BlueVolt Blog

Maximizing Your Partner Connections

renee.seker — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:16:14 +0000

Did you know that the BlueVolt LMS is a great way to reach your extended enterprise? BlueVolt’s newest white paper, Maximizing Your Partner Connections, explains how important the role of your online presence is in reaching your market.

There are very few companies that are completely vertically integrated, meaning they do everything from gathering the raw materials to making the final sale independently. Most rely on a network of suppliers and service providers to get things done quickly and efficiently.

Thinking of these relationships as an extended enterprise, a closely joined community all working towards a larger effort, rather than just separate links can give you a definite competitive advantage in the marketplace. Rather than simply tolerating one another, efforts become collaborative and work towards success for all.

How does BlueVolt fit into all of this?

The right LMS is the perfect way to connect with your extended enterprise and give them the resources they need in their drive for success. Whether it is product knowledge courses, business advice or marketing support, you can provide exactly what your business partners need in a central location, accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.

Interested in learning more? Check out the whitepaper here.

Photo credit: dmitrybarsky on Flickr

Why Online Training Gives You an Edge

renee.seker — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:48:30 +0000

Recently, I sat down with John Sonnhalter over at Tradesmen Insights to discuss how online training gives you an edge over your competition.

Typically, there are four different ways to train distributors:

Observation—watching and repeating the actions of another employee with more experience
Conferences—one or two management level employees attend a conference, report back and train the employees who didn’t attend
Classroom—the classic lunch & learn with a rep
Self-study—Spending time on a manufacturer or supplier’s website or looking through catalogs to learn

While there is certainly value to each of these methods of training, online training helps consolidate training resources (be it from conferences, lunch and learns, or supplemental materials directly from the manufacturer), making time spent training more efficient.

People also tend to favor what they know when selling, which means if they are well trained on a product, they’re more likely to recommend it.

Online training is a fantastic way to get a leg up on your competition. You can hear more of our thoughts and the podcast in its entirety here.

Photo credit: derrickkwa on Flickr

Webcast Series: An Advantage for Associations

renee.seker — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:32:21 +0000

As you may already know, BlueVolt offers webcasts through its Learning Management System as a way to reach and train an unlimited audience, anywhere in the world, in real time, without having to leave your office.

One of our association customers, Affiliated Distributors (AD) has taken full advantage of webcasts, with our innovative Knowledge@Noon™ program. Through this regular series of webcasts, manufacturers are able to present products to the association’s distributor members while greatly reducing travel costs and time. And, because the webcasts are live, the training remains interactive – crucial to any training program’s success.

Distributor members have the ability to ask questions of the product experts from the manufacturers. The webcasts are also recorded and available on AD’s University for viewing by those distributor employees who weren’t able to attend the live event. And it works! After a Knowledge@Noon webcast, AD manufacturers report a direct increase in sales.

Recently other association customers, like the Independent Distributors Cooperative (IDC-USA) and Embassy Group Ltd, have taken advantage of this interactive webcast series concept from BlueVolt in order to provide their members detailed information about the new products and promotions from their suppliers and manufacturers.

As an association, creating a webcast series is an excellent way to provide a unique value to all of your membership – you are connecting the manufacturers with their channel in a way they aren’t able to do on their own. The distributor members can learn about the products they stock and sell directly from the product managers and marketing experts at those companies. This is much less expensive for the manufacturers as they don’t have to send sales reps around the country to visit the distributors’ branches. Instead, one or two people, sitting in their offices, show and demonstrate a product’s features and function to hundreds of people at one time. And it is more efficient for the distributors as the employees can view the recorded version of the webcast when their schedule and their customer traffic allows.

With a successful series, the members come to expect these events and the difficulty in attracting an audience is reduced significantly. And if $BlueBucks (BlueVolt’s exclusive incentive and reward) are offered, it’s even easier to ensure an engaged audience.

Webcasts are the perfect venue for product launches, demonstrations and promotions. Let us know if we can help you create a series for your organization?

Photo credit: Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden on Flickr

LEAP Ahead eLearning Conference

renee.seker — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:29:57 +0000

Anyone who develops or manages training knows how stale content can be the kiss of death to learner engagement. In order to have a successful program, you need to keep content dynamic and useful for your learners.

What’s the easiest way to stay on top of and even get ahead of this problem? The BlueVolt LEAP Ahead eLearning Conference can definitely help. You’ll learn how to educate users and accelerate business profits (LEAP). LEAP Ahead can improve your existing training program, which can increase your sales.

Over two days, you’ll choose from more than twenty-four sessions and learn about training program management, content development, and learning management system (LMS) administration. There’s also plenty of time to network with peers and opportunities for one-on-one appointments with BlueVolt elearning experts.

This is a perfect conference if you want to take that next step in developing content. Whether you’re a beginner, or want to learn some more advanced techniques and tips, there are sessions that will benefit you. Here are a few titles from some of content development sessions:

Adult Learning: Design for Your Audience, Not Yourself
Structuring a Course from the Ground Up
PowerPoint^® Basics for Beginners: Design and Templates
Design. Build. Transform. Instructional Design Basics
It’s All in the Details: A Dive into Design
Articulate^® Hands On Basics: Publishing, Audio and Video
Articulate^® Advanced: Customizing Quizmaker/Engage, Branching
Content Botox: Before & After Course Facelifts

If you’re a training manager, there are several sessions that will improve your skills and give you some ideas for to accelerate your program:

Making a Grand Entrance: How to Launch a New Product
The Carrot or the Stick: A Guide to Motivation
Who’s in Charge? Managing Your Projects
Becoming Super-Better: A Discussion Training Challenges & Successes
Measure This! The ROI of Training

We have special sessions for our customers who attend and want to learn more about LMS administration:

BlueVolt Admin – Basics
BlueVolt Admin – Advanced
BlueVolt Releases: Get Behind the Scenes
Training Meets Mobile
Getting the Most Out of Your BlueVolt Reports

The cost for the 2-days is just $520. Register today and get ready to Leap Ahead.

Two Million $BlueBucks and a Vacation

renee.seker — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:10:58 +0000

Where would you go on vacation if you could go anywhere? My choice would involve some running and mt. biking on the trails in the Rocky Mountains or the southwest desert. Although a little beach time in the Caribbean sounds pretty good too. One lucky BlueVolt user will get to make this choice when they win our 2 Million $BlueBucks Celebration.

Since we first began training electricians online a decade ago, until now when we create and host training for hundreds of companies, we’ve awarded $BlueBucks to learners as they complete qualified courses. In 2009, we awarded the one-millionth $BlueBuck. And now, just three years later we’re already approaching the two-million mark. That’s a lot of $BlueBucks! To celebrate we are giving away a grand prize vacation and 50 runner-up prizes.

Anyone who completes any course on the BlueVolt Learning Management System between April 11, 2012 and when we award that 2,000,000 $BlueBuck (expected early this summer) is automatically entered into our random drawing.

The grand prize could be a cruise, a trip to Vegas, a family ski vacation, beach time or wherever else the winner chooses. We’ll also make fifty users happy, when we award the runner-up prizes of 25 $BlueBucks to a winner from each US state.

Our one-millionth $BlueBuck celebration winner passed on a cruise to the Bahamas so he and his wife could spend some quiet time in a cabin in the Great Smokey Mountains instead.

So where would you go? Take any course now for your chance

NEC Code Update - 5 Tips for Learning the 2011 NEC Changes

renee.seker — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:57:33 +0000

The purpose of the National Electric Code (NEC) is to safeguard electricians, the people benefiting from the electrical work, and property from potential hazards. Every electrician needs to learn the new electrical code so they can practice their professions in the safest manner possible. Every three years the NEC is updated to reflect the newest installation practices utilized by the electrical industry, which means there is a need for electricians to keep themselves informed of all new information included in these updates.

5 tips for learning the new 2011 NEC Code Changes
Continuing education for electricians is an ongoing process, and BlueVoltCEU’s online courses make this convenient to do anywhere, at any time. The following tips will help you learn the new changes to the NEC quickly and easily.

1) Change Summary. This summary cuts through the jargon to briefly state the. It is a straight-forward review, but usually requires more reading to truly understand the change.

2) Code Language. Read this section to review the change language taken directly from the 2011 Significant Changes to the NEC book. This includes all the article sections and informational notes found in the new 2011 NEC book.

3) Significance of the Change. To broaden your understanding of a particular change, click on the “Read the Significance of the Change” button. This is optional information that really explores the purpose of the change and how to apply it to installation practices. This section often clarifies definitions and technical language.

4) Why the Code Changed. Click on the “See Why the Code Changed” button, where available, to view optional videos for more information. Michael Johnston, Chairman of the Code Correlating Committee and leading code expert, discusses the changes in even more detail, clarifies tricky code articles, and discusses why the code was changed.

5) Practice Quizzes. Each chapter in the 2011 NEC course has a practice quiz at the end. These are optional and help prepare the electrician for the 20-question final exam. All of the questions and the quizzes can be reviewed as often as needed.

Work safely and confidently, and pass inspections with the 2011 Changes to the NEC online course.

An Interview with BlueVolt’s Founder

renee.seker — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:34:45 +0000

As we mentioned last week, this year marks BlueVolt’s 10-year anniversary in the elearning business. And we’re excited!

To reflect on how far we’ve come over the past decade (and for a glimpse at what’s in store), we sat down with our founder Don Spear, whose passion for elearning has helped us deliver more than 1 million online courses to almost a quarter of a million users.

How has BlueVolt evolved as a company in the past decade?
I think over the past decade, we've become something we didn't think we would be (as is the case with most companies). We’ve gone from providing online training for a very niche audience (electricians) to creating custom elearning solutions for entire industries, delivered throughout the vertical channel (from the manufacturer to the end user). As of today, we have 208,000 worldwide users and 13,000 courses available through the system. We recently surpassed our 1 millionth course delivery milestone and are rapidly approaching awarding our 2 millionth $BlueBuck.

What’s new with the company?
We’ve worked hard at expanding our mobile elearning offerings. Elearning enthusiasts have long touted the benefits of training on-the-go and now technology has caught up. We have optimized our mobile LMS interface using HTML5 (since most mobile devices do not support Adobe Flash). We’re also working with several customers to create new or modify existing courses to work best on a mobile device.

From a development perspective, mobile can pose a certain challenge but it’s important to our customers and we’re going to continue to invest time and resources in this growing space.

What is BlueVolt’s mission?
The company’s mission is to improve lives and livelihoods of skilled professionals and those who serve them.

How would you describe the BlueVolt's internal culture? How do you cultivate that culture?
The main thing about BlueVolt's culture is we're very customer-driven. Figuring out what our customers want and evolving our products and services to deliver that is at the heart of everything we do. To me, that's important. As you're trying to build a business or sustain the growth of an established business, if you're not listening to your customers intently, you won't build something of value—something that your customers actually desire and that solves real problems that they deal with every day.

We encourage all of our employees (not just our sales team) to go on "ride-alongs" with our customers. We went on a day trip to Wilson construction, which is based in our hometown of Portland, Oregon, to see the environment they work in and what they encounter on a typical work day. Safety is of huge importance to them (as it should be). That trip helped us develop better training solutions for them that are focused on safety. We aren't necessarily subject matter experts in each of the industries we serve so we have to observe and adapt.

What does the future hold for BlueVolt?
I think the future for BlueVolt is very bright. Every year, we continue to grow our user base but there are still so many trade professionals throughout the world we haven't touched yet. The more people we have on our network, the more companies will choose to put their training in our LMS, the more valuable we become.

Despite the very serious economic challenges our country is facing, and the delayed growth of the homebuilding and construction trades, BlueVolt continues to grow rapidly. To me, that shows that we are providing a service (online training) that is useful throughout the building and other specialized trade industries. And with the increase in mobile phones and computing making it easier for trade professionals to connect to the Internet where they work, adoption will increase and BlueVolt’s growth will continue to accelerate.

Do you have a personal mission statement?
In my life and in everything I’ve done, I strive to create organizations and companies that make the world a better place. It's not only about making money, it's just as important that I create something that I can be proud of. Our parents and children should be proud of the work we do. BlueVolt is focused on training – which is something that, by nature, makes people better. I enjoy the work that we do and the value we create for others.

A Decade of Online Training

renee.seker — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:09:43 +0000

Did you know that BlueVolt was one of the first companies to offer online training for tradesmen? In fact, this year marks our 10 year anniversary in the elearning landscape!

When we got our start back in 2002, we spent hundreds of hours with electricians while on the job – watching them work, talking to them and understanding what made them happy in their jobs and what their frustrations were. What we found was that proper training was critical, especially in keeping up-to-date with the thousands of products introduced in the industry each year, but the right resources simply weren’t available. Yet…

We created the BlueVolt Learning Management System because we know often times the best way to learn about a product is directly from the manufacturer. We decided to bridge the gap between product manufacturers and the people most important to the success of the product (often these people are sales staff, installers, distributor employees, etc.) with an LMS that puts the focus on verifying knowledge and rewarding success.

Getting up and running was comparable to building a three-legged stool. Manufacturers didn’t want to put content online until there were enough eyeballs in the audience, but the audience didn’t have anything to look at online without enough courses.

Over the years, though, the numbers grew and now we have more than 208,000customers taking training courses, powered by BlueVolt, from a variety of manufacturers, associations and distributors. We’ve also delivered more than one million courses and awarded nearly two million $BlueBucks, our award-winning incentive program, to learners.

It’s been a great decade, and we’re looking forward to what the next years will bring as we continue to develop and upgrade our Learning Management System.

Stay tuned for our next post featuring a Q&A with our founder about where BlueVolt has been and where we’re headed.

Blended Learning is Easier and More Consistent with an LMS

renee.seker — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:16:57 +0000

An online Learning Management System easily helps increase the consistency of your message for learners, but did you know that it can also help increase the consistency of the message from your classroom instructors?

One of our customers, Wilson Construction, found that different instructors were teaching the same in-person courses with slight variations. This had nothing to do with the quality of the instructors, but instead the natural differences in teaching styles. However, because the courses were all safety courses, it was crucial that learners all received the exact same information in order to be prepared in the workplace and on the jobsite.

Best of both worlds
Wilson Construction’s solution? Blend online learning with classroom learning.

Instead of implementing the LMS just for learners, Wilson had its instructors use the online platform during in-person courses. This helped ensure that every instructor covered the exact same material - no matter the time, location of the class, or teaching style.

And this scenario isn’t unique to Wilson Construction. There are four types of learning styles, so it only makes sense there are many more ways of teaching in order to accommodate for these different styles. However, this could lead to the omission of important information or conveying misinformation. By having instructors utilize a course in the LMS to teach from, they will have the same material and can adjust their teaching to accommodate all four types of learners. Plus it is easier to update the content in one place, on the LMS, instead of ensuring all the dispersed instructors have the most current version of handouts and hard copies.

Easier to manage
The BlueVolt LMS has a feature that simplifies your training calendar and registration process for in-person events. For each training event you can configure date, time, seat limits, location information, instructor, and reminder emails. Learners can check out and register for events from a calendar view or a chronological list view and both views can also be filtered by event type.

Often instructors or training managers want learners to demonstrate a newly-acquired skill. This is especially relevant when the learning involves larger than life objects that cannot be brought into a classroom, involve a safety hazard or are just difficult to test for. Training administrators can create an ‘activity’ in the LMS to give learners an opportunity to prove their competence. The administrator sets up various activities, but in order for the learner to complete the training, they must complete a task or training activity (like making an actual sales calls side-by-side with a manager or correctly operate a piece of machinery). The learner submits that completed activity for approval online to the administrator who can approve it, all within the LMS.

Blending in-person and online training gives learners and training managers the best of both worlds.

Photo credit: Elsie esq. on Flickr

OpenSesame: Unlocking Online Training through eCommerce

renee.seker — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:03:25 +0000

One of the biggest challenges learning & development managers face is creating, finding, selecting and sharing training content that meets their organization’s unique needs. If you’re creating courses, it’s a challenge to identify the critical content and communicate it effectively. If you’ve decided to buy courses, it is difficult to find the content you need and hard to understand the complicated purchasing models.

If you have compliance and safety training needs (like forklift operator training or bloodborne pathogens safety), it doesn’t make sense for you to create the training from scratch or interrupt the work day for group training sessions. Buying off-the-shelf elearning courses allows you to save money, time and hassle by connecting your employees to training opportunities they can accomplish on their own during downtime.

For BlueVolt customers, shopping from OpenSesame is an opportunity to browse thousands of off-the-shelf courses and use them in your University instantly through OpenSesame’s integration with BlueVolt.

OpenSesame is an ecommerce marketplace for elearning courses. Our new purchasing models enable buyers to purchase courses up front to take advantage of volume discounts or to be billed at the end of every month only for the courses they actually use.

In the OpenSesame marketplace, you can browse available topics or use our enhanced search system to narrow the course selection by course topic, intended audience, length, features or price.

Get the courses you’re looking for
OpenSesame’s catalog includes thousands of courses in the categories you need, like soft skills, compliance, industrial skills and safety training.

Syntrio- With interactive scenarios, Syntrio’s cost-effective and short compliance and soft skills catalog includes great courses on sexual harassment, industrial safety, management, team building and communications.
Convergence Training- Convergence is known all over for really realistic 3D animations that bring safety scenarios to life. With short and to-the-point courses that focus on the core information, Convergence makes safety and compliance training that won’t bore your team to tears. Try their great courses on Personal Protective Equipment, Driving Safety or Hot Work Safety to see how Convergence makes accomplishing your safety training easy.
ej4- ej4 uses video presentations from management, leadership and safety experts who have been in the trenches, on construction sites and leading the sales team to accomplish training goals with content your employees can relate to. These short videos relate crucial information in relatable and interesting ways.
E-Mersion- Looking for communication and presentation skills training? Do you have intergenerational conflict in your office? Excellent training courses from E-Mersion provide a guide to clear communication - reducing unnecessary conflict and achieving office harmony.

Need help finding what you’re looking for? Get in touch and we’ll help you find the courses you need.

Learning Management System Calculators

renee.seker — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:28:41 +0000

It’s important to know the value and return on investment of business decisions. With training, it can feel a little scary to move from tried and true in-person methods to cyberspace. Thankfully, we have a few tools to make the leap a less risky.

BlueVolt’s ROI Calculator estimates the impact the BlueVolt LMS will have on your sales and profits, based on the size of your extended sales force, within the first year of implementing it.

Minimizing travel costs is also a huge benefit of incorporating online training into your existing program. The Travel Savings calculator estimates the number of employee “travel days” (days your sales employees spend traveling to train) you’ll save, as well as the hard cost savings from flights, lodging, meal and such. For example, with just 10 sales employees traveling twice a month, you could save over $50,000 in hard costs.

Elearning is also a green alternative for your office. With the Print Savings calculator, you can estimate the cost savings of putting your training online with BlueVolt instead of printing and shipping training materials – which usually end up in the recycling or garbage bin. You can also see an estimate of the number of sales collateral pages wasted, trees used and tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere.

