ATD, a non-profit organization that promotes training and development in the workplace, outlines the three primary learning theories that instructional designers need to know to provide effective corporate training.

10/10

This article by the Tech Edvocate discusses seven ways to gamify corporate training. I find this personally important because I often use games to teach my adult learners about some of the most boring topics. (For instance, I'm currently creating training to explain the theory and calculations behind a very complex distribution management software tool. Imagine explaining how a calculator works to provide correct answers to math equations, then multiply that a few times. It's tough.) According to this article, in order to gamify, instructors can specify learning objectives, use reward systems, incorporate social interaction, and challenge learners to make gamified learning successful. 8/10

Cue Thorstein.

It’s a very specific dream, but it sounds like it’s shared by a lot of people.

There’s typically a big gap between “education” and corporate training. Sounds like the deal is more about the latter than the former.

In the Ivory Tower, we hear less about that part of the relationship between Higher Ed. and businesses. Those colleagues of ours who are so against the 100-year push for universities to become more vocational tend to assume that employers are the ones doing the pushing. While it’s quite possible that some managers wish for universities to produce optimised employees, many people on that side of the equation argue that they’re quite able to train employees, as long as they’re able to learn. Now, there’s a whole thing about the “talent pipeline” which might get faculty in a tizzy. But it’s not about moulding learners into employees. Like much of Higher Ed., it’s about identifying (and labeling) people who conform to a certain set of standards. Not less problematic, perhaps, but not so much of a distinction between academia and employability.