Welcome To The Free Training and Development Resource Center

In a fast paced world, continuous learning is essential to success. Individuals need to learn to succeed in life and at work. Companies need to ensure their employees continue to learn, so they can keep up with increased job demands, and so the company can gain or maintain competitive advantage.

This site provides resources, ideas, strategies, etc to help those involved in the training and development profession help meet the learning needs of the organization through the use of training techniques, facilitation, and development activities.

Of course, there's also material here for learners themselves, and corporate personnel (e.g. those in human resources departments to help them maximize training and learning effectiveness.

Below are the newest training and development items added to our library:

• Distinguishing Between Inert Information, Activate

  By na - It is impossible to reason without using some set of facts, data, or experiences as a constituent part of one’s thinking. Finding trustworthy sources of information and refining one’s own experience critically are important goals of critical thinkers. We must be vigilant about the sources of information we use. We must be analytically critical of the use we make of our own experience. Experience may be the best teacher, but biased experience supports bias, distorted experience supports distortion, self-deluded experience supports self-delusion. We, therefore, must not think of our experience as sacred in any way but, instead, as one important dimension of thought that must, like all others, be critically analyzed and assessed. The mind can take in information in three distinctive ways: (1) by internalizing inert information, (2) by forming activated ignorance, and (3) by achieving activated knowledge. ^new (Added: 5-Dec-2011 Hits: 0)

• Using Intellectual Standards to Assess Student Rea

  By na - To assess student reasoning requires that we focus our attention as teachers on two inter-related dimensions of reasoning. The first dimension consists of the elements of reasoning; the second dimension consists of the universal intellectual standards by which we measure student ability to use, in a skillful way, each of those elements of reasoning ^new (Added: 5-Dec-2011 Hits: 0)

• Content Is Thinking, Thinking is Content

  By na - The first and most important insight necessary for the appropriate design of instruction and curriculum is that content is, in the last analysis, nothing more nor less than a mode of thinking. Let me explain. There are many ways to begin to grasp the profound truth that all content is nothing more nor less than a mode of thinking (about something), a way of figuring something out, a way of understanding something through thought. Here are just three ways of beginning to grasp this truth: ^new (Added: 5-Dec-2011 Hits: 0)

• The Role of Questions in Teaching, Thinking and Le

  By na - One of the reasons that instructors tend to overemphasize "coverage" over "engaged thinking" is that they assume that answers can be taught separate from questions. Indeed, so buried are questions in established instruction that the fact that all assertions — all statements that this or that is so — are implicit answers to questions is virtually never recognized. For example, the statement that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade is an answer to the question "At what temperature centigrade does water boil?" Hence every declarative statement in the textbook is an answer to a question. Hence, every textbook could be rewritten in the interrogative mode by translating every statement into a question. To my knowledge this has never been done. That it has not is testimony to the privileged status of answers over questions in instruction and the misunderstanding of teachers about the significance of questions in the learning process. Instruction at all levels now keeps most questions buried in a torrent of obscured "answers." ^new (Added: 5-Dec-2011 Hits: 0)

• An Overview of How to Design Instruction Using Cri

  By na - Instructional design involves two deeply interrelated parts: structures and tactics. In this article we focus on structures. Structures involve the "what" of the course: What am I going to teach? What content am I going to teach? What questions or problems will be central to the course? What concepts will be fundamental? What amount of information will students need to access? What point of view or frame of reference do they need to learn to reason within? What is my concept of the course? What overall plan shall I adopt? What requirements shall I set up? What grading requirements? What performance profiles? etc... Tactics involve the "how": How am I going to teach so as to make the structures work? How am I going to get the students to be actively involved? How am I going to get them to develop insights, understandings, knowledge, and ability that are essential? How am I going to get them to learn to "reason" their way to the answers to questions in the field? ^new (Added: 5-Dec-2011 Hits: 0)

• THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANDRAGOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ORIENTATIONS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR ADULT LEARNING

  By BRIAN L. DELAHAY - Current literature suggests that the relationship between andragogy and pedagogy is based on a continuum. This study found that the relationship of andragogical and pedagogical orientations, measured by the Student’s Orientation Questionnaire, is more correctly represented as being orthogonal or at right angles to each other. Such an orthogonal relationship reflects the complexities involved in adult learning. The paper discusses implications for both the learning process and for future research. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 113)

• Multicultural training: Did we forget about our racial minority students?