Finally, with the Manufacturer Rep Savings calculator, you can estimate the savings you’ll gain when you reduce the number of Lunch-and-Learns your manufacturer reps deliver. Given the number of lines carried by a typical rep, the number of branches they serve, and the fact that they aren’t necessarily trainers, it isn’t realistic to expect reps to train everyone on your product when they show up with a pizza at lunch time. When you deliver the training online ahead of the rep’s visit, the sales force already knows the features and benefits and can make better use of the rep’s and their own time.

While changing from traditional trainings methods to more contemporary ones can feel like a bit of a risk, we do our best to provide you with all the tools necessary to ensure you feel confident making the switch. Ready to learn more? Contact us today!

Reflections on BlueVolt’s First Decade

renee.seker — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:11:59 +0000

It’s true what they say, isn’t it? Time flies when you’re having fun. Well it’s been 10 years of fun around here at BlueVolt.

Hard to believe but we first began offering our learning management system (LMS) to our customers back in 2002.

In our first days, I remember talking to customers about training and hearing, “I don’t want to spend time training, because my employees will just quit and go to work for someone else.”

About five years later, the story evolved. “We can’t effectively train online, people have to touch and feel a product to really understand it.”

In my many hours spent working with customers over the years, I found an overarching commonality—that many of them were stuck in a training rut of doing the same thing over and over again. It was the whole “If it’s not broken…” mentality.

I’ve found that most companies’ training needs fall into one of two categories—performance-based training or product knowledge. And, understandably, it’s best to have a strategy for both.

Companies that have a strategy for training on product knowledge often appear to have the best people working in the industry. Companies hire workers based on core competencies and then train them with the proper product knowledge. In the past decade of working with these companies, in my opinion, this is a formula for success.

Companies that recognize training as a competitive advantage know how to internalize industry resources in a way that supports business objectives. These companies are also able to make adjustments in training for changes in the economy or marketplace much more easily than their competitors who don’t value training.

Awhile back, I came across an interesting study from Susan Levering, PhD and author of Smart Investments – a book about training in wholesale distribution by the NAW. Her survey showed that distributors were making just cents on the dollar; theirs was a very low margin business. Her survey also showed that distributors were spending very little on training (average $178.59/employee, less than 0.1% of payroll costs), and that the majority of training was shoulder-to-shoulder; learn by watching how other employees did it.

At roughly the same time, I read an industry-agnostic study published by the American Society of Training & Development (ASTD) that said: “Companies who invested $680 more in training per employee than the average company improved their total stockholder return the next year by six percentage points, even after considering other factors.”

I always wondered if the mysterious cause behind distributors’ low margin business was training.

Today, we know that companies are more inclined to train online because it is convenient, can cut down on hard costs associated with in-person training (e.g. materials, travel, etc.) and it works to guarantee a consistent message throughout an organization. Through elearning, knowledge can be verified and, unlike the beliefs of our earliest customers, even product training can be effectively delivered online thanks to simulation technology.

I remember it took us a year to get our first 100 users. Suppliers didn’t want to put content online until we could guarantee there’d be learners there to take it. And we didn’t have anything for the learners to learn without course content from suppliers. So in the beginning, our goal was really just to make people more productive. And we saw that training was just one of the things that wasn’t super-efficient and had a lot of upside potential.

It took us another year to get our first 1,000 users and today, we have more than 200,000 people coming to our LMS to take training from a variety of customers.

In the beginning, we spent a lot of time riding along with our customers in the field. We learned that launching new products was really pretty tough. So we started looking for ways we could help streamline the process through elearning. We came up with an idea to reward learners for successfully completing product training courses, and thus increasing the success of new product launches. And so our $BlueBucks incentives program was born and it’s proved extremely successful in increasing course enrollments.

Today, we specialize in developing and delivering robust, interactive and effective online training to business and organizations in an extended enterprise, especially for those in manufacturing and construction. We’re proud that our hard work resulted in year over year growth in sales in the neighborhood of 20%.

It’s been exciting to see and I know I’m personally looking forward to another ten years.

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks on Flickr

Brandon Hall Gold Award for Rewards & Recognition Technology

renee.seker — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:10:39 +0000

We’re very excited to announce that we won the Brandon Hall Gold Award for the Best Advance in Rewards and Recognition Technology for our $BlueBucks rewards program.

If you haven’t heard of the $BlueBucks program yet, it’s our built-in, pay-for-performance system that both excites and rewards learners as they successfully complete training through their online University, which is the learning management system we host. Adding $BlueBucks to training ensures more learners successfully complete the courses companies often spend countless hours developing. In fact, the program is proven to increase online course enrollments up to ten times! Our learners have earned over 1.8 million $BlueBucks so far and that number grows every day.

We seriously improved the $BlueBucks program so that learners can redeem their $BlueBucks rewards for gift cards at hundreds of retailers nationwide (like Foot Locker, REI and Sears) to shop any way they like – online, offline or even from their smart phone! And now:

Virtual eGift cards are delivered to the learner’s email immediately after redeeming for their retailer of choice. The system tracks the receipt of the gift card and sends reminders to the learner if he or she has not yet viewed the gift card.
Learners can also redeem eGift cards at participating retailers’ brick and mortar stores, which accept the printed or mobile versions of the gift card.
A unique gift card experience allows the BlueVolt learner to re-gift the virtual card, select from numerous gift card designs, view a video provided by the merchant, and display a mobile-friendly version of the gift card on their smart phone.

We’re pretty unique in the elearning industry with this reward system. Brandon Hall used the following criteria to judge the submissions for the Excellence in Technology awards:

The product’s innovation
Its unique differentiators
The value of the need the product addresses
The measurable results for customers.

We’re doing a happy dance around the office.

Consistency of Message through BlueVolt’s Learning Management System

renee.seker — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:01:44 +0000

Do you remember playing telephone when you were a child? Someone would whisper a message to the kid next to him or her and it would continue down the chain, often distorting into something completely different by the time it reached the end of the line. Unfortunately, the same thing can happen with product training.

Picture this – a manufacturer creates a great new product and trains their reps on it. The reps train the distributors, who explain the product to the contractors, installers or end users. Clearly, there is a lot of room for the manufacturer’s message to change, whether it’s forgotten details or mixed up facts.

One solution is to have the training come straight from the manufacturer all the way down the vertical channel. It’s easier than you might think!

With BlueVolt’s LMS, manufacturers can upload a product training course to their online university upon a new product release. The course can include all of the product’s unique features and call out exactly what makes it the best in its category and demonstrate its application. The university can also house all supplemental materials, like sell sheets and brochures. The manufacturer then has the ability to give everyone in the vertical channel access to the individual course or entire university. This means the distributors, sales reps, contractors and end users can all learn about the product directly from the manufacturer. Best of all, because the training is online, materials are available 24/7/365 from anywhere with an internet connection.

One of our customers, Coleman Cable, found that without consistent messaging they were losing sales opportunities due to ineffective communication. After implementing BlueVolt’s LMS, their sales reps were providing consistent information, which resulted in an increase in sales.

Ready to increase the consistency of your messaging? Contact us today!

Photo credit: studiostoer on Flickr

Elearning is Green

renee.seker — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:00:21 +0000

In previous posts, we’ve discussed the benefits of elearning on your budget, your learners and your profits. You can add the environment to that list as well.

According to the Clean Air Council, the average U.S. office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year, which equates to about four million tons of copy paper annually. In addition, U.S. office workers generate approximately two pounds of paper and paperboard products every day. It’s no question that a huge amount of that paper goes to waste. Of course, recycling and reusing help the effects on the environment, but let’s not forget the third “R,” reducing!

With in-person training, you nearly always walk away with at least a few handouts, tests, supplemental materials and books all conveniently printed out so you’ll have them for reference during and after the course. But, realistically, most of those printouts end up in the recycling bin or stuffed in the bottom of a drawer, never to be seen again.

By moving training online, all of the same documents are accessible at the click of a mouse, no digging through stacks of paper required!

It’s a similar story for product training sessions or Lunch-and-Learns. You can create a beautiful handout to leave behind, filled with diagrams, photos and detailed explanations of why this is the best new product out there. But again, chances are it’s gets filed away with hundreds of similar documents or simply misplaced.

If your product training information is all online, though, sales reps can quickly pull up supporting materials whenever and wherever they need.

This equals a significant reduction in paper needed around the office. You can see your print saving numbers for yourself with our Print Savings Calculator.

And, at BlueVolt, we don’t just talk the green talk, we believe in practicing sustainability and protecting the environment. Our office is paperless and, living in the green city of Portland, we do what we can to reduce our impact on the environment. In 2009, Oregon Business named our parent company, BlueTech LLC, one of the 100 Best Green Companies to Work For in Oregon.

What does your business do to help keep the earth a great place to live?

Photo credit: Wolfgang Wildner on Flickr

4 Fun Careers to Take After Being an Electrician

renee.seker — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:06:40 +0000

I don't know about you, but the thought of "retirement" makes me think of boredom. The way I look at it, if you're not growing, you're letting life slip by. Drink up every last drop of life and grow by experience, by mind and by spirit.

Retire? Oh, someday I might take it easier. I might not punch a time clock, but I intend to keep busy learning and doing.

This list of things to do when you're done being a professional electrician may be all tongue-in-cheek, but let it help you think outside the junction box. Who knows! You could be the next Colonel Sanders.

Professional Do-It-Yourselfer. Not that you're going to pay yourself much for fixing your own wiring, but you might like to help your neighborhood do-it-yourselfers learn how to keep from killing themselves. Imagine that; an army of do-it-yourselfers under your command. But don't get too carried away with yourself. Unless you had management training and experience, you might find your next DIY bivouac pretty empty after the first meeting.
Professional Student. Yep. Pay yourself to go back to college. Earn as many degrees as you can. Soak it all up. You may well become so smart that you have to make use of all this new knowledge. Just imagine—you the PhD.
Professional Hobbyist. A new career based on a hobby might just be the best thing that ever happened to you. No time clock. You are your own boss. Take your hobby and join the lecture circuit. Tell the world about the details of your hobby and what makes it so much fun. If there are others out there that share your hobby, they may enjoy learning what you learned. Of course, if your hobby is "couch potato" or "picking navel lint," you may have an interest shared by millions, but launching yourself to the Moon might be easier than getting them to come to the lecture.
Astronaut. Hey, why not? Talking about launching yourself to the Moon, if the space capsule happens to do an Apollo 13 on you, your electrician skills might come in handy. So, you think NASA's not hiring old guys for space work? Heck, Senator Glenn went up when he was 77. And you saw Space Cowboys, the movie, right?

Dream on! Dreaming is good. In fact, a dream cannot come true unless it is dreamed in the first place. But you have to do more than dream. You have to make things happen. Because you're still an electrician, you need to take care of things like electrician license renewal and learning the latest NEC code update. And you dream of staying an electrician for the time being, right? So, take care of your online electrical continuing education and make those dreams come true.

Photo credit: puuikibeach on Flickr

BlueVolt’s Holiday Tradition: Warming Kits

renee.seker — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:32:04 +0000

For the third year and what has become a holiday tradition, the BlueVolt team eschewed sending gifts to customers during the holidays and instead, created and distributed Warming Kits to those without homes in the Portland area. These warming kits each contain wool socks, a stocking hat, wool gloves, a scarf, a sweet treat and a voucher good for a meal at Sisters of the Road café.

BlueVolt employees purchase and make the items for the kits. Again this year, we engaged the other businesses housed in the Portland State Business Accelerator in the effort, setting up donation boxes to collect the needed items. We also let our customers know what we were doing and gave them the opportunity to donate toward the cost of the meal vouchers. Don Spear, our president and CEO, personally matched those customers’ donations, thereby increasing the number of vouchers and kits we could create. Everyone gathered to help build the kits last week, assembling 105 warming kits.

We are now in the process of personally hand-delivering the warming kits to those we see in need. Carolyn Glass, of Sisters of the Road, said that the hand-delivery is the best way to distribute the kits; “Most people just drop stuff off for the agencies to hand out and never have any contact with the street folks. Just having the conversation to ask if they would like a kit is so important since most people pretend like folks experiencing homelessness aren’t even there.”

Thank you to all those who helped in creating, assembling and delivering the warming kits! You can see more photos of the kit creation and assembly activities on our Facebook.

Photo credit: TotoVo on Flickr

Extended Enterprise LMS of the Year

renee.seker — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:51:05 +0000

We are pleased to share that influential elearning consultant Craig Weiss, of E-Learning 24/7, named BlueVolt the runner up for his Extended Enterprise System of the Year award!

Craig is active in the elearning field and has more than thirteen years experience, including as a former analyst for Brandon Hall Research. He also manages the popular LinkedIn group E-Learning 24/7. Disappointed with our industry’s “awards season” and the way most companies give out awards, Craig decided that E-Learning 24/7 would do things a little differently. Instead of entrants paying money to submit an award application and the only winners being those who advertise with the award-giving organization, he was going to level the playing field, and choose winners based on his knowledge of their products.

According to Craig, a good extended enterprise system should be geared towards the channel/distributor space and have multiple portals for various types of users (for example external vs. internal employees). They should also feature reward incentives (like BlueVolt’s $BlueBucks) and powerful reporting tools.

In regards to BlueVolt as an extended enterprise system, Craig wrote, “Very cool incentive points program, e-commerce reporting, can place ads at the bottom of the page, multiple portals/sub portals, e-commerce, excellent UI for users and admins, very good LMS.”

When considering BlueVolt as the Extended Enterprise System of the Year, Craig states that BlueVolt “has come a long way” and features “clever additions.”

We want to know, what features do you think are most important when considering an extended enterprise LMS?

photo credit: LuMaxArt on Flickr

Optimizing eLearning Webcasts for your Audience

renee.seker — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:33:32 +0000

We designed our BlueVolt Learning Management System specifically for our first customers – electricians and other skilled professionals who don’t typically use a computer all day, every day. We left out the time-consuming downloads and frustrating upgrades. Our online Universities are easy to navigate and our courses feature advanced functionality while remaining as intuitive and easy-to-use as possible.

But even with all of this work to make our LMS and elearning as simple as possible, sometimes our customers still need to get things done (e.g. communicate a message or launch a new product) quickly and more efficiently.

In these cases, we highly recommend webcasts for nimble elearning – especially when time is not on your side

We get asked all the time to help create webcasts for our core customers – manufacturers in the trades industries such as building and construction. And in doing so, we’ve picked up a few tips on tailoring webcasts to your audience.

Here are our top seven tips for creating webcasts with your learners in mind:

Timing: More likely than not, your webcast’s audience is probably busy (aren’t we all?) In the trades, these guys and gals are on the job site or in the warehouse all day. Same goes for a sales force or retail staff. No matter who your audience is, chances are they’re “too busy” to participate in your webcast. So consider scheduling your webcast first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon so the audience has time to rearrange schedules to attend. If all else fails, see Tip #5.
Keep it short: Because of everyone’s hectic schedules, even if your audience does have the chance to attend the webcast, they won’t have a whole lot of time to actually participate (i.e. learn!) Aim to keep your presentation at about 15 or 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions. If you have a lot of material to cover, keep it high level and send detailed information in your follow-up or host a series of webcasts to break up the information in easier-to-digest (and schedule) chunks of time.
Don’t forget the WIIFM: That stands for “What’s in it for me?” Again, remember your audience doesn’t have a lot of time, so they need to understand that your webcast will provide them with essential information that they care about. If the benefits of attending are clear, you’ll likely get a much better response.
Expand your promotional reach: Give a quick overview of the webcast to key constituents – perhaps your company’s sales reps, distributors and/or retailers –and ask them to telltheir contacts about the event to maximize attendance. Don’t be afraid to pass out flyers, send an email, make a post on your Facebook page or Tweet, share on LinkedIn and generally spread the word.
Archive your webcast: Stuff happens. Inevitably, something will come up for some registrants that will prevent them from attending your amazing webcast. Don’t sweat it – just archive the webcast so your audience can participate on their own time. These archived webcasts are also a great way to create quick content for your learning management system.
Provide contact information: Some attendees may only have time to stay for the actual presentation and not the Q&A. Give them a way to contact you outside of the webcast to ask questions or provide feedback (an e-mail address or Twitter handle work great).
Follow-up: Send a quick email to thank your attendees for making the time to participate in your webcast, attach any supplemental materials and include a link to the archived presentation. You want to make things as simple as possible for your busy audience so they’ll want to attend future webcasts from your team.

Check out our previous blog posts for more webcast tips on keeping your audience engaged and how to look great on camera.

Benefits of Course Sharing on the BlueVolt Learning Management System

renee.seker — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:21:04 +0000

Imagine that you just designed a truly fantastic elearning course; a course that expertly blends video, quizzes, games and text. A course that is just begging to be shared with other learners from other companies, organizations or even industries! A course that if available to others, would increase your company’s sales.

Lucky for you, BlueVolt offers Course Sharing—a unique feature of the Learning Management System that allows you to share that fantastic elearning course. This means that customers’ university administrators can upload content to the Course Sharing library where other administrators can browse and request to add courses to their university. There are hundreds of product training and professional skills courses available. And now administrators can also shop quickly and easily for courses in OpenSesame’s elearning marketplace, directly from within the BlueVolt LMS.

Typically with online training, a manufacturer uploads a course about its latest product to its university to share it with its learners. But what about the rest of the supply chain—the distributors, outside sales teams, manufacturers’ reps and contractors or end-users? One of elearning’s most useful (and powerful) assets is the ability to deliver a consistent message to all learners throughout an entire channel or industry vertical (everyone gets the exact same information, so you don’t have to worry about teaching variations or diluting your powerful message). So why wouldn’t you want to extend your message and allow others to learn all about your new amazing product, directly from you? Course sharing does just that!

Course sharing can also help cut training costs. Rather than continually having to create new courses, administrators can add new content without having to create it themselves. Using the previous example, if the product manufacturer creates a course, then the distributor no longer has to create one of its own for its sales reps.

On a related note, course sharing also helps ensure content is fresh. If every time your learners visit your university they’re only greeted by stale courses that they’ve already taken, they will eventually stop coming to the university. But, if you’re constantly providing new content, they will likely spend more time learning, become even more effective salespeople or customer service representatives or knowledgeable end users.

Interested in learning more about course sharing? Check out this brief demo.

Photo credit: Mr. Empey on Flickr

LMS Customer, URC, Wins Award

renee.seker — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0000

One of our Learning Management System customers, Universal Remote Control (URC), recently won an award in CE Pro’s 2011 Quest for Quality Awards. These awards recognize CE Pro’s readers’ selections of manufacturers and distributors they say best deliver in categories covering training, general communication, tech support, website, marketing and more. URC won the platinum award for Training Programs. A big part of URC’s training program is its commitment to elearning.

The URC University, powered by BlueVolt, is an in-depth resource for URC’s dealers to learn how to sell, apply, program and install URC products. The University features several how-to courses, including the popular “How To: Get Your PC to Recognize Your Remote.” When a learner successfully completes a URC University course, he or she can earn $BlueBucks, which are dollar-for-dollar rewards that learners can redeem for electronic gift cards or used towards future courses.

