Author: Irene Stern Frielich

Polishing Your Gems – And Showing the Value of Your Training Efforts

Have you ever gone on a treasure hunt, or maybe seen one in the movies? The seeker searches for a treasure chest—usually attending to challenges along the way. Imagine large rolling rocks and a few poison darts, all difficult to control! Eventually the seeker locates the elusive treasure chest, but not all its contents are [...]

Heating Things Up: Pilots Provide Useful Feedback

Practicing a classroom course polishes and improves it. Typically, practice comes with a pilot, during which instructional designers and trainers iron out classroom kinks. Two pilots (an abbreviated pre-pilot and a full pilot) were employed in a class entitled Operationalizing Emergency Plans: Incident Command in Action, on which EnVision consulted for a public agency. The [...]

Team Learning Opens Minds — and Office Doors

Too often, we go through our workdays head down, nose to the grindstone, and office door shut (or cubicle door metaphorically so). A coworker may need help with something, but we get lost in a deadline, meeting prep, client appointment and are oblivious. Perhaps once in a while, we stop to touch base with our [...]

Ride the Wave of Change – and Navigate Successfully

Change is hard and causes unease, anxiety, and at times, frustration. Every parent who has dropped a child off at kindergarten (or college) knows this! While change can be overwhelming or even scary, it is often necessary. Professional change brings its own set of challenges. How can you best navigate change at work? EnVision needed [...]

Helping Learners to Digest – even Savor – Your eLearning

When you eat at a restaurant, the food arrives in a specific order.  First, there’s the bread (for those who still eat carbs!).  Next, you may get a first course, a salad or soup. Then the waiter brings the main course, the heart of the meal. This takes longer to eat than the bread or [...]

Re-envisioning the Meeting, Part 2 – Meet, Close, and Follow-up

In part 1 of Re-envisioning the Meeting, we looked at how to prepare for and open a meeting. Now let’s look at facilitation, meeting conclusion, and post-meeting activities. Facilitate Actively The facilitator must consciously strive to keep participants on task to achieve the meeting’s goals. If you’re talking about an upcoming training launch, for example, [...]

Re-envisioning the Meeting, Part 1

“Wow...what a GREAT, productive meeting!” When was the last time you heard someone say that? Hopefully the other day .... or has it been a while? Meetings have, sometimes fairly, earned the reputation of being timewasters at best, scheduled snooze-fests at worst. Too often, employees suffer through meetings until they are released from captivity, free [...]

Short Can be More Than Just Sweet!

What do stained glass windows, intricate marble carvings, and richly symbolic murals have in common? Give up? They are all easily seen from just one spot in the Library of Congress. Why do I mention this? I recently visited Washington, DC and toured the Library of Congress. If you haven’t been to the Library, I [...]

How Many “Two by Fours” Does Your Curriculum Use?

By Kathy Harvey-Ellis For my day job, I work in marketing, for EnVision and another company. After this winter, however, I also feel like I work in home improvement – of our own home. I am my own general contractor. From the repair of a supporting beam in our garage, to minor water damage in [...]

The Pick of the Crop

Have you ever gone berry picking? Usually, you fill a container and pay by its size. Those juicy berries look so appealing you want to fit as many as possible into the container, right? Would you squish them in to get more? Or would you select the ripest berries to ensure excellent quality and highest [...]

The Course Pilot and a Wedding? More Alike than You Think.

The bridesmaids donned light green dresses with intricate lace overlays. Before the ceremony, the ketubah (marriage contract) was signed by the groom. The groomsmen and bridal party enjoyed sushi and potato pancakes with smoked salmon in separate rooms before the wedding. At the appointed time, both groups entered the ballroom, awaiting the arrival of the […]

When Learning Becomes Too Much: Seven Ways to Reduce Cognitive Overload

Have you ever been in a class where everyone’s eyes are glazed over? By the end of the first half-day, participants stop, well, participating? Perhaps the course just isn’t engaging them. Or, perhaps (cue music: dut, dut, dut) they are experiencing cognitive overload. So, what is cognitive overload? Cognitive overload is an inundation of short-term […]

Blended Learning: Look Before You Leap

Blended learning tools provide an instructional designer with many options, but more choices can also be confusing. How do you determine if the blended solution meets your learning objectives? How do you know which modalities to pick? And finally, how do you know that your mix will work within the culture of your organization? To […]

Can the Myers-Briggs Help You Achieve a Happy Medium?

Colleen and Stella both work at a medical device company and develop a catalog to market the products. Though they often complement each other well, recently they have reached a stalemate on this year’s catalog drop. Colleen, a product manager, wants to make sure the catalog hits the printer well in advance of her conservative […]

Create Learner Value with the Virtual Classroom

Independent elearning offers convenience for the learner and ease of delivery for the client. Yet, sometimes there is no substitute for discussion with one’s peers, feedback from the instructor, and hands-on activities to cement learning. Can the advantages of elearning and interaction of classroom learning both be addressed in a different modality? Meet the virtual […]

Creating Your Own Sweet Adventure

“When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.” – Regina Brett Like many people, I have a weakness for chocolate. For a while, I had wanted to take a chocolate walking tour in Boston, enjoying the city while sampling delicacies from various specialty shops. This would be a tasty way to be a tourist in […]

Ingenious Ways to Improve Learner Retention

As instructional designers, we focus on improving employee performance through knowledge and an increased skill set. We strive for learners to retain what they learn and implement it in their jobs. Yet, with so many competing demands at work and home, retaining what we learn can be easier said than done. For the instructional designer, […]

Forging a Path in the Snow

While many New Englanders bemoan this harsh winter, I find I embrace most of it; well, maybe not the snow removal part. Since one of my favorite pastimes is snowshoeing, winter – especially snowy winters like this one—enables me to indulge in it. What keeps me attaching these cumbersome apparatuses to my feet, and trudging […]

Get to the Head of the Class in Writing Learning Assessments

A college midterm for Introduction to Psychology. The Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam. The MCAS (the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System – if you’re a parent to a school-aged child, you know it!) What do these three items have in common? Yes, we commonly refer to them as “tests” or “exams,” but like the MCAS acronym […]

Making New Discoveries Next Door

Recently, I was privileged to enjoy a stroll with Free Tours by Foot (www.freetoursbyfoot.com/boston-tours). I really love walking tours, and decided to visit Harvard Square, a place I had been many times before. I soon gained a new perspective of this historic area favored by out-of-towners. I got a good view of the Widener Library, […]