Customer Service

#2: Communication

#1: Management and Leadership

All of these are also high on the list of most-used courses, but I think more people launch an Excel course to check on how to make a pivot table than launch a management course to check on how to motivate that employee who had a rough day. (Although we'd love to make that second part more easily done, too!)

What do you think: do these lists line up with the training needs you see most in your office? What would you most like to see on that top five list?

Download the story of an award-winning learning team

Few companies have raked in as many learning awards as SCC Soft Computer and their Education Services team. They've been in Training Magazine's Top 125 companies for eight of the past nine years, in the top 15 in the past four years. They're also current holders of the ASTD BEST Award and the OPAL Award for Excellence in Leadership Development.

Don Keller, SCC's Vice President of Global Education, is a bit of a legend around the MindLeaders offices for his passion and vision for learning. We asked Don to work with us on a case study of SCC and the methods they used to build such a strong learning program that's so tightly integrated at every level of their company.

The case study includes information like:

• The key role of blended learning resources to meet all learning needs
• Methods for tracking and communicating training results
• The positive effect that learning programs have on employee engagement and retention
• Tips for efficiently complying with government regulations

Download the case study for free. MindLeaders is proud to share the story of our incredibly successful partner!

No more free Ning: Social networks are dead, long live social networks!

Ning, the 800-pound gorilla of personalized social networks, announced last week that they are shutting down their free networks. They're planning to release more options for paid network services on May 4, but whatever those options will be, we know that none of them will be free. (Hint to Ning: it was a very bad plan to announce the removal without announcing the alternatives.) Ning is saying that they'll launch the new version of their service within 90 days, which I'm guessing is also when the free networks will be shut down.

Social networks are a great service to encourage people to share their backgrounds and resources with each other. They add gasoline to the informal learning fire. Whether a group is in the same office or spread out across global locations, social networks connect people and encourage them to share and help each other out. Think of them as private, small Facebooks, or as company directories on steroids. Many people have been using Ning to allow classmates to share ideas and projects in their studies.

So, for those already with Ning social networks, or who might have been considering starting some, but face the budget crunches we all live under and can't consider paid services, what comes next? There are already a lot of resources listed online, with more to come as the Ning closing date approaches:

• A collaborative Google doc has been created with a firehose of information about alternatives to Ning and how to back up Ning members for importing into a new network. (Ning says they'll be announcing more conversion/porting tools for networks that will be moving to other sites.)
• Stephen Downes has collected a good list of Ning reactions and alternatives.
• Black Web 2.0 gives a nice rundown of some pros and cons to Ning alternatives.
• Some sites like Grouply and Grou.ps are already making a marketing play for Ning refugees.

I hope these links help out folks who are looking for new homes for their social networking groups. Social networks are one of the most potent ways to encourage long-term interaction and engagement in your learning programs; don't let the Ning speedbump discourage you.