We congratulate URC on this well-deserved award and the company’s commitment to excellence in elearning!

Using Twitter during Webcasts

renee.seker — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:37:22 +0000

Webcasts are a proven and popular way to deliver training. As any elearning enthusiast will tell you, audience engagement is crucial for a successful webcast. Without engagement, the important messages you spent hours honing could fall on deaf ears. Webcast participants may end up multi-tasking – checking email or even worse, playing Angry Birds (gasp!).

One great tool for getting your webcast audience engaged in your content is Twitter.

But, like all great technology, if not used properly, Twitter can be a time-suck at best and overwhelming at worst. The 140 characters, @s, #s and RTs might just seem like foreign, robotic language. There are plenty of guides and countless blog posts and user guides to teach you the ins and outs of this ubiquitous social network, but here’s a great overview for using Twitter to enhance engagement during a webcast.

Here are our favorite tips for integrating Twitter into your webcasts:

Design a hashtag: On Twitter, a hashtag (#) makes a topic easily searchable, when a user clicks on the hashtag they can see all the tweets that also include it. So for your webcast, decide what hashtag you want to use. Here’s an example for how to create an effective hashtag: At BlueVolt, we recently hosted BlueVolt Academy and perhaps we wanted to create a hashtag for attendees to use. One option could be #BlueVoltAcademy, but remember Twitter limits the number of characters in a tweet to 140 characters and #BlueVoltAcademy uses 16. The hashtag #BVAcademy would be more effective because it is shorter, but the topic at hand is still clear. Overall, when creating your hashtag, make sure it’s both short and relevant.

Incorporate the hashtag into the planning process: Delivering a webcast isn’t easy, and it can be easy to forget a non-crucial planning element such as a Twitter hashtag. Taking questions live throughout the webcast that are asked using your designated hashtag is a great way to encourage participation, but, again, it’s easy to overlook this step. In your notes or script, be sure to call out when you’ll mention the hashtag and when you’ll mention audience tweets. In order to maintain your focus, you may want to enlist help from a second party who can call out relevant tweets for you.

Promote the hashtag: Build up some buzz about the webcast before it even begins by using your hashtag early and during the actual webcast as well. A few suggestions:
- Use your hashtag when you tweet about the webcast.
- Include it in any promotional materials (i.e. flyers, invitations, web pages, etc.)
- Call out the hashtag in registration information, as well as confirmation and reminder e-mails.
- Remind viewers about the hashtag at the beginning and in the middle of the webcast.
- Consider including the hashtag in the bottom of the webcast screen itself if you choose to use slides or graphics

Respond to tweets: This is where the presenter will certainly need a helping hand. When people use the hashtag, write back to them, ask questions, get a conversation going (as much as you can in 140 characters). Attendees are much more likely to use the hashtag when there is a good dialogue happening.

Keep it alive afterwards: The webcast hashtag can live on after the webcast is over. Sharing links to the presentation or other support material via Twitter is a sure way to get people to participate who may not have during the live portion.

Tell us, how do you use Twitter in your elearning program?

Using QR Codes in eLearning

renee.seker — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Have you noticed those square black-and-white boxes that kind of look like bar codes out and about lately? They’re called QR codes, abbreviated from Quick Response codes, and they are popping up everywhere from t-shirts, to business cards, to cereal boxes.

Car manufacturers originally used QR codes to keep track of parts. Today, they’re an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Anyone with a smart phone can scan the code with the designated app (using their device’s camera), and the information hidden within the QR code appears. Often, it will pull up a website with more information about the product/person/etc., but more and more marketers are getting creative with QR codes.

Manufacturers can take advantage of this trend, using QR codes to teach distributors, installers and even consumers about new products. As we’ve discussed in previous posts, the BlueVolt Learning Management System's (LMS) online universities are a great way to centralize product information and the perfect hub for distributors, sales reps and even end-users to revisit as often as necessary.

So if you’ve invested in an online university or centralized hub for your elearning and product training, try experimenting with QR codes to tell your audience about your courses. For example, try including a QR code on a product’s package. Now, your distributor’s sales staff or the installer just has to scan the code to interact with your content – which could be a product demo, video, PDF, or even the training course on the LMS. QR codes that link to installation instructions or diagrams make it easy for contractors and installers who need quick references while in the field.

This is an especially effective tool for sales reps. Instead of lugging around a laptop to show a product video and following up with an email to deliver the file to the customer, just use a QR code and their smart phone to access a product video on-the-spot and share the link with the customer. Your customers can then scan the code and show the video when training their employees about the product, and so on and so forth.

Integrating QR codes into your elearning program can help ensure a consistent message directly from the manufacturer, which ultimately leads to better understanding of the product and increased customer satisfaction.

Tell us, how would you like to see QR codes used in the elearning industry?

11 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Electrical Continuing Education

renee.seker — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:32:32 +0000

Each person has their own unique needs. This goes for electricians, too. So, why can't electrical continuing education accommodate those unique needs? Well, the amazing thing is, it can.

When you look for a course, you should consider the following tips for selecting the right training for you:

The learning is highly customizable. If you're extremely busy and already have years of experience under your belt, you don't necessarily want to study each detail, especially if it's not necessary for that all-important license renewal.
Non-required details are easily accessible. Say that you do want to dig deeper on a subject. Perhaps you're curious why a code was changed or added. Maybe this isn’t required for your license renewal, but sometimes knowing the background behind the data can help you remember the data for the test.
Vital material clearly marked in the course. In order to get through the material as quickly as possible, having the really important stuff easily recognizable helps you breeze through, focusing only on what you need.
Liberal use of summaries throughout. This allows you to get the gist of what's on the page so your mind can focus properly on the ideas presented. This is education on rocket thrusters. Say you're learning NEC updates. This might simply be a "change summary" for the particular item in code.
Generous use of pictures and videos. Text is important, but a text-only education can become pretty mind-numbing. We all need variety to spice up learning so that it doesn't become information overload.
Practice quizzes. This gives you the chance to test your retention of the material before actually taking the exam. In a hurry? Merely skip these.
Fast retrieval of your completion certificate. This is, after all, what you're after. You want to get the certificate without having to wait days or weeks. At least one online course lets you retrieve your certificate as soon as you complete the exam and pay.
The ability to take the final exam as many times as you want. Say you finish the course, take the exam, but don't quite make the grade the first time out. That by itself is a bummer. But to have to pay for the course again and to spend hours retaking it sounds like electrician hell.
The option to study the material as many times as you need. A traditional classroom likely won't let you sit through the training multiple times. Each seat is valuable real estate. Most likely, you'll only find this kind of option online.
Pay only when you pass the exam. Now, why didn't anyone think of this before?
Accredited in multiple states. If you're licensed in more than one state, check to see if the training covers all of your states.

BlueVolt's User Group Drives LMS Improvements

renee.seker — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:25:25 +0000

In August, we were very lucky to have a great group of customers in our Portland office for our annual User Group. During the event we had important sessions including peer group discussions on Successes and Challenges of Running a Training Program and Measuring Training Success. We talked about hot topics of mobile learning and social media. And there was also a presentation by our director of engineering, Belinda Runkle, on the BlueVolt development process and our roadmap.

The first half of her presentation was about how our software development team works and what items are on our upcoming roadmap, but the second half was where things got interesting. Belinda posed the question to our customers: “If you controlled the BlueVolt roadmap, what changes would be most beneficial to your organization?”

Our customers had some very insightful suggestions and system changes, one of them regarding getting courses online. I think we can all agree that getting training out to your training audience is the most important thing, and you have to be able to get those courses online to do so. Customers recommended some usability improvements for the process of loading courses to the Learning Management System and for cross-categorizing them into multiple categories. They had some great ideas for making the Admin easier to use, and I just loved hearing them discuss these ideas with each other.

The exciting news is that we were able to immediately prioritize some of the suggestions that came out of the user group into our development roadmap. Since we follow an agile approach to our software development, our developers worked on getting these improvements implemented and we just released the changes to the LMS for all of our customers to benefit from. From suggestion to implementation in just two months! The feedback is tremendous, for example, Lori of Johnstone Supply says, “Amazing! Those are awesome! Thank you so, so, so much.”

For those of you who know how BlueVolt started and that we are a customer-driven company, this will not come as a surprise. But I wanted to share this experience, for those who haven’t worked with us, or for our new customers. We love having intelligent customers that constantly push us to improve! Thank you BlueVolt customers.

Photo credit: thejourney1972 (South America "addicted") on Flickr

My Top 5 Most Used Tools for eLearning

renee.seker — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:11:12 +0000

I am not a software developer, nor designer, or even an instructional designer – but like many of you, I am a pro at what I know (and in my case, I know the BlueVolt LMS) which makes training one of my key responsibilities.

Has training fallen in your lap? This happens often with helpful product managers, the rock star sales person, or even you marketing folks. You know your product or process, but how do you create elearning out of all of that knowledge? I tend to rely heavily on tools to help me out.

Here is my Top 5 List of Most Used Tools for eLearning:

Snagit^®: Best screen capture software I’ve ever used! Snagit is super easy (almost zero learning curve), fun (really, it makes me feel like a cool creative type) and has lots of impressive editing features. If you do any kind of software/desktop/website support or training – you must get this software. It’s available for both Mac & Windows, and is under $50 - totally worth the time it will save you.
- Free trial (30 days)

PowerPoint^®: I know everyone knows about PowerPoint and has experienced terrible, horrible, no good, very bad presentations – but it is also a pretty powerful tool when used well! It’s good for both in-person training as well as online. If you have one of the newer versions (2007 or 2010) there are also lots of great image editing, formatting tools, and design theme tools. I use PowerPoint in nearly every course that I create. Did you know that 2010 even has an option to save the file as a video? Its possible to make mobile videos from PowerPoint!
- Free trial (60 days)
- Check out lots of free templates, training, & support online

Audacity^®: If you record audio of any size, shape or form you should use Audacity. It is a free (let me repeat that… free!) open source software for recording and editing audio. I use this for recording audio for my elearning courses, making it easy to record in one click and edit audio easily.
- Download it now – did I mention it was free?

Articulate^®: As I mentioned above, I like PowerPoint – it’s quick, easy and most everyone knows how to use it. That said, Articulate is the perfect complement to using PowerPoint as an elearning development tool. It is an add-on for PowerPoint (so it is built to work directly with PowerPoint). It allows you to publish your training to SCORM industry standards, add and sync audio and incorporate interactivities.
- Free trial (30 days)
- Award winning support and software, tons of resources & training for newbies

Excel^®: This one is for the data nerds out there (yes, I am one of you!). Once you have developed, launched and have students completing your elearning, then you will have lots of data to analyze. This includes how many people are taking the training? Where are the knowledge gaps? What are the trends in our training results? Just a little bit of Excel knowledge can go a long way with your elearning results. It helps you sort, organize and pivot your data in any way possible.
- Free Trial (60 days)
- YouTube video tutorial on making Pivot Tables (they skill will change your life)

So that’s my Top 5 list! I hope that you found something new, or maybe just a new resource for software you’re already using. What are your top elearning tools?

Photo credit: Austin ampersand Zak on Flickr

How eLearning can Benefit Co-ops

renee.seker — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:39:56 +0000

This week, businesses across the world are celebrating co-op week.

Co-ops are founded on seven principles, and the fifth emphasizes education, training and information. Cooperatives provide education and training for their members so they can effectively develop the organization.

We’ve worked with co-ops in the manufacturing, construction, trade and other industries for the past 10 years—including BLUE HAWK, a purchasing cooperatives of 233 HVACR distributors in 49 states, IMARK Group, a member-owned marketing group comprised of more than 1,100 electrical distributors nationwide and IDC-USA, a cooperative representing over 260 independent distributors of bearing, power transmission, hose, rubber and hydraulics products.

Elearning and online universities are ideal training solutions for co-ops--they’re a “win-win” for all involved parties:

Co-ops are able to provide world-class learning and training opportunities for little or no cost. Online training tends to cost less than doing it in person, and often (in the case of purchasing cooperatives) funding will come from a co-op’s supplier.
Members receive training that enables them to increase sales and enhance customer satisfaction because of a more thorough product or service understanding. When $BlueBucks are added to courses, members receive dollar-for-dollar rewards that can be put towards future courses, donated to charity or redeemed for gift cards to hundreds of retailers.
Suppliers no longer have to send training reps to every distributor or sales organization they work with, they can communicate directly with the people who support and sell their products. By using a centralized hub, like an online university for training needs, suppliers can cut costs.

BLUE HAWK created their online university to help maximize the strength and skills of its members. In order to ensure its members’ sales teams are well-educated in the latest products, trends and techniques, BLUE HAWK University, powered by BlueVolt, launched last summer. It has since garnered almost 3,700 users and 29,569 enrollments in online courses that take between 15 and 20 minutes to complete.

IMARK Group has also created their own online university to provide basic training and understanding of products and selling techniques. The online university also serves to enhance classroom and one-on-one training offered to each employee of the co-op’s member companies.

IDC-USA recently launched their online university to provide their distributors’ owners and staff training on products from their suppliers. These courses provide the sales staff with in-depth product knowledge that supports their ability to sell.

Continuing education and training are crucial in any job and many co-op employees and volunteers have already experienced the positive effects of it at some point in their co-op career. Many may have also already experienced the convenience and effectiveness of online learning. But we challenge those who have not yet tapped into online education to start exploring their options today.

Co-op Week – What are Co-ops?

renee.seker — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:56:28 +0000

Every October, businesses across the world celebrate “Co-op Month,” with a special emphasis on “Co-op Week,” which, this year, happens to be this week!

You’ve likely heard the term “co-op” (short for cooperatives), as they become increasingly popular worldwide, but might be unclear on what it really means. There are many types of businesses and organizations that are called co-ops, from grocery stores and preschools to insurance and health care organizations. Simply put, a co-op is a business owned and controlled by its members, that operates for their mutual benefit. Worldwide, approximately 1 billion people are members of cooperatives. U.S. residents hold more than 350 million co-op memberships.

According to the International Cooperative Alliance, there are seven principles by which co-ops operate. The principles are grounded in the co-op roots of equality, equity and self-responsibility. Cooperative members work together to develop their organizations and, ultimately, improve the community.

Co-op month is managed by the National Cooperative Business Association, which represents cooperatives of all types across various industries. Founded in 1916, the NCBA was the first national organization for cooperatives. Co-op month is designed to raise awareness for cooperatives and invite people to approach their day-to-day differently by emphasizing working together.

One of the principles of co-ops is to provide education, training and information for members. BlueVolt recently partnered with the NCBA to learn about members’ needs in continuing education--specifically how online courses can best benefit co-op leadership, employees and volunteers.

BlueVolt is a great way for co-ops to extend learning, stay tuned this week to find out more and check out #coopmonth on Twitter.

30 Days of eLearning Tips

renee.seker — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:56:30 +0000

We recently wrapped up our one-millionth online course enrollment celebration by tweeting elearning tips each day throughout the month of September. We had fun sharing some of our favorite elearning tips and hearing new ideas from other members of the elearning community.

Jeff Goldman (@MinuteBio), author of the elearning, mlearning and learning technology blog Minute Bio, tweeted: “Save yourself time by tweaking/updating old #graphics &/or #characters for re-use in new courses #elearningtip” We couldn’t agree more, updating materials for re-use is a great way to save time and keep content fresh.

On a similar note, we also recommend creating templates for courses so you can fill in the blanks when it’s time to add a new course. Not only will this save you time and money, it will also keep your courses consistent. As you’re creating templates, you might consider building a library of assets (think pictures, illustrations, links and screenshots) to make creating courses even easier. The Rapid E-Learning Blog has a useful post on organizing your graphics in PowerPoint – a great time-saver.

And don’t forget to reach out to your Subject Matter Experts (the guys who always have the answer to your questions) for more time savings!

We retweeted eLearning blogger Cathy Moore (@CatMoore): “If ?s are too easy, learners might assume material is irrelevant. Don’t be afraid to start with challenging ?s” When creating material, it’s important to capture and keep your learners’ attention and we agree that challenging them right off the bat is a great start.

We also suggest using incentives, like $BlueBucks, to motivate your learners—which we have seen help increase course enrollments up to 10 times! Another way to keep participants engaged? Instead of simply telling learners what they need to know, use scenarios to help them discover the material on their own. Even the most informative elearning course is useless if your learners aren’t paying attention, so be sure your courses are designed to engage and motivate your audience.

September may be over, but we’d still love to hear more of your #elearningtip! We invite you to tweet your elearning tips to @BlueVolt (don’t forget to use the hashtag #elearningtip) and keep the conversation going!

In case you missed any of the tips, here they are for quick reference:

Want to beat boredom? Emphasize interaction throughout your elearning courses. http://ow.ly/6819x
Offer up games and virtual scenarios to reinforce learning
Don't forget the Pareto Principle or 80 /20 rule. In elearning, 80% of the value & knowledge is gained from 20% of the content
Build a library of assets; pictures, slides, templates, links. Planning ahead will make your job easier over time!
Templates, Templates, Templates… make them and re-use them. They make your courses more consistent and save time & money!
Not every LMS is the same! Save time and money on an LMS with an online platform that updates automatically
@CatMoore tip: If ?s are too easy, learners might assume material is irrelevant. Don’t be afraid to start with challenging ?s.
No two people learn the same way. Appeal to different learning styles by adding videos, games and quizzes.
2 heads are better than 1. Collaborative learning is powerful & effective. Allow learners to work together http://ow.ly/681nm
Make a good #webcast even better by archiving it for future reference.
Instead of just telling your learners what they need to learn, help them discover it through games or scenarios.
Repetition improves retention: Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.
Don't forget to lend a helping hand to your learners. Check course results and see which learners might need some extra help.
@minutebio: Save yourself time by tweaking/updating old #graphics &/or #characters for re-use in new courses
Even a small incentive goes a long way in motivating learners.
Launching a new product? Try elearning for a successful launch. Sales reps will be informed and ready to support your product.
Only use animations and sounds when they add value to a course. Whizbangs & whirligigs for their own sake are just annoying!
Avoid overwhelming learners. Break up a course or webcast into a series if there's a lot of material.
Use a control group of people who have received training and those who haven't to track if it helped drive sales
Create short video segments (2 min or less) of longer courses that can be viewed from a mobile device for a quick refresh
Remember, an elearning course doesn't need to be complicated to be effective, sometimes it's best to keep it simple.
Did you know that adding videos to an online learning course actually improves retention?
Product simulations allow learners to get in on the action from anywhere, any time.
Set up a designated hashtag on Twitter during webcasts to let attendees collaborate with one another.
SME (Subject Matter Experts): Know who they are & make good friends with them. http://ow.ly/681JS
Sharing your courses is a great way to extend your reach and keep content fresh. http://ow.ly/681IA
Slide driven content isn’t bad. Relevance is important. The best game on a topic a user doesn’t care about isn't engaging.
Pop quiz! Monitor progress and course effectiveness with short, interactive quizzes throughout the course.
Tired of earning CEUs in a stuffy classroom? Many states are allowing electricians to earn CEUs online. http://ow.ly/681Ny
Remember show and tell? Still applies today. Try adding video into a course to reduce training time.
If all of your elearning courses look the same, try switching things up to keep learners interested.
Hello, is anyone there? Ask your learners for feedback to find out what is and isn't working in your elearning program.

