Nelson Croom's Blog

Launch of Grammar and Effective Writing

by Andrew Turner

 

Good grammar and writing skills are key communication tools for every professional. Using language incorrectly can undermine your credibility; you might be an expert in your field, but people won’t listen or fully understand if you can’t explain yourself coherently. Writing concise, accurate and engaging text relies on choosing the most suitable words and applying the correct rules of grammar.

Nelson Croom’s new course, Grammar and Effective Writing, will boost your grammar and punctuation skills and help you to craft effective and clear sentences to allow your writing to be fully understood.

Professionalism and Ethics launches

by Andrew Turner

 

From the Enron scandal and BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill to MPs expenses and Wiki Leaks, issues of trust, transparency, ethics and corporate social responsibility have never been so high on the organisational agenda.

Yet recognising ethical issues and taking appropriate and effective decisions isn’t easy. Spanning both home and personal worlds, and never black and white, the management of ethical dilemmas is a challenging situations for all professionals.

Nelson Croom‘s new online CPD course, Professionalism and Ethics, helps the learner to discover the challenges and rewards of behaving ethically, consider their own moral values and explore perspectives that will challenge their views.

Chairman of the Bored (with apologies to Crass)

by Alan Nelson

 

Oh no! I think I really am part of the mainstream now.

First we win an award. Not just any award, but the main one for eLearning Development Company of the Year - I may have mentioned it before! Second, this year I am one of the judges. Now, I have been elected a director of the eLearning Network. This really is an end to pretending I am alternative. A proper director, with details at Companies House. And not just of my own company.

Add in that I sit on committees at ACCA and ICAEW and you have to conclude either that I have sold out or that the lunatics really have taken over the asylum. I’m not sure which I prefer!

So why have I stood for election to the Board of the ELN and what am I planning to do with my new-found power? Simple really. I stood because the ELN is a good thing and I wanted to support it. The events are well organised and interesting, the people that attend have something to say and are prepared to share, and the awards are really well run and provide both a showcase for the best of the industry and a place to highlight interesting newcomers. Over the years we have learnt a lot from the network and have profited from the exposure that the awards have given us, so I thought it was time to stand up and be counted.

What do I plan to do is a harder question to answer. I don’t have any master plan - no list of things I think need changing or ready-made brilliant ideas for new stuff. My plan is just to try to help a bit. Maybe I will feel more radical once I have been doing it for a while. Let’s see.

Anyway, must dash – I’m off to buy a really boring suit and sensible shoes!

E-Learning Awards 2011

by Alan Nelson

 

And so the day came that I had for once not been looking forward to. The E-Learning Awards 2011 Gala Dinner: posh frocks and bow ties; champagne and small talk; the announcement of all the winners; joy for some and disappointment for others;  but for us the inevitable handing over of our crown as E-Learning Development Company of the Year.

As luck would have it I spent the day at a PARN conference so I casually dropped it into every conversation: “Have I mentioned that we are “currently” E-Learning Development Company of the Year?” It was my last chance after all! As it turned out, from the looks on people’s faces I think I probably had mentioned it a couple of times.

Then back to the office to don our glad rags and Jacqui and I were soon in a taxi on our way to Grosvenor Square. For the first year I can remember we knew we hadn’t won anything - for the simple reason that we hadn’t entered!

Instead, I had volunteered to be a judge. The process had started a couple of months before, when for each of two categories I was confronted by a large pile of submissions to read through. I don’t think I had ever realised how hard the judges work. It took me at least half a day to read through the entries in each category and then another to discuss it with fellow judges and come up with the two shortlists. And it was clear that everyone else had spent as long on it as me. The final stage was a day on each category listening to the presentations from the short-listed companies. The standard was extremely high and I thought it would be difficult to agree a winner, but in the end in both categories I was involved with we all came to the same conclusion.

Back to the day itself and I found that one of the winners of a category I had judged was sitting on our table, so I had to keep a particularly straight, poker face! I listened to the winners being announced one by one, until we eventually got to the last category. And the 2011 E-Learning Development Company of the Year is ........ Unicorn Training.

I was delighted. I cannot think of any other company I would be happier to hand over our crown to. I have known Neil McWilliams for 12 years, having met him when he and I were first starting out with our respective ventures. He is a serious professional and always has something interesting to share. Like us, Unicorn adopt a publishing model, building things once and selling them lots of times. And like us they succeed because they take their customers seriously and make sure they are delighted.

So congratulations to Unicorn. Be sure to mention your award wherever you go!

Updated Employment Law course

by Andrew Turner

 

Nelson Croom has today launched a new edition of our Employment Law course. Employment law changes frequently and we make sure that all changes are incorporated into the course on a regular basis. Every once in a while we consolidate all the updates, refresh the learning activities and the design into a brand new edition.

All learners’ answers have been kept so that they can continue working their way through the course as they please. If you want more information on this update or on our planned future updates you can contact us.

And the winner is …

by Alan Nelson

 

So the judging of the e-learning awards is finished for the year. This is the first time I have acted as a judge, so how was it? Well firstly, it’s quite a lot of work. Overall I had forty submissions to read in two categories, which took me more than a day. Some were good, some had flaws but all were interesting. There were three judges in each category and we talked through the entries to establish a shortlist. This was fairly straight forward. Basically if the project was noticeably good in some way and didn’t fall significantly short of the mark in any of the stated criteria, it tended to get onto the shortlist.

