It seems to me that people are expected to know how to learn. Surely there is a need for a short session or paper explaining this.

What do you think?

I shall be over in the USA speaking at the Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Conference (see www.absel.org) (March 7-8th)

I shall be talking about customizing business simulations – more details on http://www.simulations.co.uk/NEWS.HTM#Customising If you can’t make the conference I can send you a copy of the paper.

After the conference I am exploring Route 66!!!!

Whenever I buy a new computer, I do not dispose of the old one but use it for the less processor/memory intensive tasks – such as documenting my work, sending emails, writing this blog.

I do this because even with large screens display space is limited and it takes time to swap between applications.

I feel that although this approach does not double my productivity it probably increases it by 10% – but at no cost!!! 

The “process”  leg involves using appropriate methods, providing a learning “journey” and managing the learning. In four and a half hours the content was to be presented on 99+ “busy” Power Point slides (I say plus because additional slides had been added the previous night and not included in the hand out and I say busy because it was usual for each slide to have multiple points (typically between 3 and a dozen)). Admittedly there was some interaction and some small group discussions but this was insufficient. Needless to say only a fraction of the content was covered – less than a third and that the unimportant stuff.

The “rapport” third leg is the emotional and engagement needs of the learners. Yesterday was about marketing for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises). Despite being a university lecturer, the trainer built a little rapport by mentioning the businesses he ran in his spare time. What was missing was ensuring ensuring that the learning was relevant, important and taking into account the learners business knowledge and experience – the day was largely about what you should do and this was at an operational level rather than what you should do at a strategic level.

Overall the day was a useful reinforcement of how NOT to teach adult business people.

For more information about my milking stool model see http://www.simulations.co.uk/Milkmaid.htm 

Please let me know what you feel about my milking stool model.  

What was interesting was the HUGE range of prices bid – for flights up to 50% more and for car rental up to 100% more.

For the flights, I tried contacting an agent by phone, contacting the airline direct and using a travel agent in the highstreet. Despite a “low fair guarantee” the fare offered directly by the airline was a third more!!! Orignially, the highstreet agent offered a fair nearly 50% more. When I questioned this, the fair came down to slightly higher than the lowest fair.

The car rental was even more interesting, having checked prices on the internet I found that the lowest price was from the highstreet agent’s OWN website – but in their shop the price quoted was nearly double!

So, my advice, be very careful when booking travel – otherwise you will be ripped off!!     

Another trick where you work in UK/Europe and the USA is to replace the whole power lead.

However, there is a potential problem. Regularly I receive emails with embedded links that I click on only to find the link is wrong and I reach the dreaded “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage”. And, if you are a 2+2 finger typist (2 fingers on each hand) it is easy to mistype a URL. The solution is simple, before you send the email or provide the document, check the links.

First, when reading on-line I find that documents with a landscape layout are really difficult to read – it is much, much better if they have a portrait layout.

Second, when printing out, although large blocks of colour and pictures are very pretty they expensively soak up ink and toner – an example of artistic licence without concern for use!

So, two rules when designing for electonic distribution- use portrait layout if possible and, if you must have a pretty picture,  limit to the first page so that when printing one can just print the subsequent pages.

The first question here is whether this is bundled into the fee or charged for separately. Except where the training is close to my London office, I charge for travel and accommodation at cost.

For flights,  rail travel and accommodation I charge this back to my clients at cost and, for these, try to get the best price. For example, when travelling long distance (for example from the UK to the USA) a flight including a weekend can be much cheaper than flying in and out during the week. Commonly, the saving is sufficient to pay for the additional accommodation and care hire – I get a short holiday. Another example of best cost is one client that sent me every where First Class and on two occasions I managed to get them to change a First Class flight too and from the Far East to an around the world Business Class Flight!!!!

Road travel in my car is different. Here I charge on a mileage basis. In the UK the AA publish information that you can use as a basis (see http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/running_costs/petrol2011.pdf. Unfortunately, at times but rarely, the reasonable rate that I charge conflicts with what the client wishes to pay. On one occasion, when this happened, I had the choice between using the shorter mileage from my home to the client (that I had been using)  or the longer distance from my office to the client.