Photo credit: manuelwaiter on Flickr

How eLearning Accommodates the Four Learning Styles

renee.seker — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:00:00 +0000

If I ask you to think about learning something new, what comes to mind? Are you visualizing a typical classroom setting that puts the learners behind desks and the teacher at the front of the room, chalk or dry erase marker in hand?

Those of us who had this vision probably went to school before the digital age.

Today’s students (or “digital natives” as they’re often called) would probably visualize a slightly different scene. Perhaps their typical classroom vision includes a computer, digital projector or even an iPad.

Regardless of what type of classroom setting you envisioned, there’s probably one thing they all have in common. Most classroom-based learning (which many professional training programs are still utilizing) puts the instructor at the front of the class to “talk to” (not with) the learners. It’s the same approach as the first grade classroom.

Unfortunately, with this static approach to learning, we are overlooking the needs of the most important person in any learning scenario... the learner!

The VARK guide to learning styles suggests there are four types of learners:

Visual: Learners who prefer diagrams, pictures, graphs, videos, charts etc.
Aural: Prefer to hear and discuss the material when learning
Read/Write: Handouts, glossaries, lists, readings and notes are most helpful for these learners
Kinesthetic: Learners who learn by doing, i.e. games, hands-on examples, real-life application, trial and error

In a classroom filled with learners and only one instructor, it can be easy for one or more of these learning styles to be left out and make it more difficult for some employees to learn.

A well-designed elearning course, however, can meet each of the different learning needs while still completing your company’s professional development or training requirements. A single course can include graphs and videos for visual learners, narration for the aural learner, thorough notes for the read/write learner and games or product demonstrations for kinesthetic learners to interact with.

And not only do employees learn in different ways, everyone also learns at a different pace. Some learners grasp concepts very quickly, while others might need a little more time to let it “sink in.” In a traditional classroom model, the instructor needs to accommodate each of the learners and stick to a rigid time schedule, which can result in some learners not fully grasping the material. A scary thought if you’re responsible for delivering safety training to electrical contractors, for example.

A traditional classroom setting also has a set start and end time, which results in learners having to fit the class into their schedule (thus having to rearrange work deadlines or other projects) or, even worse, miss the important opportunity to learn altogether, which can impact on-the-job safety or productivity.

With an elearning approach to professional training, not only do employees choose when to start, they can also learn at their own pace. So whether a course takes three hours or three days, the learner is the one in control.

Elearning has many benefits for today’s employees, especially those of us who are too busy with projects and deadlines to easily rearrange our schedules to accommodate a traditional training course. A good elearning course has all the functionality of a traditional classroom-taught course (even the ability to collaborate with other students!), but with much more flexibility.

Can you tweek your training program to better fit the needs of your learners? Contact us today to learn how to incorporate elearning into your existing training program.

Gaming – the Future of Education, Science & the World?

renee.seker — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:55:49 +0000

I have had my fair share of “discussions” with my husband over the years about all of the things that he should be doing rather than playing video games… yard work, home work (back when we were still in college), pretty much any kind of work -- anything but playing silly games.

Then, last spring I attended the SXSW Interactive, a festival in Austin Texas about emerging technologies where I heard Jane McGonigal speak for the first time and she changed some of my strong opinions about video games. I thought, maybe my husband is a better person because of all of the games that he has played.

McGonigal said some incredibly amazing things about the possibility of saving the world in real life, in the same way that we do in games. She quoted some impressive statistics; did you know that we play online games three billion hours per week?! (Check out a Jane McGonigal TED speech). How and why do people spend so much time playing games? There are a lot of reasons, here are a few:

We are better in games than we are at real life
Games come with inspiring stories
Games inspire us to collaborate
In games, it’s satisfying to stick with a problem to solve it
You want to get up after a failure and try again
You feel as though you can achieve anything

As she talked, I was inspired. If we could integrate this gaming mentality into education and online training, imagine the possibilities. Online training lends well to gaming, as much of the same technology is already integrated – learners are already online, content is often Flash-driven, and there is already a set of users embarking on the same training adventures at the same time. My mind was reeling just thinking of the possibilities.

Then… she went on to talk about solving the world’s problems such as poverty, climate change, and global conflict using games. Whoa! Now that was a little intense for me, as I am fairly practical, so I questioned this crazy pipe dream about whether we could really change the world with games. Training, yes. The world – wasn’t sold on that quite yet.

Fast forward six months, when I see this headline on my news home page: Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists. What? It’s working! Collaborative online gaming environments are a powerful source.

If gaming can have this kind of impact in the world of science, solving training and education with games should be fairly simple, right?

Photo credit: Ian D on Flickr

Living out of a Suitcase

renee.seker — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Autumn. Possibly my favorite season. As a trail runner, I love the sound of my feet shuffling through the dry leaves and the feel of the crisp air. The sales team here at BlueVolt is also strapping on their shoes as they get ready for tradeshow season.

Fall is typically a busy time for shows and this year is no exception, with lots of airplanes, hotels and suitcases… and a voodoo doll. We’re excited to return to DevLearn again this year. This is a great show not only for us as an exhibitor, but is also a chance to squeeze in some professional development as their offering is robust. If you’d like to go, you can register with our special discount code and receive $100 off the price: 418DL11

But before we even get to DevLearn, we have several stops to make and then a couple more events afterwards to close out the year:

The National Cooperative Business Association’s Annual Meeting & Co-Op Conference is in Minneapolis this year. BlueVolt and CCA Global will announce their joint venture in BizUnite U at an early bird session prior to the conference.
We’re also exhibiting at Affiliated Distributors Electrical Supply Division North American Meeting. We’re anticipating some big new and exciting things at this year’s event.
IMARK Group’s Annual Meeting is a standard stop on our fall tour.
The NECA Convention is a super show for both sides of our business. We get to talk to electrical contractors who need our continuing education units (CEU) to maintain their licenses, plus we see a lot of our Learning Management System customers.
The Specialty Tools & Fasteners Distributors Association’s Annual Meeting is the last stop on our tour before Thanksgiving.
But then we’re right back to it for our winter BlueVolt Academy, our own hands-on elearning conference, which we’re hosting in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Whew! I think we’re going to need bigger suitcases.

Are you attending any of these shows? Want to share a cab?

National Tradesmen Day

renee.seker — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:56:00 +0000

We understand how hard tradesmen work every day. The long hours, grueling conditions and sometimes dangerous situations—it is certainly not your typical 9-5. We would like to take a moment in honor of today’s National Tradesmen Day to extend a huge thank you to all tradesmen for their hard work!

Since 2002 we’ve worked to help make the lives of tradesmen easier. Proper training is crucial to help ensure safety on a jobsite, but it’s often difficult to rearrange schedules to attend training courses. We’ve spent countless hours riding along on service calls and sitting down to talk with skilled professionals about their unique needs. The result? An easy-to-use Learning Management System filled with safety courses to keep skills sharp. And all BlueVolt universities are online, which means no long downloads or frustrating updates necessary.

Manufacturers like Klein Tools and Hubbell Lighting have uploaded courses for tradesmen as well. The courses feature in-depth training about cutting-edge products tradesmen use every day. By understanding the unique ins and outs of a product, tradesmen are able to better install and maintain it.

Electricians and other skilled tradesmen can also earn their CEUs online. In some states, BlueVolt even reports results directly to the board.

Without tradesmen, our society couldn’t be what it is today — Mike Rowe said it best, “They are the backbone to our functioning nation.” We truly appreciate the hard work these men and women do every day, and in order to make their lives a little easier, we want to make training as accessible and convenient as possible.

So be sure to thank any of the Tradesmen in your life today for their hard work keeping America functioning. Happy National Tradesmen Day!

What Do You Do When You Miss Earnings?

renee.seker — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:58:06 +0000

Today’s post is written for our readers who work for product suppliers or manufacturers. And smart suppliers know – it’s time to double-down on training.

No one likes to miss out on the potential to sell — and that revenue slips right out of your hands and into your competitor’s pockets.

What’s the best way to boost revenue and combat missed sales potential? It’s not “sell more” or “decrease overhead.” Yes, doing those things can impact the bottom line. But perhaps one of the easiest ways to boost revenue from sales is to tweak your training program. Invest in more training and you’ll see an impact on sales revenue!

Let’s take look at a few key training drivers, how they work, and what successful suppliers understand:

Tips for increasing product line awareness
After conducting a survey of our distributor customers, we were surprised to learn that few distributors know the breadth of their suppliers’ product lines. And these weren’t suppliers they had never heard of, or worked with once or twice. They were well-known suppliers! Yet we heard time and again, “I didn’t know they made that!”

Whether selling direct or through reps, folks start at the top of the pyramid to increase product-line awareness. Then they train the guys, who will train the guys, who train someone else. This training has been predominantly instructor-led. But studies have shown that there is approximately a 5% retention rate of information presented in a general lecture format.^*That means if you are going to train a person who will probably remember just 5% of what he or she learns, and then expect that person to turnaround and train another group of people in a “lunch and learn” format, how can you expect to have an effective training program?

Thankfully there’s a approach to training that doesn’t limit the capacity to learn – elearning!

Elearning offers many advantages over instructor-led training. For example, employees can minimize the amount of time spent away from actually doing their jobs. According to the Brandon Hall report Return on Investment and Multimedia Training, “The actual time required for training by computer averages about 50% that of instructor-led training”^**.

And, because elearning courses are available 24/7, employees can take training whenever is most convenient for them. Another benefit? The U.S. Department of Education recently released a study that found online training is more effective than in-person training. So not only is elearning a better approach for retaining knowledge, it actually helps minimize costs associated with more traditional, in-person methods of training. And tying it all back to the theme of today’s post: elearning can help increase suppliers’ product line awareness among distributors (a.k.a. the people responsible for selling your product!)

And as any good sales person will tell you, increased awareness = increased sales!

Tips for increasing product sales
Now that we’ve reviewed how to boost awareness through training, let’s take a look at how training can actually impact product sales. At BlueVolt, we suggest training distributor employees in three distinct categories: identification training, product application and expert level training.

Identification training is the most basic. This is the training that prepares distributor front-line staff to handle customer requests. When a customer comes in with a specific product request, does the person helping him know what he is talking about? Although it seems like an obvious skill, we have heard stories over the years about employees who haven’t had the proper identification training. In one example, a new-hire who wasn’t properly trained to identify products was causing long lines and frustrated customers. And this new-hire’s more experienced co-worker had to step in to answer each customer’s request. Poor identification training? Poor customer service. Not a great environment for increasing sales, is it?

The next training category is around the proper application of the product. If a customer comes in asking for a really quiet ceiling fan, a distributor employee should know to suggest a 6” ducted fan versus a 4” ducted fan (because it’s quieter for you non-fan-geeks reading this). So not only should distributor employees be well-versed in identifying products quickly, they also need to understand how to properly apply various products for different situations.

The final training category is expert level training. Think of this like distributor employees getting a black belt in the knowledge of suppliers’ product lines. At this point, the employee is not only capable of selling from an entire product line, but he or she can also train other people on the products. Typically the best way to reach this level is a combination of in-person training and a series of online courses.

So if we take that pyramid approach to training, we all-too-often find that supplier reps gloss over the basics during meetings. They are excited about new products and have so many branches or product lines that training new people on old stuff is often considered less valuable and, unfortunately, overlooked. However, given that a high percentage of employees in the distribution field are starting to retire, there is more hiring going on, which means there are more people in need of basic (or old) product training in order to be effective on the selling floor.

Putting basic product training online, whether it involves a simple matching game or a primer on how to order from your catalog, ensures everyone gets a consistent message about your products. You can also verify that distributor employees have the knowledge they need to be effective on the job. From there, you can take online training to the next level and even bring products to life virtually – it’s not an easy task to sell something you’ve never seen in use.

Tips for new product launches
According to Accupoll Research, 80-95% of new product launches fail. Yikes! That statistic always makes me cringe. Companies invest countless dollars in getting a new product to market – and the thought of those new launches being doomed from the start is disheartening! Even though so many of them will fail, inevitably, new products must be launched and promoted. Unfortunately, most reps and distributor employees are blissfully unaware that these launches are occurring! So how can you expect them to sell a new product if they don’t know about it?

How do many BlueVolt customers avoid a new product flop? Online training (bet you guessed that one!) By bringing new product information online, supplier training managers can assign new product courses to their reps, set a strict timeline and then monitor which reps “get it” and which may need extra help to understand the product. The supporting course materials can also be forwarded along to the distributors and, again, the supplier can verify knowledge along the way to ensure new product messages are resonating throughout the sales channel.

Another benefit? Spotting slackers. With online training suppliers can see who has successfully completed the product training and who hasn’t. And reps can follow up during their next visit or when the time comes to launch another new product. Thus greatly reducing the chances that your new product launch will fail.

I always say that there are no emergencies in training, but emergencies happen all the time when people aren’t trained. Listen up suppliers! Have you ever been on a call with a rep when he realizes he is 15 days into a new product promotion and he hasn’t told any of his customers? I have, and let me tell you, that is not the most effective way to bring new products to market!

Ready to “double down” with your training program? Consider offering a few online courses to increase awareness, then go deeper with specific product training and finally, support all new product launches with the right online courses.

^*National Training Laboratories, Bethel, Maine
^**Hall, Brandon (1995), Return-on-Investment and Multimedia Training, Research Study. Sunnyvale,California, Multimedia Training Newsletter

Photo credit: banspy on Flickr

10 Tips for Making Interesting eLearning Videos

renee.seker — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:23:15 +0000

Increasing I find myself using YouTube as a reference for even the most straight-forward, mundane tasks like:

YouTube has simultaneously raised and lowered the bar for those looking to create quick and easy learning videos. On YouTube the vast majority of the content is produced by amateurs - not video production houses, but subject-matter-experts and web enthusiasts armed with little more than a camera, computer, and a few good ideas.

Is this you?

You are struggling to create enough elearning content to satisfy the needs of your learners.
Your company is pushing for more elearning to reduce costs like travel and lost work time.
You need to create new course content at a breakneck pace.
Your budget to create that content is modest at best.
Your modest budget means relying on lower-cost production options and doing more courses in-house.
In order to create courses in-house, you need quicker ramp-up time for new tools and technologies.

The same way that digital photography surpassed traditional film photography and put enormous creative power into the hands of consumers, digital video is equally ubiquitous. The cost of shooting digital video is at an all time low. HD video cameras can be had for less than 600 bucks. My iPhone captures video as do most smartphones. The GoPro camera series have made high-def, first-person action movies accessible to 12-year olds on snowboards, skateboards, bikes, and kite boards. The editing software is getting cheaper and in many cases, you can use free software for most tasks. Hard drives are cheaper, larger, and faster.

As the generation of audience gets younger, the tolerance for long, dry tutorials is getting lower. There are too many other demands for their attention and anything that can be said in 30 seconds, should be said as such. The popularity of reality TV shows, b-rolls, bloopers, as well as amateur video has created an audience that is surprisingly forgiving of shaky cameras and pixelated shots.

Rather than agonizing over perfect, professional-quality videos, learning professionals should embrace the current video revolution and make video that's fresh - short, interesting, personal, and unique.

Here are my 10 tips on making interesting videos to fulfill your elearning content needs:

1) Use real people. Real people are interesting. Real people also put a personal face on your brand, company, product – that paid actors cannot imitate. While there's definitely a place for professional voice-overs and talented presenters, the best people to watch are real people in their natural environment. Studios and other professional recording environments make most of us nervous and cagey on camera. Do your best to focus your people on doing what they do best and have them speak in their own words.

2) Plan. Assuming you don't have a script already, create a list of points you are trying to make. Then create a simple storyboard using index cards or sticky notes. Stick figure drawings are fine. Try to imagine what the video will look like when you are done.

3) Shoot a lot. Again, eschew perfection. Plan on doing retakes. The shorter the better. There won't be a perfect shot, but you will have more to choose from and can probably find creative ways to weave together different takes.

4) Show not tell. Think about how you would tell the story if this was one of those old soundless movies. The best movies excel at visual storytelling. Re-watch that Robert Zemekis movie, Castaway, where Tom Hanks is stuck by himself on an island. Watch it with the sound off, and you will appreciate the visual storytelling. Use this movie as inspiration on how you will spend the least amount of time talking at your audience.

5) Audio is king. While you want the video to emphasize telling a visual story, the person watching your video likely will have a very low tolerance for mumbling, poor sound quality, background noise, or gratuitous and unnecessary music. Try to provide the best audio you are able to. As much as possible, use an external microphone for recording, as most video cameras have pretty mediocre audio recording.

6) Use the simplest tools you can get away with. While Final Cut Pro has a well-deserved reputation among video editing experts, the learning curve can ensure that you will spend more time twiddling with the inner workings of the software. If you aren't ready to expend the hours to learn a pro editing platform, start out with the introductory, lower-cost, reduced-feature packages like iMovie.

7) Keep it short. We've heard this message enough in relation to elearning, and it's just as true in video which is not an interactive medium. The shorter the video, the more likely it is that your watcher will reach the end of it. Planning for shorter video can also translate into less work as you will spend less time shooting, editing, and agonizing.

8) Shoot and edit in the highest quality you can reasonable afford. The higher the quality, the more disk space and computing time is required, but you can never add back resolution or sharpness that you never had in the first place. Once the video is complete, down-grading the entire video to smaller-size, lower-bandwidth copies is easy.

9) Find inspiration. YouTube, Vimeo, and other sites are full of ideas you can use. Even copying the sequence, format, or style of an existing video will teach you how it was put together. This is a time-honored tradition in film and ever other creative medium: learn by imitating.

10) Experiment. Don't be afraid to just try some stuff and see if it sticks. Most videos average a 10:1 shooting ratio, meaning that you shoot 10 minutes of video for every 1 minute that ends up on the final cut. Be bold!

BlueVolt Talks to our One-Millionth-Course Learner

renee.seker — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:51:36 +0000

As announced earlier, BlueVolt recently delivered our 1 millionth course since we began offering elearning courses in 2002!

Our one-millionth-course learner, David, was kind enough to take the time to sit down with us and talk about the role of training in his workplace.

David has been an electrician for 24 years and recently decided to start up his own business in southern Illinois. The electrical industry is continually changing and David wanted to make sure he was up-to-date on Lutron’s advancements in energy conservation and dimming – so he enrolled in the award-winning Lutron Lighting Control Institute Online.

Our one-millionth course just so happened to be David’s first experience with online training. And we’re pleased that he “found it very easy to navigate and take the course.” As his business continues to grow, David feels that he will continue to take more and more training courses online. The ability to learn at home, at his own pace is one of David’s favorite things about online training. Especially since he can revisit material as often as necessary to ensure he’s “choosing the correct outcome for every project.”

We salute David, an avid learner who is always looking forward to learning more.