Next was judges houses. I want the groups. I want the groups. Only kidding. Next was two days of face to face presentations, one for each category. I turned up wondering what it would be like. I have been on the other side of the fence presenting submissions, but I hadn’t been in the judges’ shoes before. I had done my research though. I had practiced being Simon Cowell (“I don’t like this.....[long pause] I love it!”) and Louis Walsh (“This is just what the elearning awards are all about”). But I quickly found that such preparation was unhelpful. What we did, for those looking for tips on how to win, was to listen to the presentations and decide how we thought they stacked up against the stated criteria for that award. Nothing more mysterious than that. If you want to win outright, you need to be good on every count.

For obvious reasons I can’t go into much detail about the entrants and our decision making but I can say a couple of things:

• I was impressed by my fellow judges. They took the job seriously and thought deeply about how to arrive at the fairest outcome.
• The quality of the entrants was high. All the shortlisted projects had something about them that was admirable.
• I was impressed with the honestly and openness of the candidates. Straight questions got straight answers, even when they weren’t exactly what they would have wanted to tell us.
• It is hard for a project to be good in every way. Was the need properly researched? Did it have a strong theoretical underpinning to the learning design? Were the outcomes measured? Did the results demonstrate clearly that the objectives had been met? And once they had scored a yes in all of those, there remained the question of whether we thought it was an example of excellence in itself?

So well done to everyone. They can’t all win and while it is true that all the shortlisted candidates are winners, having been on the other side both successfully and unsuccessfully, I do understand that the former is infinitely preferable. But I will be looking forward to the awards evening in November and the chance to celebrate the quality and commitment of all those involved with the finalists.

Last Minute Learners

by Andrew Turner

 

People learn best when they are engaged, interested and having fun. This was always true for me and it is clear, when I spend time with my young niece or watch my partner, who’s a primary school teacher, planning her lessons, that it is the case for children of all ages.

And this shouldn’t stop when we leave educational institutions. There isn’t an ‘off switch’ which flips when we no longer have a teacher in front of us. Why would our learning style change once we reach a certain age? Yes our interests and approach to learning are likely to be very different, but the fundamental aspects of how we learn are a constant throughout our lives.

This is something that e-learning can capitalise on by offering a ‘student-centric’ approach to adult learning, whether it be for CPD, qualifications or personal fulfilment. For many people the thought of being taught in a classroom with a teacher taking you through a topic, is not a pleasant idea. It’s unlikely to be fun, interesting or engaging. E-learning offers a unique way for learners to remain immersed in their learning. By putting them at the centre of the experience they are able to pick the route best suited to them and which provides the best results.

Not all of our learning habits are good though. I for one was always a ‘last minute learner’ staying up late to meet a deadline, with a week to complete a 12,000 word essay! I like to think pressure helped me perform but some of my friends said I was unmotivated and ‘lucky’ to get away with it. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to work this way.

This is certainly born out each year as I watch professionals sign up to complete their CPD. No matter what good intentions we all have, in my experience, the majority of CPD is completed in the last two months of the year. That’s also where e-learning comes into play. How much CPD have you got left to do? How are you going to complete it?

With e-learning you can complete the courses when you want. You aren’t tied down to the dates when a learning provider could secure the hire of a suitable room, or when you can get time off work. All you need is a computer and internet connection and you can do the course when you want.

Of course this isn’t the way everybody learns, and e-learning isn’t just aimed at those who do this, it truly is there 24/7 365 days a year. But this is an added benefit of learning online, and another way that it caters for the learning preferences of those ‘last minute learners’, who like me, like a bit of pressure.

Updated Course

by Rachel Bruce

 

We have just relaunched Corporate Governance with further content to make it relevant to all international markets.  The course covers the two key approaches to corporate governance: the code of best practice approach, for example the UK corporate governance code which was the first code to be developed and has since been widely emulated all over the world; and it also covers the legislative approach which is typified by the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.  In addition, other techniques from across the world are also covered.
 
Written by Lisa Weaver the course takes a practical approach with a myriad of scenarios to bring the subject to life.  It enables you to understand the main provisions of Corporate Governance, identify governance problems within a company, establish effective board management including remuneration and audit committees, understand why poor governance has led to corporate scandal in the past, and use governance principles to create successful business strategies. Find more out about the course here.

Managing risk in your business

by Andrew Turner

 

It is difficult, these days, to pick up a newspaper or magazine and not find stories involving serious problems which have suddenly struck particular enterprises.

Whatever the cause you are left to wonder why top management were not aware of the possibility so that they could take evasive action – or at least be in a position to react quickly and positively when the problem arose.

Nelson Croom’s new course, Risk Management, from author David Allen looks at some of the problems which have made national and international news. He explores the context in which the concept of risk management has developed, the sort of infrastructure and processes it requires, and the impact it has on traditional control systems.

Contributions to enrich the learning experience

by Crispin Best

 

It's always good to talk to peers, hear their points of view and share experiences. So, we try to create courses that enable users to do just that, courses that have the flexibility to allow engagement with other learners as well as reading the thoughts and opinions of subject matter experts.

These features are one of the main facets of our courses that consistently get a great response from our learners and clients, and so that's why we've spent a good deal of time expanded and updated this technology.

We've recently been working to design, build and launch a new initiative called "Contributions". The functionality allows learners to add bits of professional experience or opinions into courses. Doing this works to build on and enrich the knowledge on each topic. Learners can read, reflect on and respond to other people's contributions, creating a learning experience that can be different and interactive in various new ways.

The functionality also allows learners to rate each other's contributions, as well as flag any that are inappropriate.

We're looking forward to seeing what this new initiative leads us towards, and will keep trying to create new ways in which our courses can engage the learner.