  By Derek Seward - Multicultural training courses are a primary preparation method employed by counselor education programs to prepare counselors for work with diverse populations (Abreu, Chung, Atkinson, 2000). However, the effectiveness of multicultural training in preparing racial minority students has been questioned. In particular, it has been mentioned that multicultural training courses fail to address the educational needs of racial minority students and have limited effectiveness in the development of cultural competence in racial minority students (Pope-Davis, Breaux, & Liu, 1997; Negy, 1999). However, there is scant empirical research to support these critiques of counseling multicultural training courses. This paper presents a rationale for empirical investigation of multicultural training courses to (1) identify racial minority student cultural learning needs and (2) determine the extent to which multicultural training courses are meeting the training needs of racial minority students. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 158)

• Diversity Training

  By Bettina Brown - Work force demographics, which reveal increased diversity among the working population, are triggering a huge growth in diversity training programs. Although these programs typically are designed to improve working relationships, many of them are accompanied by a backlash from those who do not agree with the focus of the programs or the messages they deliver. Some people believe that diversity training should focus only on those categories protected by law%u2014race, gender, and disability. Others argue for a more inclusive definition encompassing age, educational level, family structure, job function, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and values. However, it is the messages these programs deliver that spark the greatest controversy. This publication considers myths that cause some people to fear or resist diversity training as well as myths overstating its outcomes and effectiveness. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 109)

• The Rise and Fall of Diversity Training.

  By Marilyn Easter - The effectiveness of diversity training in eliminating racial stereotypes in the workplace and modifying employees' negative attitudes toward diversity was examined in a study conducted at a private nonprofit college in the San Francisco Bay area. An analysis of the students' performance on the CCAI using descriptive statistics and repeated measure analysis of variance established that there were no significant differences between the pretest and posttest scores of the two groups. Thus, diversity training did not appear to have altered the attitudes or behaviors of students who took the MCD course. Several possible explanations for this finding were offered, including the fact that the students were already fairly sophisticated with respect to the subscales measured by the CCAI. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 75)

• Diversity Training. Myths and Realities No. 13.

  By Bettina Brown - Certain myths cause some people to fear or resist diversity training; other myths overstate its outcomes and effectiveness. Many workers--white males in particular--fear that in the rush for a more diverse workplace, they will lose out. Their fears can be addressed by delivering training in a way that convinces employees that the organization's diversity programs do not seek to displace white males but to prepare workers and managers to work in a heterogeneous environment. Diversity is not synonymous with affirmative action. Successful processes to establish focus and content of training include needs assessment, organization's demonstrated commitment to diversity issues, and organizational communication about the goals and objectives of its specific diversity program. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 99)

• Employee Diversity Training Doesn't Work - TIME

  By LISA TAKEUCHI CULLEN - A groundbreaking new study by three sociologists shows that diversity training has little to no effect on the racial and gender mix of a company's top ranks. Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of the University of California, Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota sifted through decades of federal employment statistics provided by companies. Their analysis found no real change in the number of women and minority managers after companies began diversity training. That's right--none. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 104)

• How to Evaluate Diversity Training in the Workforce

  By Amanda Dyer - Diversity training gives a business the ability to understand the diversity of its employees and customers. Diversity training consists of skills and awareness training. Evaluating diversity training has four stages which involves the reaction of the participants and the positive effects on the organization. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 97)

• Free Diversity Training Activities

  By na - Diversity training provides a means by which you can assist employees in their development of cultural awareness and sensitivity to others in a multicultural work environment. Diversity training, including the activity ideas that follow, not only helps ensure that the company is Equal Employment Opportunity compliant, but also can foster an atmosphere of shared ownership of diversity issues and build a company culture of inclusion where ethnocentric, sexist and racist language does not exist. ^new (Added: 27-Nov-2011 Hits: 166)