Today, we have over 166,000 learners using our learning management system to advance themselves. Whether it be through courses about products they sell, they use or they are just interested in, or courses on safety, or company processes and procedures, or state-required training for licensure. There are more than 11,000 courses on our platform! We’ve learned quite a bit about elearning over the years and are always eager to share this knowledge.

That’s why, starting in September, we will be tweeting an elearning tip every day throughout the month to celebrate hitting the million-mark. To join in on the conversation and tweet your own elearning advice, be sure to use the #elearningtip hashtag and follow us @BlueVolt.

1 Million BlueVolt Courses Delivered!

renee.seker — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:28:34 +0000

BlueVolt reached an exciting milestone – we delivered 1 million online courses to our users.

BlueVolt started in 2002 with online training geared towards electricians. We spent hundreds of hours on-the-job to understand their unique needs and frustrations. We learned that proper training was essential to success (especially with more than 8,000 new products introduced each year), but access to training was limited and inconvenient. So we built BlueVolt from the ground up to reach beyond the typical online learning audience of cubicle-dwellers and appeal to skilled professionals like electricians—a typically under-served segment in elearning.

We’ve since expanded our course offerings to serve professionals in the plumbing, HVACR, welding, flooring and other building trade industries, as well as product distributors, manufacturers and the associations that serve them. We now have over 165,000 registered users! We’ve found that the best way to learn about a product is directly from the manufacturer, so we bridged the gap between companies and the people who are crucial to product success, like sales staff, distributors and installers.

Elearning is a powerful tool; did you know the U.S. Department of Education found that students who learn online generally perform better than those who learn in a face-to-face course? And we’re continually working to improve the experience. Over the past nine years, we’ve refined our LMS, responded to support requests, modified the user interface and found better ways to get things done as we move towards 2 million courses delivered.

To celebrate hitting the million-mark, we are tweeting an elearning tip every day in September using the hashtag #elearningtip from @BlueVolt. We have a whole pile of tips to share, but really want to hear yours too. Be sure to use the #elearningtip hashtag and join the conversation!

photo credit: James Cridland on Flickr

10 eLearning Lessons Learned at BlueVolt Academy

renee.seker — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:58:24 +0000

We had a great BlueVolt Academy and User Group last week in Portland! I am always excited about the interesting things that our customers are doing. Even as an instructor, I always learn something new every time. For those who weren’t able to attend, I wanted to share some of the great themes and tips that I gleaned from last week’s Academy…

1. Borrow, Buy, Build: elearning can be expensive to make. Whenever possible, try to get elearning resources in the following order:

Borrow: Borrow existing elearning courses from anyone that is willing to share for free… training partners, vendors, free training available online, your insurance company (safety training), or other BlueVolt customers.
Buy: Buy already developed training from 3^rd party providers. BlueVolt has access to several content libraries or check out OpenSesame (the world’s elearning marketplace).
Build: Build custom content where necessary, such as in proprietary content specific to your company.

2. Audio: Get great sound quality with little to no cost. There are a lot of free tools out there:

Free: Audio recording & editing software Audacity
Cheap or Do-it-Yourself: Make your own Pop-Shield or Portable Sound Booth
Some Cost: You will want to spend some money on your microphone (just a little, no need to blow your budget here). We recommend using a USB microphone because it doesn’t pick up as much of your computer sound as the internal or jack microphone. One of the microphones we use in our BlueVolt studio is the Blue Snowball, available for under $50.

3. Learning Styles: Know your preferred learning style, and be aware of all of the other learning styles. You want to make sure that your courses cater to all learning styles. Be conscious that you tend to create training in your preferred learning style. Read more about Kolb’s Learning Styles here.

4. Objectives: When building training, ALWAYS spend the time to write learning objectives for the course. Get stakeholder buyoff on objectives to make sure that your course is on the right track. Like building a house, it’s easier to make changes early during the blueprint phase, rather than trying to add a bedroom to the ground floor after the house is built. Here is a great resource on writing course objectives.

5. Templates: Templates, templates, templates! Whenever possible, use and create re-usable templates. They will save you a lot of time during your elearning building career. You can create design templates, PowerPoint templates (master slides), Articulate templates (player templates), and much more. Download a generic product course template from BlueVolt.

6. Peer Feedback: Grow a group of peers that you can talk to about specific elearning challenges and successes. That way you can learn from each other, what is working really well, or not so much. Networking events in your industry, in the training sector, or even peers in associations that you belong to are great people to turn to.

7. Video Tips: There are a lot of simple & free ways to improve your video quality, whether you are shooting testimonials, product video, or video in a webcast.

Position your camera so that the entire head and chest are on camera. If you chop the person off at the neck, they will look like a floating head. Also, make sure that there is not too much space around the person; they should be the main focus.
Try to film with a window facing the subject, which will provide great natural light. NEVER have a window behind the subject (unless you want the silhouette look, or are trying to protect an innocent witness).
Wear solid colors while on camera.
Need help with video production? BlueVolt’s creative services team can help.

8. Social Media: Social media is a great way to build brand awareness, build community, generate leads, and drive traffic to your training site. Common social media sites used by professional are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The most important things to do when implementing your social media strategy:

Identify your audience (who are you trying to socialize with)
Identify their hangouts (what sites are they using)
Identify your message (what message do you want to communicate)

Interested in using Social Media? Here are a couple of cool resources:

Free course on “Beginning Twitter for Professionals” available on OpenSesame.
HootSuite is a social media dashboard that makes it simple to view and manage multiple social media sites from a single page.

9. Audience: Define your audience early in the project. For every course, you should provide your learners a ‘WIIFM’ (What’s In It For Me?). Your WIIFM will provide motivation to the learner to make a personal connection with the training. If you are training multiple audiences, you can to re-purpose content by simply shifting the WIIFM. For example: A new product release, similar course materials are presented to three different audiences in slightly different ways:

Installer: Save time on the job site with a simple 3-step installation of Product X
Distributor: Product X provides a perfect opportunity as an add-on sales in a common household product
End User: Product X saves money over the lifetime of your household system because it lasts 3 times longer than the traditional solution

10. Shortcuts: Familiarize yourself with shortcuts in the software that you are using. If you can save a few seconds or a couple of clicks doing things that you use over and over, it will save a lot of time in the long run. What are your most commonly used shortcuts? Mine are (Ctrl+c) to copy, and (Ctrl+v) to paste. Download FREE PowerPoint and Office quick reference guides. TIP: Another easy way to find shortcuts is watching others work in the software, and ask questions when they do something you’ve never seen before.

See what I mean about all the great things learned at our Academy? We’re planning our next event now and will publish the dates and location soon. We hope to see you there!

Keeping an Agile Approach to LMS Software Development

renee.seker — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 23:21:25 +0000

It seems things today change at warp speed and the next “It” thing can come and go in the blink of an eye. It can be easy to fall behind if you’re not paying attention – especially if you work in the technology space. For example, in the world of social networking, first came the blogs, then Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, then Foursquare and now it’s all about Google+. What’s next?

In the world of elearning, there’s been buzz recently that the LMS is dead. Those who believe the LMS is in fact dead say it’s because elearning platforms aren’t adapting quickly enough to what users today need.

Part of the reason for this stagnant growth is that many LMS providers release large technical updates for their platforms every few months or even just a few times a year. The long wait time between updates can mean that even before updates are released, they’re already outdated.

At BlueVolt, we move a little faster than other LMS providers.

Not to toot our own horn, but we feel it’s crucial to provide technical updates every two weeks. This means when technology evolves, we adapt quickly so our LMS can best incorporate those advances in the form of enhanced features and benefits to the end user. How is this possible? Without boring you by going in-depth into our back-end system, we have built our platform based on something called the “agile development approach.” And no, this doesn’t mean everyone at BlueVolt can touch their toes… what it does mean is we have a certain approach to development that allows us to release LMS updates incrementally and more frequently than other LMS providers.

Because we are a customer-driven company, we have found that using the agile approach allows us to be more flexible for our customers and continuously deliver value. By incrementally releasing updates, BlueVolt customers can immediately begin using new features and provide feedback on what works, and what doesn’t. From there, improvements can happen as quickly as the “digerati” are buzzing about the next “It” social networking application.

At BlueVolt, we understand that there isn’t a one size fits all approach to elearning, and our agile development approach lets our customers have a direct influence over our software updates. We listen to what our customers need and do our best to incorporate those features into future updates.

For example, energy management specialist Schneider Electric had a very specific vision for their online training university before it launched, and we worked with them to ensure they would have all of the functionality they wanted to provide the best training courses to their customers.

The agile development approach has proved to be a huge benefit for our customers. Instead of holding valuable updates hostage, or spending months working on a program only to release it and watch it fail, we’re continually updating our system so new technical features can help improve elearning for all of our customers.

And at BlueVolt, it’s not just the development team that takes this agile development approach–the whole company uses it. Every few weeks, all of our departments meet to have a “retrospective” and demo what we have in the works. The approach is just as important to our internal culture as it is to our customers.

So in the spirit of agile development, let us know—if you could have anything from your LMS, what would it be? You never know, our development team just might incorporate your feedback into our next software update…

Photo credit: bm.iphone on Flickr

How to Avoid Common Stumbling Blocks of Video in eLearning

renee.seker — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:35:52 +0000

We know that incorporating video into elearning boosts the already plentiful benefits of learning online. Video can enhance understanding, engage users of different learning styles, reduce training time and demonstrate how products work.

Unfortunately, with some LMS platforms, it can be a frustrating task and feel like you need a degree in course design to add in even the simplest video. Here are some tips to start incorporating video into your online learning to get more out of your training program.

First, you should make sure your video works across multiple browsers (for example, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari). This can be a rather complicated process that requires expert knowledge (video converters, encoding, blah, blah, blah!), so you want to make sure your LMS provider can assist you with this process. If you don’t, you’re taking a gamble at which of your learners can actually watch the video based on what type of browser they use. This simple step can prevent knowledge gaps (ensuring all learners have access to the the same video content) and cut down on your time spent troubleshooting (when learners have issues viewing the video).

Second, check with your LMS provider about reporting metrics or analytics for your video. You need to know that the learners are actually watching the video – and not just the first few seconds. If they aren’t, you may be having technical issues that are preventing learners from viewing the video, or you may need to create a more compelling video with content that engages your learners until the end.

Video is a powerful learning tool and it’s unfortunate when these two factors (browser incompatibility and lack of analytics) create a barrier to incorporating it into elearning programs. That’s why, at BlueVolt, we make it as easy as possible to add video to your courses.

Our platform supports just about any kind of video you could possibly want to include, whether it’s one you create on your own, one we help you create, a snippet from a webcast, and so on…

Simply upload your video into the BlueVolt LMS, and we will do the rest! We convert the video to multiple formats for you, which means it will be supported across multiple browsers and streamed from our content delivery network. This ensures both you and the end user have absolutely nothing to worry about after pressing play (think simplicity of use, like YouTube).

We also help make sure your learners are actually watching the video. Course administrators can set a required seat time for a video and the learner must watch at least that many minutes before they are marked complete and can continue to the next section. This is especially important for certification and continuing education courses or courses that award any type of rewards or incentives (like BlueVolt’s $BlueBucks), where you need to ensure the learners have actually seen the material.

And, because BlueVolt’s platform doesn’t require pesky software downloads and updates, you won’t really have to worry about course glitches because of system changes.

We’ve worked hard to make incorporating video into elearning as painless as possible so your organization and your learners can benefit from the power of video. All you have to do is click the “upload” button, select your video file and leave the rest to us.

Interested in finding out more? Contact us today to start incorporating video into your elearning program.

BlueVolt Pursuing Continuing Education Credit for OSHA Courses

renee.seker — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:04:58 +0000

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported there were 4,551 workers who died on the job in 2009.

Nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses among private industry employers declined in 2009 to a rate of 3.6 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers--down from 3.9 cases in 2008. The construction industry sector reported 71,700 fewer cases in 2009, compared to 2008 – a 22 percent decline, lowering the incidence rate by 0.4 cases to 4.3 cases per 100 workers. The number of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses reported in 2009 declined to 3.3 million cases, compared to 3.7 million cases in 2008.

These declining statistics are great, but that is still over 3 million cases where people were killed, hurt or made sick on the job.

OSHA Training Improves Safety
The construction, electrical and manufacturing industries can be especially hazardous. Safety training is imperative to reduce on the job injuries, illnesses and deaths. In early 2009 BlueVolt partnered with ClickSafety to offer hundreds of online safety courses, including OSHA 10 and OSHA 30. Some states require OSHA training for all construction contracts and public work projects:

New York
New Hampshire
Connecticut
Massachusetts
Missouri
Nevada

BlueVolt is working with many states to get these OHSA courses qualified as continuing education units (CEUs) for electricians and electrical contractors. So far California, Georgia, and Utah have approved them.

Reporting is Easy
For these states, completions are automatically reported directly to OSHA. The continuing education credits are applied toward your electrical or contractor license renewal.

Thousands of electricians and electrical contractors already get their CEUs with BlueVolt. Now they can kill two birds with one stone – by combining safety and jobsite hazard awareness with the requirements to renew an electrical license.

For more information about the OSHA courses we offer, visit:

OSHA Certificate and Outreach courses

OSHA 10-Hour Construction Safety

OSHA 30-Hour Construction Safety

Show Me the Money: the ROI of eLearning

renee.seker — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:40:22 +0000

As businesses continue to adapt in the face of today’s great economic challenges, budgets are tighter now than they have ever been. Things like training, both on and offline, can fall into the “nice to have” rather than “must have” category when it comes to budgetary planning.

So if you’re a manager, you’re going to have to prove the value of an online training program before being able to invest in one. Theory is great (who doesn’t want to believe in the power of education when it comes to increased job performance?), but in today’s economic climate, you need numbers and analytics to get the company behind your decision to invest in elearning.

One way to show the higher-ups a return on investment (ROI) tied to elearning is to use SMART metrics.

What are SMART metrics? They are:

Specific: Your metrics need to be targeted directly to the area you are measuring. When measuring customer satisfaction, for example, a specific metric would be direct feedback from the customer about how they feel about your company or products (e.g. on a 1 to 10 scale). An indirect measurement, like counting customer complaints, could end with misleading results.
Measurable: The data you collect need to be both accurate and complete to be useful. In other words, you must be able to measure it. You have to know if hit a home run, hit a single, or struck out. Make sure you can turn your goal into something numerical.
Actionable: Instead of trying to measure something overly-complicated, make sure your metrics will be easy-to-understand so you know how to make sense of the data and how to ultimately take action.
Relevant: If you don’t need to know how long someone uses your product, don’t waste your time trying to measure it. It isn’t worth trying to measure everything if you don’t need the data.
Timely (or Time-based): When it comes time to collect the data, you need to be able to retrieve it, otherwise it will be useless. And make sure there is an end point, a finish line to cross (e.g. increase sales by 20% by the end of the second quarter).

Obviously, we at BlueVolt believe in the power of elearning. But to take our beliefs further, we decided to collect our own SMART metrics to evaluate whether or not elearning can directly impact sales, proving ROI.

The results are quite powerful. For example, 81% of distributors in a BlueVolt survey said they sell more with online training.

We also found that distributors recommend specific products 2-5 times per day. If we average that to 3.5 recommendations per day at a 50% success rate for a $50 product from 500 employees, the impact to your daily sales could be $43,750! You can read more about this subject here.

Our metrics have also shown that providing learners with incentives has enormous benefits. Just how big? Our $BlueBucks program has increased online course attendance by 10 times, easily explaining the more than $1.5M in incentives awarded to our learners.

Here are a few other ways to measure the ROI of your online training program:

Decreased costs from minimizing:

The amount of time, and thereby the cost, of managing training schedules
Training-related travel costs and time
Incident costs from poorly-trained employees
Employee turnover costs by providing better training and development— did you know continuing education is the second most important reason employees stay in their jobs?
IT costs when using an online Learning Management System versus internally managed software

Increased revenues from:

A quicker and more efficient sales force
Higher customer satisfaction

It’s important to note that while metrics are extremely useful to help justify ROI, they don’t paint the whole picture when it comes to the benefits of elearning. To some degree, ROI will not perfectly reflect whether students enjoyed the training or not, or the extent to which the students’ personal objectives were achieved. No matter how great your training program is, if your students aren’t happy, you won’t have a good ROI. At BlueVolt, we have found that most students enjoy taking courses online because of the flexibility and ability to customize learning that fits into their own schedule and personal learning style. And with nearly 1 million online courses successfully delivered, you don’t have to just take our word for it!

Interested in learning more about ROI and online learning? Check out these articles:

http://www.fastrak-consulting.co.uk/tactix/Features/tngroi/tngroi.htm
http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/10/roi-and-metrics-in-elearning.html

The LMS is not Dead

renee.seker — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:29:02 +0000

The typewriter didn’t die, it became a computer and a keyboard. Cassettes didn’t die, they became CDs and now digital music, There has recently been quite a bit of buzz on whether or not Learning Management Systems (LMS) are dead.

The overall argument is that learning is shifting away from traditional methods and towards more informal methods, like social learning. Some argue that an LMS is just a “learning vending machine” – providing courses to pick and choose from, without a lot of feedback or interaction. Others argue that most LMSs are stuck in a rut, and can’t find a way to enthusiastically engage learners. While these statements may be true, it is also true that an LMS is still an important part of delivering and managing learning of all types.

When it comes to learning, most people have a “pull” mentality (i.e. they want to pull in the specific information that is relevant and useful to them). For these types of learners, social learning is the perfect fit. With social learning, you can search out what you want to learn and ignore the rest. This, however, can sometimes result in a knowledge gap. The learner didn’t pull the information they needed because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. A simple way to avoid this situation is to utilize an LMS so you can assess if the learner got what they needed to via a quiz. If the learner doesn’t pass (because he didn’t pull the needed information), an online course or reference document or activity is prescribed to fill that gap.

Traditional learning is built on a “push” mentality. The teacher (or, in the case of online learning, course provider) pushes information onto the learner, often without an explanation of why it is valuable. Without the WIIFM (what’s in it for me), most people will not care or pay attention. In an online scenario, you can bet they’ll be doing their own ‘social learning’ on their smart phone or another website while the online course is running in the background.

But, by understanding the “pull” mentality of learners, elearning providers and LMS administrators can rework how they market courses, encouraging learners to seek out the courses themselves. For example, say you request that all employees take a class about your new product. If they aren’t interested in the product, they might halfheartedly take the course and not get much out of it, or just ignore your directions altogether. But if you explain why the course is valuable to your employees and the benefits it will provide to them in the long run (i.e. a better understanding of the product, which can lead to more sales which can increase their compensation), they might decide to take it on their own.

Of course, there will always be courses learners don’t want to take, no matter how useful the information might be. That said, it doesn’t hurt to use incentives to encourage a more enthusiastic participation.

At BlueVolt, our incentives program, called $BlueBucks, is built into the LMS. Learners earn $BlueBucks as they successfully complete courses and can redeem them instantly in the form of gift cards from hundreds of merchants nationwide. Our customers who use $BlueBucks understand the value of incentives in improving elearning participation– and they have been shown to increase online course enrollments up to ten times! Having a built-in reward system in an LMS allows for successful learning of all types to be acknowledged, rewarded and tracked…all in one place.

Also, an LMS provides an option that traditional classroom-based learning simply can’t: learning online means the student can learn whenever and wherever he or she chooses. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that by 2013, 35% of workers worldwide, or 1.2 billion people, will be mobile workers. It is often inconvenient, expensive and unnecessary to require mobile workers to travel for a training session. Online training is just as effective, if not more than, in-person training, and a lot more convenient for the learner. In-person learning and training certainly has its place, but online learning is often a more logical solution.

While some LMSs may be stuck in a rut, or refusing to adapt, that certainly isn’t the case for us here at BlueVolt.

We update our LMS platform every two weeks in order to provide the best technology and elearning experience to our customers. Some weeks the changes might be small improvements, other weeks it is a bigger revamp (usually incorporating suggestions from our customers). Either way, we’re always working to make our LMS better to improve elearning for all.

There’s no doubt that the world of LMSs is evolving, but it certainly isn’t disappearing. If an LMS provider can’t adapt to the changes, then yes, it will probably die. But a great LMS will continue to evolve and stay relevant.

Mike Rowe Gets Dirty for a Good Cause

renee.seker — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:34:48 +0000

Most of you probably know Mike Rowe from his hit Discovery Channel series Dirty Jobs, where Mike apprentices with hardworking men and women across the country who work fear-inducing, dangerous or, you guessed it, just plain “dirty” jobs.

But did you know Mike Rowe has launched a “PR Campaign for Hard Work”? The mikeroweWORKS Foundation is the self-proclaimed UNhandyman’s courageous attempt to draw attention to the fact that our country needs more skilled professionals – lots of them.

Mike recently spoke to the Senate Commerce Committee, advocating the importance of skilled labor. You can check out the video of his testimony:

It’s nearly impossible to read a newspaper or watch the news without seeing the glaring headline that unemployment is at a devastating high, as every day, more and more friends, family members and neighbors are laid off. But what you don’t see is that there is an increasing shortage of skilled labor in this country. Many skilled tradesmen are retiring and there simply aren’t enough people with the training to fill the vacancies. This has resulted in a skilled labor shortage and skills gap – which Mike Rowe believes is going to cause irreparable damage to our country. And we here at BlueVolt have to agree.

In order to combat the gap, Mike is first encouraging a change in the way society looks at hard work. In his closing statement to Congress he says, “I encourage you to support these efforts, because closing The Skills Gap doesn’t just benefit future tradesmen and the companies desperate to hire them. It benefits people like me, and anyone else who shares my addiction to paved roads, reliable bridges, heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing.” We’re with you Mike!

We also commend Mike for supporting the need for more funding for training for skilled laborers. Not only will a strong training program prepare much-needed tradesmen for the professional world, it will also greatly increase on-the-job safety.

At BlueVolt, we are in full support of Mike’s efforts. We know the value and importance of all skilled professionals. We believe that a strong apprenticeship, training and continuing education program for skilled professionals is the most helpful tool to have on the job.

To find out more about Mike’s efforts and how YOU can get involved to help support this country’s hard-working skilled professionals, please visit: http://www.mikeroweworks.com/mikes-office/

The Benefits of Video in eLearning

renee.seker — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:36:00 +0000

In the late 19^th century, Eadweard Muybridgetook a (now famous) series of photos of a racehorse galloping down a straightaway. The photos, later set to motion, are considered one of the earliest forms of video.

From there, video quickly evolved – beginning with silent films and moving on to “talkies,” Technicolor, television, and today, the internet.

There’s no question that the use of video is commonplace in our society today—YouTube has become a significant search engine; people go there to search for stuff over Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Things are no different in elearning. It is becoming more and more common to include a video (or two, or three!) in an online course.

Video not only adds a dynamic element to your online training courses, it has several important benefits that you couldn’t get otherwise:

Improves knowledge transfer and appeal. The VARK guide to learning styles suggests there are four types of learners: visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic. Adding video to an online course is a significant help to both the visual and aural learners who might not have the same understanding by just reading the material.
Enhances understanding. Remember show and tell? There are times when you need a visual to help explain a point, and video is a perfect solution. You can simultaneously show your audience what you mean as you explain the concept.
Reduces training time. In addition to enhancing learning, video can also reduce training time. It’s easier and takes less time to watch a well-made video than it does to read through pages of dense text or complicated diagrams to grasp a concept.
Demonstrates how products work. Without video, it can be very difficult to demonstrate to learners how a product works in the real world. While photos and animation can help, a video can bring the product to life for learners. A video showing the proper way to install a solar panel is better than drawings or photos with a voice explaining that you insert tab A into tab B.

The eLearning Guild's LinkedIn Group had a recent question asked in the discussion forum: Have you ever used YouTube to teach yourself something? The answers ranged from “how to bleed a diesel boiler” to “how to set up a heart rate monitor”. The options are almost endless.

What’s your favorite video that taught you something? Share it here, we'd love to watch it.

Rage Against the eLearning Machine - How Technology can Make Fools of us all

renee.seker — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:02:58 +0000

Today's post is from guest blogger Rich Maranta of Pinched Head.

There is a problem in the world of eLearning and I am not sure how we fix it.

It’s not a new problem. In fact, it has existed ever since the invention of the computer and the rise of the Internet but it continues to plague us. I am sure any time new technology like the printing press popped up throughout history the same problem reared it’s head. I’m talking about the tendency of businesses to over-invest in technological solutions and then skimp on the quality of the content that the technology is intended to serve up.

Far too often, companies who discover that eLearning is the way to go, jump in and invest inordinate amounts of time and money in a system or set of tools, whether it is a new LMS, a Content Management System, Human Resources Management system, or latest authoring tool, only to discover that it is not meeting their needs.

Why does this happen? Because, in my opinion, organizations fail to invest properly in content development. It happens all the time in our technology loving world. Just ask Research In Motion. They have a decent hardware platform in the new Playbook, but fail when it comes to delivering the content people want – the killer Apps. They have not focused enough on getting killer content and are paying the price. The same holds true for organizations looking into eLearning.

Time and time again, I have seen companies implement a new system or buy a bunch of new eLearning tools and then feel their job is done. They then assign the task of developing content to people that are often ill-equipped to create effective, engaging online courses. Usually, they give the job to an underfunded training department which must make the shift from from the old world of traditional stand-up training to the new world of online learning. Unfortunately, many of these training people do not have, or may never have, the necessary skills for online training development. This often results in what I call, Plop and Play eLearning.

Understandably, these new “developers”, sometimes not very technically savvy, wanting to keep their jobs and develop their careers, take up tools like Articulate, Lectora or a dozen other content development products and attempt to create some courses to go on their LMS.

Unfortunately, because of their lack of technical or design skill, they simply cut, paste, and plop the content into their tools or systems, in a way they are familiar with without any thought (or with lots of thought but no skill) for this new medium. What you are left with is very bad eLearning which in turn get’s plopped on to a very expensive infrastructure.

When users access this type of learning, they don’t care if you have spent a gazillion dollars on your system or authoring tool set, all they see is a bad course that gives them a bad impression of you and your bad system. Did I say this was a bad? Well, this situation isn’t even good for the company that sold you their fantastic tool or system because the average person often does not differentiate between the content and the system behind it.

A case in point. I recently, had a chat with the girlfriend of the owner of a very large LMS vendor. She took an online course at a local University which uses her boyfriend’s LMS. She was not impressed with this eLearning stuff. She basically said to her boyfriend: ” What kind of crappy system are you selling here?!” That didn’t sit well with him so he went online and discovered, that, yes, it was a crappy course, done by a professor who might be a genius in his field but knew nothing about online course design, media, information development, or presentation. As with every great technological system, you get out of learning technology what you put in to it. It’s the whole garbage-in garbage-out story. Unfortunately garbage tends to stink up impressions of the entire package it’s in.

This is not just a problem in academia. Not very long ago, a company called us asking if we could help them spruce up a course they had done. But here is the problem: it was bad – really bad– badly written, badly designed, badly everything. Basically, what the developer had done was simply copy and paste Word documents into Lectora and then added a couple of arrows at the bottom for navigation. This was supposed to be a completed course that only needed some tweaking.

Apparently, this organization purchased a site licence for Lectora but no one knew how to use it. Since, they were mandated to develop eLearning but were not properly staffed to do so, they left their copies of Lectora sitting on a shelf and hired an external consultant to develop the course. I am not sure where they got this person from, but this consultant did not know how to use Lectora either. By the time we were asked to quote on fixing the course, their budget was completely spent. We did our best to kept our quote quite low – knowing full well that we would probably end up doing a lot of extra work for free just to make the thing half decent. Unfortunately, it wasn’t low enough.

After three or four weeks, we received a one-line email from an assistant that informed us that our quote was not successful. That’s fine. You win some you lose some. Now I don’t mean to dish up sour grapes or attempt to get back at someone for rejecting us like one might do on Facebook, but I think this illustrates how organizations invest in tools and learning management systems but when it comes down to content development, scrape the bottom of barrel. They are not given the expertise, guidance, staff or budget to do the job the way it should be done and often the wrong people end up leading the way. It is unfortunate that this organization will end up with very poor eLearning on a very expensive LMS created by a very expensive authoring tool.

As with cooking (my favorite subject), if the people using the appliances don’t know how to best mix and present the ingredients (even though they know all about properties of the ingredients), all that anyone ends up with is indigestion. It does not matter if you use the best ovens, mixers, utensils and put the final product on golden plates. You need to invest in a good chef and good cooks who know how to use the tools and technology to it’s potential. Perhaps your current cooks have the potential but need to go back to school and be retrained. Maybe you just need new cooks. Either way, if you are going to be in the business of serving food, you need to keep on investing all the way down the chain until you get a quality final product.

For those companies wanting to get into eLearning, I suggest you don’t just throw money at some tools and eLearning infrastructures and expect to get an effective learning program. I can’t tell you how many times I have talked to companies who bought a system or set of tools before they had good eLearning developers or a development process in place. Focus on quality content first and then get the tools that will take you to the next level.

One way to do this is to invest in people with the new skill sets first. I am not necessarily talking about people with an “instructional design” degree. Now they might be fantastic depending on the person you get, but sometimes, in my experience, these people can bring a lot of nice theory to the table and a lot of buzz words but sometimes a lack of realism and practical skill. Of course I generalize but it has often been my experience.

Here are a few things companies can do to help fix things:

1. Find excellent communicators for your eLearning team – people who can write, think and create.

2. Look for people with good technical aptitude. This is a must. If a person can’t unzip a file or figure out how to get files remotely using ftp, Dropbox, Sugar Synch or some other service, seriously think about NOT having them working on eLearning in any capacity. Sorry we are talking about survival skills here. Maybe you can teach them but find out if they have what it takes first.

3. Make sure your leaders have hands-on experience or are at least very technically literate when it comes to all aspects of eLearning. I don’t care if he or she is always going to be a manager in the department and plans on moving up the latter and loves paper-work. Having a manager that has never personally done eLearning or something similar is just asking for trouble. They need to know if these tools and technologies can do what you are asking them to do and the technical complexities that go with it. If the manager of your department does not know anything about stuff like Flash, HTML 5, LMS, a CMS – get one who does or train one.

4. Get Money. If only this was so easy. Someone, somewhere must free up some cold hard cash to get these courses. It’s not cheap to do top-notch courses but you need to spend the money to develop training that’s accurate, engaging and complete. Of course, I am not saying you should just throw money at a project. But consider investing more heavily in good course development both in people and budget. If your organization does not have enough money to invest properly in eLearning, you are wasting what money you do have. I can’t tell you how many times I have see something that would have done just as well as a PDF that you hand out or put as html on an Intranet but instead get’s the eLearning treatment. It’s kind of like buying a restaurant-grade oven to cook chicken nuggets with. I know a lot of you are saying, “but my company won’t give me more money to do eLearning.” Consider raging against the machine and being honest with those in leadership about the quality of training they will get if they don’t pony up.

5. Hire experts like us. It doesn’t have to us but we certainly would like that. We and other small eLearning companies have done this for a lot of different companies. We are good at it and efficient because we have been through it before. Our experience with different technologies and types of content means that we know how to roll with the punches and can deal with whatever comes. We are content experts. We will not waste your time as we ride the learning curve. You need to consider if you really need to build an in-house team and spend money on expensive tools to do your eLearning. Maybe you just want to be subject matter experts and manage the development by outsourcing to a proven vendor who does this for a living. It’s always an option.

Let me tell you a story to wrap it up.

In a land not so far away and not so long ago, in a previous company of mine there was a group of documentation and training wizards who promised us a world where, through the magic of SGML, the power of databases and intelligence of sophisticated software all our wildest dreams would come true. All we would have to do is pull a switch and out would pop sophisticated modular information products whether it was training courses, user manuals, multimedia materials, or online courses. It would be like Charlie’s Chocolate Factory only technical information instead of chocolate. Needless to say, it was a pipe dream that wasted millions of dollars and many hours and there was no glass elevator to the sky. The company was Nortel and it is now at the bottom of the sea.

Thank you to Rick Maranta of Pinched Head for letting us republish his blog post.

We Had a Blast at ASTD

renee.seker — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:58:48 +0000

Last month, we attended the ASTD 2011 International Conference & Exposition in Orlando, Florida and had a wonderful time. We were able to meet with learning and development professionals from around the world and have great conversations about the role elearning plays in training & professional development.

Our giant voodoo doll, part of our “Don’t Hate Your LMS” campaign, was quite popular—it might have even upstaged our iPad giveaway! You can check some of out the photos on our Facebook page.

After the voodoo doll broke the ice (and eased the pain many conference attendees feel about their frustrating and complicated LMS platforms), we were able to speak with booth visitors about what they both need and want from their LMS. After trying out our demo, people fell in love with BlueVolt’s comprehensive user interface and easy-to-use administrative features. The ability to add $BlueBucks to courses was a really popular feature of our LMS. $BlueBucks are completely integrated into our platform, so there’s no need to administer incentives through a separate program or system.

We’d like to thank Mike Prokopeak from Chief Learning Officer for stopping by our booth to learn more about BlueVolt and including us in his recap of the conference. And a big thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth to learn more about BlueVolt - and congrats to Kris Martone, our iPad drawing winner. All in all, we had a blast at ASTD!

We are gearing up for DevLearn in Las Vegas. Tell us, will you be attending? What would you like to learn from us?

NEC Code Change Course Now Available

renee.seker — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 22:12:46 +0000

For many electricians, taking continuing education courses is frustrating. Spending an entire day in a classroom, if there’s a course conveniently scheduled and within driving distance, isn’t high on anyone’s list of priorities.

At BlueVolt, we know an electrician’s time is valuable. Who wants to spend weekends or evenings in a cramped class? Here’s where BlueVolt comes in. We want electricians to earn their CEUs online — which many electricians find more convenient because they are in control of when and where they take the course.

We recently released a course on the 2011 National Electric Code changes, which is approved by 28 states across the country so far, and BlueVolt will automatically report course completions to 19 states. Licensed in several states? BlueVolt will report completions to each state where the course is approved for no extra charge.

As technology continues to advance, electricians cannot afford to fall behind. Major changes in the 2011 NEC incorporate green technologies and alternative energy. For many in the electrical business, the NEC changes can ignite panic, confusion and, at best, annoyance. But taking the NEC course online can help electricians stay on top of the new code changes and keep their licenses up-to-date.

Ask anyone who has taken a BlueVolt training course before, and they’ll tell you how convenient online learning can be. Our online courses for electricians are available 24/7, there is no software to install and you can learn at your own pace.

Plus, we’re always striving to improve our elearning options for electricians and other skilled professionals.

Here are some other benefits to taking CEU courses online:

Learn at your own pace. Most of the 2011 NEC changes courses aren’t timed. If your stomach starts growling, or life calls for a break, take it. When you log back in, you’ll start right where you left off.
No hidden charges. You don’t have pay until you pass the course and you don’t have to purchase any extra books or materials. We just recommend you have a copy of the NEC codebook available.
Immediate results. You can access your course results and print your certificate of completion immediately, and your certificates earned through BlueVolt will always be available online. Don’t forget, we’ll report your course completion to 19 state boards for you and email you afterward.

With Bluevolt, electricians shouldn’t fear the terms “online” “code changes” or “CEUs”. Our easy-to-use online training can help any electrician stay up-to-date on the latest code changes and license renewals.

For more information about continuing education for electricians, visit www.bluevolt.com/electricians.

Klein Tools wins Award from Sphere 1

renee.seker — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:31:34 +0000

We’d like to extend our congratulations to Klein Tools for winning the award for Most Enrolled Students in Sphere 1 University from tool and fastener cooperative Sphere 1.

Sphere 1 University, powered by BlueVolt, connects product manufacturers, like Klein, with distributors. By offering manufacturer courses in Holemaking and Cutting Products or Wire Strippers to distributors, counter sales people learn about the application and value of the manufacturer’s products. And because the courses are online, anyone can take the training whenever is most convenient and revisit material at any time.

Klein Tools, a leading manufacturer of more than 3,000 professional tools, turned to our team at BlueVolt to develop their online University and their courses that would train both internal (sales reps) and external (distributors, associations) stakeholders about their products.

BlueVolt developed state-of-the-art training courses for Klein Tools University, which include the latest technologies like video, interactive instruction and testing designed to both engage the user and present information in a more compelling way. In order to increase course enrollments, we syndicated the University with seven association universities, including Sphere 1, to help grow visibility and exposure. Klein Tools’ courses also offer incentives called $BlueBucks, which reward learners as they successfully complete training.

This is just one example of how valuable it is to make training accessible to everyone within a vertical channel, which is easily accomplished using BlueVolt’s proven approach to online training. After syndicating their courses, Klein Tools University’s enrollments more than doubled within a few months, and now their courses have the most enrolled students in Sphere 1’s University. So we want to take a moment to echo Sphere 1’s recognition of Klein Tools for having such a robust online training program – and the engagement from both internal and external sales reps, which is accomplished through valuable training content and further supported through incentives for successfully completing courses.

So how can other manufacturers & distributors learn from Sphere 1 & Klein Tools’ approach to training?
Manufacturers want to launch new products, reduce the time and cost of training and reach new markets. Distributors want training to be centralized, easy to access and help them sell more products. Connecting manufacturers and distributors through an online university, like Sphere 1’s, accomplishes each of these goals.

When launching new products, manufacturers are able to reduce time spent traveling for training and easily, not to mention more effectively, reach learners from anywhere with an internet connection. By putting training online, manufacturers are also in complete control of the message that reaches distributors, ensuring product messaging is comprehensive and consistent. Sharing online courses allows manufacturers to reach a very large number of distributors and retailers and significantly expand their market share.

Distributors sometimes have tens of thousands of products they are trying to sell and need to be able to quickly and easily access product information for customers. Instead of jumping from one manufacturer’s training website to another, distributors can have all of their training information in one central location making it easier to give their customers the information they need.

It’s important to reiterate the impact incentives have on online training. Our built-in incentive program, $BlueBucks, are proven to increase enrollment up to ten times. When you earn $BlueBucks through a BlueVolt university, they accumulate in your account and can be applied toward the purchase of more courses, redeemed as a virtual or traditional gift card or even donated to charity.

Curious how you can use BlueVolt to increase sales? Feel free to get in touch, we’d love to hear from you!

What the heck is User Generated Content?

renee.seker — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:24:44 +0000

If “user-generated content” seems like a broad and ambiguous term to you, don’t worry you are not alone. User-generated content is any data that is contributed by a user—it seems like a broad concept because it is!

Wikipedia is one of the most recognizable examples of user generated content in practice. For those of you not familiar, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to, whether it’s adding a new fact to an existing subject or creating an entirely new page or article. Of course, this can result in incorrect or false information—so it’s always important to be wary of any “facts” and “news” you read online.

Online encyclopedias aren’t the only form of user-generated content on the web -- discussion boards, blogs, review sites, YouTube and even video games all allow users to contribute content. User-generated content can be found anywhere that lets users share their knowledge online.

There are certainly risks associated with user-generated content, namely that anyone can post anything whether it’s true, false, offensive, reasonable, outrageous… you get the point.

Even so, as long as you’re a savvy media user the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. User-generated content lets everyone’s voice be heard. By allowing users to comment, discuss and give input, they’ll be able to learn more. And you’ll gain valuable insight on what your audience wants.

User-generated content also provides a place for highly targeted topics to grow and flourish. Say you’re interested in bead weaving on a loom. There are certainly books or classes you could take to hone your craft, but a quick Google search provides thousands of videos, patterns, websites, discussion boards and blogs providing free access to ideas from people all around the world. User-generated content vastly opens the marketplace of ideas, expanding the possibilities infinitely.

At BlueVolt, we believe in the power of user-generated content—no one knows your message or audience better than you. So we provide a sophisticated and easy-to-use platform to facilitate learning, and you provide the content. We make it easy for you to track user progress, add in features like games or videos, reward your learners and host webcasts.

We also want your University learners to be able to contribute content as well. That’s why we also provide tools for collaboration and to encourage feedback from participants. Not only will learners be able to learn from one another, you’ll be able to learn from them. You can also see what type of content they want more of, and what isn’t working.

With user-generated content, you are the one in control and can adjust the materials as often as needed so they’re right for you and your audience.

For more tips on creating successful content, visit the following links:
http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/1951/how-to-create-great-content.html
http://www.opensesame.com/category/blog-tags/content-revolution

Photo credit: cheryljns on Flickr

How to Integrate Interaction into your Online Training

renee.seker — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:14:06 +0000

There is nothing that is going to lose your audience’s interest quicker than a long, text-heavy PowerPoint. If that is what your training courses look like, I’m pretty sure that they aren’t going to be as effective as they could, not to mention, should be.

People learn best when they’re motivated, excited and understand the benefit from the potential knowledge. But even the most useful training course will flop if participants are faced with slide after slide of dense text. They’ll lose interest, stop paying attention or won’t even bother to finish the course. Not only did you waste time creating an ineffective course, participants won’t have the training knowledge they need to be more successful.

Thankfully it’s easy enough to avoid this pitfall. Simply letting users interact with courses helps keep them interested.

Interaction in elearning isn’t the same as collaboration. Collaborative learning is two or more people working together to learn. Interactive elearning allows the learner to play an active role in the learning process. Instead of passively watching a slideshow and jotting down notes, the learner must respond to prompts from the course.

One of the most common and simple ways to integrate interaction into elearning is by incorporating a quiz. While it may not be the most exciting way to interact, it certainly is effective. Participants know they need to pay close attention to course materials, because they will be held accountable for the information down the road. Course administrators can monitor learners’ quiz results, and reward those who do well and provide extra support to those who need it.

Games are a much more fun option that let users interact with their course in a more engaged way. Whether it’s a simple matching game or an elaborate virtual world with varying scenarios, games can help make learning enjoyable. For example, BlueVolt’s creative development team produced a pallet stacking game for some of our distributor customers, where the learner has to choose and place items of varying weights and sizes onto a pallet in the correct order before time runs out. This interaction reinforces the procedures they learned about in the course and is more enjoyable and memorable than just listening or reading the information on screen.

1) Place items on the pallet in the proper order

2) Feedback informs the learner what they did incorrectly and lets them try again.

3) Feedback tells the learner when they correctly loaded the pallet.

Virtual product simulations are a unique way to let learners interact. Whether it’s a large item (which would be dangerous, expensive or even impossible to bring on site) or a small product (where the intricate details could be overlooked) a virtual simulation presents an entirely new perspective on product training. The learner can interact with the product, observing what happens during it use, installation or repair.

In order for you to get the most out of your online training program, it is important to keep your audience engaged and excited about courses. The easiest way to do this is by allowing users to actively participate in the learning process and interact with their online courses.

I want to know, what’s your favorite way to let users interact with their training program?

Collaborative Learning Online – Is it Really Possible?

renee.seker — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:33:18 +0000

Collaborative learning is one of the hot new buzzwords being thrown around the learning landscape. But what does it even mean? Isn’t learning usually a solo activity—one person acquiring knowledge?

Absolutely not!

Traditionally, we think of learning as a teacher lecturing to a group of students – a one-way communication path. This model has moved online with great success allowing the learner more interaction with the subject. Collaborative learning adds another layer—it’s two or more people setting out to learn something together. Of course, teachers still teach, but students are given the power to discover knowledge on their own.

With collaborative learning, learners talk, challenge ideas and evaluate conclusions with one another. Instead of listing out facts and formulas, teachers can provide students the tools needed to find the solutions. By collaborating, the learning environment is richer and more fulfilling. You are exposed to different perspectives and ideas, ultimately leading to a better understanding.

So, how does all of this work with online learning?

One of the greatest things about online learning is the reach - courses can be made available to anyone, anywhere in the world. If collaborative learning in a physical setting creates a richer learning environment, imagine the possibilities of a virtual classroom. There will certainly be differing cultures, opinions and experiences in a traditional class, or for example, at a lunch-n-learn training by a manufacturer’s rep at a single distributor branch. But the number will increase exponentially when learners from around the world are able to participate - or when a manufacturer can demonstrate a product’s application online to a multitude distributors and resellers at once. Adding a collaborative element to this gives all participants an opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences and perspectives, not just from the instructor.

Here are some suggestions for adding elements of collaborative learning to your online learning program that encourage participation:

Social media: Whether it’s a message board, discussion thread, integrated chat or a blog, find a way to add an interactive, social element or two into your courses. Have the tools your users need to be able to collaborate ready at their fingertips, and they’ll be more likely to use them. Did you know that LinkedIn has forums, groups and discussions pages? You could try creating a private group for everyone enrolled in a certain course or set of courses where they can discuss relevant topics. Yammer is another great option. Find out what social media channels are already popular in your company or with coworkers, and take advantage of them. If most people are already logging in to a social network, they’ll be more apt to discuss the latest topic there than if they have to sign on to a social media channel they don’t ordinarily use.
Webcasts: While they might seem like “traditional learning,” a great webcast will engage your audience and foster a collaborative learning environment. Live webcasts put groups of people in one virtual place all at once, creating a setting similar to the classroom, where providing a collaborative activity has great potential. Enabling live chat during a webcast gives attendees a place to ask questions, and others (not just the presenter) to respond and add to the discussion. Here’s another tip, try designating a Twitter hashtag for your webcast to foster collaboration. Participants will see what others think, challenge ideas and evaluate their conclusions. Yes, this may be an unconventional form of collaborative learning, but it works!
Context: Research suggests that learning is fundamentally influenced by the context and activity in which it is embedded (Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989). Giving a group of learners a joint task or activity in context with their jobs or roles is a perfect way to foster collaboration and enhance the learning. A real-life example in a distributor setting is to give the counter sales people a mock customer’s problem and ask them to work together to demonstrate how a product they sell solves the customer’s problem. This done after learning about the product online can serve as an excellent test, and in the BlueVolt LMS can exist as an activity that is signed off on by the manager showing those learners have demonstrated knowledge of the product.

So yes, collaborative learning is possible online. Think of yourself as the community manager for your collaborative learning environment. You will certainly have to spend time thinking of discussion topics and responding to participants with probing questions, but remember that you’re helping to create a fulfilling learning experience for participants. Happy collaborating!

Art credit Flickr: lumaxart

6 More Tips to a Successful Webcast: Looking Great on Camera

renee.seker — Wed, 25 May 2011 21:15:44 +0000

We recently gave you six tips to keep your audience engaged during a webcast. Today I have six more tips on your camera, lighting and aesthetics – how to look great so that your audience wants to keep watching you.

Here are six tips to looking great on camera:

Position your camera smartly. If you’re using a webcam, place your camera right above your monitor so when you are looking at your presentation it seems you are looking into the camera and at your audience. Frame yourself (meaning adjust the direction/angle of your camera) so that your whole head and chest are seen. Don’t leave too much space between the top of your head and the top of the camera frame (this makes you look like a shorty!)
Natural lighting is best. If there is a window in the room, face it so that natural light lights up your face. If the window is behind you and you cannot change your direction, make sure to close the blinds or curtains otherwise you will look too dark or worse, be just a silhouette. If you don’t have a natural light source, set a lamp nearby and tip the shade or direct it to shine on your face. Don’t underestimate the importance of lighting… you want to be lit perfectly so your webcast looks polished and professional (think old, local TV versus current national networks and the difference in picture quality).
Don’t forget your background. It is best to have a solid background behind you. A logo can work if it is large. A shortcut is simply to tack up a solid-colored bed sheet behind you on the wall (or over the window if it is behind you). Sometimes I use a blue king-sized top sheet that I bought for $9.99.
Wear solids. Wear a solid-colored shirt that contrasts with your background. If your background is light wear dark, and vice versa. Avoid patterns like stripes, checks or plaids in your shirt as they can distort your image, plus they are busy and distracting.
Use makeup. Apply powder to your forehead, cheeks and around your nose; anywhere you are shiny. Yes men, even you, especially if you are balding or bald. You will need a matte powder to remove the shine (and you can wipe it off with water right after the webcast).
Let them see your eyes. If you wear glasses, make sure they do not glare. If you are on camera frequently, invest in the anti-glare option with your lenses when you purchase your next pair. If you choose to remove your glasses, be sure you can see your presentation without squinting – a scrunched-up face is unattractive.

BlueVolt produces hundreds of webcasts a year, so we know what works and what doesn't. Let us know if you need any help with yours.

Getting People to do What You Want

renee.seker — Wed, 18 May 2011 19:12:49 +0000

If everyone would just listen to me and do what I say, we’d all be happier. Right? As a manager of people or as someone responsible for delivering a goal, you’ve probably thought that a few times yourself. But life doesn’t work that way. We know that people need the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) to be motivated to do something. And we’re familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs so we know that esteem or recognition is an important part of our psyche.

So to get people to do something you want them to do, you need to give them some sort of motivation or recognition. This is no different with online training. It's the ol' carrot and stick idiom.

Using incentives in the workplace is a common practice. According to the Incentive Federation, North American organizations spent over $115 billion on merchandise, travel and cash incentives in 2000. That’s a lot of money. I wonder, is it effective?

When it comes to online training you can divide people into three groups:

Those who will take training on their own
Those who will take training with the right motivation
Those who will not take training no matter what

There is always going to be a small percentage of learners who will take your courses for the edge they feel they gain by becoming an expert in the latest product information. These people are motivated to achieve for personal and professional reasons. Armed with your key differentiators and stories of how your products compete, this type of learner will be an advocate despite any other motivators.

But what about the bulk of your audience? What would make them care? How can you get them to want to take a training course about your product?

Why Motivate?

The first question to ask may be: Is it even worth my time and effort to put the word out about my products through training? I say yes! It turns out that the average distributor’s salesperson is responsible for selling from an inventory of upward of 20,000 SKUs. It’s safe to assume then that most distributors’ employees haven’t seen or even clearly understand the bulk of the products they are selling. If you can get them to take a course on your product, that product is going to stand out from those 20,000 SKUs. And if your product stands out from that crowd, you are more likely to see a sale, for the simple fact that the counter sales person you rely on is going to make the connection for the customer when the opportunity to use your product arises. This same logic applies to any sales person in any environment where there are multiple products for sale.

The next question to ask is: How often does the opportunity to recommend a product over another come up? The median of distributor employees report that they recommend products to customers 2 to 5+ times per day. Consider then that if just 500 well-trained sales people make an average 3.5 recommendations per day, and only half of those recommendations convert to a $25 sale of your product, the impact to your daily sales would be $21,875 a day. I’ll take that!

Your product recommended 3.5x/day resulting in sales 50% of the time
Price	Daily sales with 500 trained distributor employees	Daily sales with 1000 trained distributor employees	Daily sales with 3000 trained distributor employees
$25	$21,875	$43,750	$131,250
$50	$43,750	$87,500	$262,500
$75	$65,625	$131,250	$393,750

Is there a Method to Motivate Them?

So the opportunity is there. However, is it possible to motivate folks to take your courses online? There is. With the right incentive, you can motivate your target audience to take your courses. Keep in mind, the right incentive is probably not a coffee cup, a t-shirt, or a pen that lights up.

Take a minute and think about your own response to marketing and advertising. Most of us are likely to be motivated to try something if the incentive for doing so is something we want. Also, that thing we want must be easily accessible; so it has to be delivered as quickly and easily as possible.

Does it Work?

It sure does. BlueVolt’s $BlueBucks (the built-in incentive program in our LMS) have shown to increase enrollments 10 times over courses without them. This program allows learners who complete training to earn $BlueBucks, which they can immediately redeem for gift cards to retailers they select. It gives the sales person something they want, right away.

But you don’t have to believe me. Here are some key findings from a study on the Incentive Performance Center that showed that properly constructed incentive programs can increase performance by as much as 44 percent:

Incentive programs improve performance - If selected, implemented, and monitored correctly, incentive programs—with awards in the form of money or tangible awards—increase performance by an average of 22 percent. Team incentives can increase performance by as much as 44 percent.
Incentive programs engage participants - The research found that incentive programs can increase interest in work. When programs are first offered for completing a task, a 15 percent increase in performance occurs. Asked to persist toward a goal, people increase their performance by 27 percent when motivated by incentive programs. When incentive programs are used to encourage “thinking smarter,” performance increases by 26 percent.
Incentive programs attract quality employees - Organizations that offer properly structured incentive programs can attract and retain higher quality workers than other organizations.
Longer-term programs outperform short-term programs - The study found that incentive programs that run for a year or more produced an average 44 percent performance increase, while programs running six months or less showed a 30 percent increase. Programs of a week or less yielded a 20 percent boost.
Executives and employees value incentive programs - All things considered, both employees and managers say they highly value incentive programs. Nonetheless, 98 percent of survey participants complained about their implementation. A program’s success and return on investment, obviously, depends on how well it’s operated.
Quota-based incentive measures work best - Programs that reward performance based on meeting or exceeding goals generate the most positive results. Piece-rate programs, for doing more of something, also provide positive results, according to the research. Least effective (yet commonly used) are tournament-based programs; i.e., closed-ended programs that reward a pre-selected number of winners, as opposed to open-ended, quota-based, or piece-rate programs that give everybody a chance at success.

So are you listening to me now? I’ve showed you the WIIFM. If you are responsible for sales, (or for people, or for getting people to do something you want them to) – consider using incentives.

One Size Does Not Fit All

renee.seker — Wed, 11 May 2011 18:39:26 +0000

Manufacturers and distributors have similar training concerns. Both have internal employee training needs for matters like customer service, sales skills, and policy & procedures—needs usually driven by the company’s HR department.

But for manufacturers, training distributors differs dramatically from employee training. The emphasis is on marketing, brand awareness and product value, not HR requirements. Training in a vertical channel, can be difficult to:

Establish a relationship between learning and business improvements
Control costs
Measure ROI and overall effectiveness

Traditional training requires face-to-face meetings, with manufacturers’ sales representatives flying around the country to meet with distributors—and travel is one of the largest controllable expenses associated with training. According to American Express, the average cost of a domestic trip is $1,100 while an overseas trip averages more than $3,000. Eliminating even just a few business trips every year can result in thousands of dollars worth of savings.

That being said, in-person meetings are absolutely crucial to building long, productive partnerships, and online training is not a replacement for all face-to-face meetings. Instead, our goal is to help you get more out of your training budget. We want you to reduce the dollars spent on unproductive travel and instead deliver effective training to more people, thereby ensuring travel expenses are worthwhile sales investments.

Manufacturers who have created a BlueVolt University report the following benefits:

Greater reach to distributors
Reduced travel costs
The ability to offer a wider variety of sales and training content, such as marketing and technical bulletins
Improved customer satisfaction and retention
Lowered cost per customer
Enhanced product launches
Improved adoption rate of new products

Manufacturers often live and die by their brand position, product awareness and the success of new product launches. A great training program can not only increase a distributor’s satisfaction and retention, but also drive bottom line results. Distributors will be more confident to sell your product, and the new, in-depth knowledge will decrease the need for basic front-line support.

For more information on how BlueVolt has helped leading manufacturers like Phillips, Broan NuTone, Lutron and more, please visit our Manufacturers page.

New Product Launch: Feat or Flop?

renee.seker — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:13:38 +0000

When my husband and I went to get our marriage license, he was feeling a bit punchy and the first thing he, rather loudly, announced was, “Marriage license?! I thought we were here for a fishing license.”

After that mortifying announcement, he asked the other couples in line, “Well, if half of us will get divorced, how about we flip a quarter and if it doesn’t go our way, we save ourselves the heartache and skip the wedding?”

He’s a funny guy, it’s one of the reasons I married him, but I was not laughing at the time!

What does this have to do with product launches? According to Accupoll research, somewhere between 80 and 95 percent of new product introductions fail. If 80-95% of new product launches aren’t successful, and you are charged with launching 10 new products per year, should you just not bother with 8 of them?

The obvious problem with this scenario is which 8 do you choose to ignore? Unless you’re the gambling sort, you can’t follow my husband’s suggestion and just toss a coin, which means you’ve got no choice but to launch them all, even knowing that 8 are likely to fail.

When I first started at BlueVolt more than 10 years ago, I learned that one of the biggest problems with new product launches is that manufacturers’ reps didn’t always know the launches were happening in the first place! For instance, I was driving with a rep in Southern California, and he realized, while we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, that he was already 15 days into a 30-day new product promotion and he still hadn’t told any of his customers. Now, if you have ever been on a freeway in LA, you know that simply trying to drive to your next appointment is tough. Trying to call customers to kick-off a product launch while driving is downright scary! Luckily for us, he eventually agreed to let me drive while he made his calls.

If my ride-along experience is any indicator, it’s no wonder that so many new product launches fail!

When new products are developed, it’s often under a cloak of hush-hush and tight security. By the time the marketing department finally receives any details (let alone the ones often needed to successfully support a launch), the product can be just days from hitting the market. Promotional and training materials are quickly created and shipped. Distributors receive a pallet of promotional items to pass along to their branches. The folks at the counter give the materials to contractors, who might just toss the literature to the side, without a second glance, until he or she stumbles back upon it while looking for a misplaced invoice.

Clearly, this is not an effective system, but what’s the alternative? You can use the Harvard Business Review article: 40 Ways to Crash a Product Launch as a preventive checklist. Or how about this:

Originally inspired by a BlueVolt customer, this idea uses online training to support product launches:

The new product is developed and is ready for market. Prepare supporting literature.
Create an online course specifically designed to support the launch. The course should be simple, for example: a PDF of the promotional literature accompanied by a quick online quiz; or a more in-depth format, featuring multiple products ending perhaps with a video demonstration (fact: videos actually improve retention!).
Assign the online course to all rep agents with a 30-day deadline. If the course is not completed, trigger an e-mail reminder. After completing the course, reps can download a product PDF to forward on to customers, print locally for handouts or keep for future reference.
Once reps have completed the course, promote the course to the rest of your sales channel – from distributors’ sales personnel to the end user (when appropriate)
Attach a product spiff (we recommend $BlueBucks) to the course as an offline activity. You give sales spiffs to the folks who sell the product after completing the online training.

After BlueVolt helped implement this 5-step program for our customer, they told us the company saved 90% of new product promotion costs by moving product training online.

While we can’t guarantee your new product will be a success, we can guarantee you will have a more well-trained sales force, which could be half the battle. Through online training, you can verify knowledge and help ensure poor marketing or communication will not be the reason your new product launch flops.

6 Tips to a Successful Webcast: Audience Engagement

renee.seker — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:06:26 +0000

Webcasts are an extremely effective tool for building customer relations, launching products and strengthening your brand, and knowing how to properly host one makes them even more valuable.

There are many benefits to webcasts, they let your message reach an unlimited audience without ever needing to leave your office. But actually hosting a webcast, and ensuring it’s successful, can seem daunting or downright scary.

At BlueVolt, we have all the tools necessary for you to easily create and host a great webcast. But even the most sophisticated webcast doesn’t guarantee an engaged audience.

Here are 6 tips for keeping your audience engaged:

Pick a topic that matters to your audience. And then show them why it’s important and how your knowledge can help them. Your audience is attending because they want to learn from you, so teach them.
Incorporate non-traditional media. A slide show that is heavy on text will quickly make even the most interested participant start checking their email or Facebook account or doing anything other than watching your webcast. Use a host, add in photos, and take advantage of split screen video demonstrations in order to bring in a new dimension to your presentation.
Keep your eye on the clock. Although travel time is eliminated, attendees are still taking time out of their workday, so avoid making the webcast go on for too long. Try to keep the webcast to 30 minutes, definitely no more than one hour. You can break your content into multiple sessions by creating a series if needed.
Encourage participation. People lose interest every four minutes so you have to re-engage them frequently. BlueVolt’s platform allows users to host a live Q&A session in the webcast – but don’t stop there! Add in a live poll, a quiz or establish a designated hashtag on Twitter at the beginning of the presentation so participants can discuss amongst themselves during and after the webcast. And mention relevant tweets during the webcast, when appropriate. If you keep your webcast from feeling like a lecture, your audience will be more engaged.
Follow-up with your audience. Mom was right: thank you notes are important. After your webcast, follow-up with attendees thanking them for participating and be sure to include highlights from your presentation. If your webcast included a survey or discussion, include results to continue the conversation.
Archive the webcast. Even though your webcast is online, last-minute things come up and not everyone can attend. By having your webcast archived and “on-demand” it is accessible at any time for future use.

Click here for more info about BlueVolt’s webcast services and here for even more tips.

Great time at Learning Solutions Conference

renee.seker — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:47:59 +0000

We had a great time at the Learning Solutions Conference & Expo in Orlando! Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth, and we’re very proud to be featured on the blog onehundredfortywords, along with our sister company OpenSesame. If you missed the show, watch the Learning Solutions Conference & Expo highlights video.

For those of you who haven’t seen us at a trade show yet, the voodoo doll is part of our “Don’t Hate Your LMS” booth theme. Why voodoo? At BlueVolt, we believe that your LMS should not make you angry because it is difficult to use. How unnecessary!

We want HR managers and chief learning officers to stop wasting valuable time on an LMS platform that simply doesn’t make sense, and trade it in for a system with all the same capabilities (or more) but is easy to use. BlueVolt’s LMS was designed for those who don’t typically use a computer every day, so anyone can easily navigate and complete training online – from any place, at any time.

Our sister company, OpenSesame, is an elearning marketplace where you can buy and sell courses that work with any LMS. Check them out at www.opensesame.com.

We’re getting excited to head back to Orlando in May for the ASTD 2011 International Conference & Expo. Will you be there? If so, what are you hoping to gain from this conference?

What is up with Reps as Trainers?

renee.seker — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:56:45 +0000

Manufacturer sales representatives are a key part of the extended sales channel in distribution

An effective manufacturer’s rep bridges the gap between distributors (who tend to focus on maximizing customer share, using a good margin mix and selling service) and suppliers (who want both a good product mix and a healthy return on research and development).

Add in the fact that most manufacturers’ reps have more than one supplier on their line card, serve many different branches and are essentially the face of the brands they sell to the distributor personnel, and you can see how reps have many balls in the air at once!

Most reps receive their product training from suppliers, then take that information to train their customers, who educate the end users. Just like the childhood game of telephone, this creates several possible opportunities for muddled communication, at best, and total communication breakdown, at worst.

If you were to look at the tools provided to reps during training, it is clear that most of the resources are in fact marketing materials disguised as training. In my experience, the average person does not often respond well when they feel they are simply the target of a marketing campaign. Distributors often give cut-sheets to contractors, who subsequently throw them into the back of their van, never giving them a second thought.

On the other hand, contractors really value training. They recognize that they don’t know everything about every product, and are always looking for ways to do things better, faster and safer in order to be more competitive in the marketplace.

But how does online training fit in to all of this?

Online training has a significant impact on how suppliers can support their reps, directly resulting in improved and profitable growth.

Here are examples of how manufacturers are using online training:

Creating video trailers to generate interest and demand before the rep arrives
Releasing product information courses to ensure reps can spend their time focusing on how to sell the product rather than the applications of it or its features and benefits
Grouping courses by rep to allow each rep to see which courses their customers have been taking (this also makes for easy tracking to verify customers’ individual knowledge)
Providing catalog training. While this may seem basic, conducting catalog training online means you can include a PDF of the current catalog rather than relying on one that is out of date
Taking domestic training international, with course versions translated into other languages

And distributors benefit from increased product knowledge and a boost in confidence thanks to online training. Here are some direct quotes from distributors about BlueVolt’s online training:

“The more we know about any item makes it easier to sell.”
“If I feel confident in the product’s features and benefits, it is much easier to sell.”
“I’m much more aware of new products and that helps me to consider products for add-on sales”
“Any exposure to a product helps a salesperson’s comfort factor when they are asked about a particular product or see an opportunity to make a sale.”
“It not only introduces me to new products it teaches me how to sell it.”
“It is a good tool to start my day, motivate me and have something new to tell my customer about”
“Greater product knowledge equals increased sales”

Manufacturers’ representatives have a lot responsibilities and training can often be pushed to the side or forgotten completely. Putting training online makes reps more effective, efficient and lets them focus on what is most important during their visits to distributors.

The bottom line is, great training increases sales for distributors.

For more information on how BlueVolt’s approach to online training benefits distributors like OneSource and Colonial Electric and distributor associations such as IMARK Group and Sphere1, visit http://www.BlueVolt.com/who-we-help/distributors.

Photo credit: Helico on Flickr

Social Media Tools to Enable Learning

renee.seker — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In these difficult economic times, we’re all stretched thin, trying to do more with less and leverage resources creatively. I would like to share my magic solution for boosting learning, performance and happiness in your work place. Here it is: Shred your social media policy.

I thought that this was old news, a settled matter, etc. Surely, businesses realize that social media are more than just tools for selling their products and communicating with customers! Until I participated in #lrnchat the other day and read this tweet from Allison Michels:

I was shocked. Like all of you, Allison and her colleagues want to get better at their jobs, be more productive and have fun at work. But her organization is standing in the way of their success by preventing them from creating Personal Learning Networks.

A PLN is a self-generated group of other people who share information and ideas, provide mentorship and advice and work together to solve problems. I am a big believer in PLNs because they are fundamentally empowering. An individual with a strong PLN will participate in regular discussions about their issues of interest, and as a result will find resources easily, keep up in their field naturally and enjoy the learning process organically.

Here’s how I access my personal learning network.

Twitter.Through Twitter, I find out about great articles and blog posts, new technology tools, suggestions for solving common problems and get specific answers to specific questions when I ask them. In the beginning, I used keyword searches and the feeds of big industry organizations to find people who had interesting and useful things to share. Remember: Twitter is the internet’s karma. You will get only as good as you give, by contributing to the conversation and interacting with your peers.

Yammer. Yammer is the workplace social network: It looks, acts and feels like Facebook, but is built within a separate domain for the workplace, so that your friends are your coworkers, and you don’t risk your boss seeing embarrassing photos. It enables media sharing, conversation and collaborative discussion with an easy-to-use interface. My organization uses it, and we love it for improving communication and building a flatter workplace.

Social Bookmarking Sites. A month ago, this would just have said “Delicious”, but I’ll be more generic, just in case it does get killed, sold or otherwise destroyed in the near future. Social bookmarking sites like Pinboard and Diigo are invaluable for sharing your resource libraries with your peers and finding your peers’ recommended resources.

LinkedIn. LinkedIn is valuable for more than just seeking new career opportunities: The forums, groups and discussions are thought-provoking centers for new ideas and professional discussion.

Blogs/RSS Readers. I use Google Reader to keep up with my fellow bloggers in the learning and technology fields, and I share the most valuable resources I find through Twitter and other resources.

Facebook. I use Facebook for general learning. I follow news organizations and professional associations to learn about current events and develop personal networks that help me make better sense of the world.

What do all of these tools have in common? Social discussion of problems, whether horizontally across different businesses or industries or vertically within one organization. Open discussion facilitated by technology enables people to ask for help, find answers quickly and develop relationships that support ongoing and future success. Use social media tools to build a PLN and you will find that the world’s vast shared resources are instantly curated through the voices of your peers and colleagues.

An added bonus to the social media-driven PLN is the ability to stretch across geographical and time zone boundaries, further enriching learners’ perspectives and professional development opportunities.

In summary, as if I haven’t been clear enough so far, every organization should open the doors! Enable employees to build a PLN and encourage them to use it. Encourage them to make sharing a habit.

Other Great Resources
For other great resources on social learning, read:

5 reasons for using Twitter (and 1 why you shouldn't use it), The Learning Quest Blog. Mattias Kareld, 2010.
Social Media for Working & Learning Blog, Jane Hart.
Social Media Basics, ASTD Learning Circuits. Jane Bozarth, 2010.
Social Media in Training, BozarthZone Blog. Jane Bozarth, 2009.

Make the Most of Co-op Cash

renee.seker — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:10:15 +0000

How Online Training Can Improve Distributors’ Sales while Satisfying Manufacturers

Co-op dollars are frequently used in the distribution, other wholesale and even retail industries. Manufacturers set aside funds for their distributors – the people responsible for selling their products to the end user – to use in various marketing activities.

Co-op dollars are often used for popular marketing activities such as promotional items (free hats, t-shirts and other tchotchkes), traditional advertising (print ads, radio spots, television commercials), direct mail, and company newsletters and events (tradeshows, open houses, counter days). “Frequent flyer” style rewards programs, where distributor employees are rewarded based on a points system, have also become more popular in the past several years.

What’s missing from this list of the usual marketing suspects? Training!

Many manufacturers and distributors understand the potential training holds for increasing sales. But some are still unaware of the power of training in general, and even more unaware of the benefits of conducting training online.

Most marketers don’t automatically think of online training when it comes to co-op dollars. But several BlueVolt customers in the electrical and other trade industries (such as HVACR, Plumbing and PVF, etc.) have tapped into the power of online training as a marketing tool.

Unlike some of the other marketing tactics I just mentioned – like traditional advertising and giving away promotional items at the branch level – online training is much easier to administer, track and prove ROI.

But how is online training a marketing function worthy of a manufacturer’s co-op dollars?

Let’s think about this…

The typical distributor sales employee sells upwards of 20,000+ SKUs. Most of the time, that employee has rarely seen many of these products out of the box, much less how they work in the field. Now if manufacturers could provide a way to educate that employee on how their products work, highlighting key features and benefits and applications, that employee is more prepared to sell the product to the end user.

It may not be a traditional marketing tactic, but training can definitely improve the sale of the product to the end user.

Here’s another factoid about distributor sales: Most distributor personnel report they recommend products to customers between 2-5+ times per day. Consider that if just 500 well-trained sales people make an average 3.5 recommendations per day and 50% of those recommendations convert to a $25 sale of your product, the impact to your daily sales could be $21,875 a day!

Here’s a chart to further illustrate the potential sales opportunities linked to training:

Product recommended 3.5x/day resulting in sales 50% of the time
Product Price	Daily sales with 500 trained distributor employees	Daily sales with 1000 trained distributor employees	Daily sales with 3000 trained distributor employees
$25	$21,875	$65,625	$131,250
$50	$43,750	$131,250	$262,500
$75	$65,625	$196,875	$393,750

So why wouldn’t manufacturers want their distributors to use co-op dollars to fund training efforts? In fact, many leading trade industry manufacturers such as Eaton, Broan NuTone, Werner Ladder and Klein Tools are using BlueVolt to deploy training throughout their channel. As these and other manufacturers have learned, when their distributors are educated on their products, they sell more. It’s a win-win.

And unlike many of the other marketing tactics typically funded by co-op dollars, these online training programs are not only easier to administer and track but provide a much greater ROI.

(For a great read on the state of co-op dollars and how they’re typically used in the electrical industry, check out this article from Electrical Wholesaling).

Another benefit to using co-op dollars for online training? Manufacturers and distributors can actually verify the knowledge of the individual who completed the training. Unlike other more traditional co-op efforts that your marketing team may or may not be able to track, with online training, it’s all about tracking. As head of sales and marketing for a manufacturer, you can receive a very insightful peek into how your distributor sales personnel are responding to a particular product training course and automatically reward those who get it – and, perhaps even more importantly, find out what’s going on with those who don’t get it.

Finally, there’s always the question – what if I build it and they don’t come? Well BlueVolt has a fail-proof rewards program that is proven to increase online learning course enrollments up to ten times! So, as a manufacturer, you don’t have to worry about spending time and effort on producing high-quality product training that falls on deaf ears. Offer $BlueBucks on your course and your distributor employees are ten times more likely to complete a course than without the incentives. Employees can earn $BlueBucks for successfully completing courses and then use those rewards at online and brick-and-mortar retailers.

Again, a simple tactic that produces a huge return for our customers. But I’ve said enough about online training… check out what some of our manufacturer and distributor customers have to say about the subject Co-op dollars only work when you use them, so use them well.

Photo credit: Creative Tools on Flickr

Share your Courses and Extend your Reach

renee.seker — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Many extended enterprise businesses have training needs that reach beyond their employees. They would also like to train their sales channel, their supply chain, and their contactors or installers on their products too, but getting their courses to all those distributed people is a challenge. One of BlueVolt’s latest features, called Course Sharing, allows customers to share their courses with other BlueVolt customers.

And inversely, customers can see and request courses from others on the LMS. This is an easy way to add content to a university or training center. And we know that fresh content is a key reason users will return and keep using their online training resource.

One of our customers, a tool manufacturer, has shared several of their courses. Ten other BlueVolt customers, including associations/buying groups and distributors, have added those courses to their universities. Now hundreds more people have access to learning about this tool manufacturer’s products. Want to see how this works? Watch this quick demo.

Photo credit: Valerie Everett on Flickr

Top 5 Ways to Share the Wealth

renee.seker — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:57:45 +0000

Don’t have the time/resources/knowledge to do it all? Our advice… Share the Wealth! We understand that creating and managing a training program can be a daunting and overwhelming project. But, did you know that you have resources all around you that can contribute to this process. Here are our Top 5 Ways to Share the Wealth:

1) Find Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Who’s the one person that always has the answers to your questions? You know? Like Joe in the warehouse that knows everything there is to know about operating the wire cutting machine. He’s your guy! Seek out those people; they have a ton of knowledge. They can act as subject matter experts when developing training. They can help write FAQ’s, fill in information (see #2), and create training materials and resources.

2) Create Templates: Next time you go to create a course, is it possible to create a generic template instead? Once the template is created, it can act as a resource for others to fill in. If you can develop a template (for example, a product knowledge course template), then have others throughout the company help populate the template (like the product managers). Try asking Steve to write a course about his new LED Light, and he’ll have no clue where to start. But if you give him a template of 5 questions to fill in, it will be much easier to pick his brain. For example:

Describe the product
What is the use case for the product?
How to sell against the competition?
When should you up sell to this product?
What are the frequently asked questions about this product?

The idea here is: create it once, use it over and over again! Templates can be in email, Word, PowerPoint, whatever works to gather information. Templates are the easiest way to provide structure to extracting information from your SMEs.

3) Draw On Newbies: After developing new training materials, during the testing and QA process, use newbies (new employees, new customers) to help review the training. They can offer multiple benefits to the review process.

They are less likely to have a full plate of responsibilities (more free time), they will offer a fresh set of eyes on the material (they don’t have the background knowledge that you or your SME have), and they will be able to able to call out topics that are confusing for someone going through the training for the first time. They’ll learn knowledge while helping QA your courses.

4) Assign Administrators: Do you have folks throughout your organization that can help administer your LMS, such as department heads, managers, or product people? If so, make sure that they have administration access to the appropriate parts of the system. That way, they can run reports for themselves; enroll students in classes, and much more. You can do this in the BlueVolt LMS by assigning administrators limited access at the university, course, or group level. This will give those administrators more ownership of the training program, while reducing your administrative overhead.

5) Reward Feedback: No matter how hard you try, you will always miss something… a typo, a wrong answer, or an incorrect image. Encourage your learners to find mistakes and provide feedback on your training. Then, when they do, make sure to thank them (it can be as simple as a nice email or a $5 coffee gift card). It’s a win-win, you have extra eyes watching for mistakes and your students will feel pride in improving the quality of your training program.

Welcome to the BlueVolt Blog

renee.seker — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Does the world need another blog? Maybe. But only if it is smart and useful, or at least entertaining. We’ve had so many people tell us we should start a blog (seriously) because we have learned so much and others could benefit from what is in our heads.

So today we introduce the BlueVolt Blog. No fancy name. No big launch party – although we’re pretty stoked around here that we finally got this off the ground. Just some common sense and peeks into the world of elearning, learning management systems and content creation.

We’ll share what we know, what we learn from others, tips and tricks that make us and our customers successful and some other random thoughts we think you’ll appreciate. And we hope you’ll share your insights too by commenting on our posts, correcting us if we’re wrong and pointing out new directions and thoughts.

Please Comment, Follow us on Twitter, and check back often.

Photo credit: NASA on Flickr