February 18th Luncheon - University of Phoenix Main Campus

Converting Face-to-Face,

Classroom Courses for Virtual Delivery

Esther Groves, Sr. Consultant and HR Director 

Description:

While executives are counting the money they will save (pro) on travel and materials for leadership courses, some facilitators who prefer to look their participants in the eye (con), are vigorously shaking their heads and saying, “no way!” 

Aside from the obvious money saving benefits, there are some very good reasons for taking training into the Webisphere:

1. Flexible scheduling – being virtual means you can schedule classes for durations that enhance the content rather than cram everything into an 8-hour day which leaves people who are not used to sitting for long stretches, mentally and physically exhausted.
2. Real life practice – multiple, shorter sessions allow participants to go back to work and experience real life issues and practice the new skills they are learning between class sessions and then bring their insights back to the next session to share with the group.
3. Cool tools – many supervisors manage their globally disbursed employees in a virtual environment anyway, so learning new leadership skills in a virtual classroom setting makes total sense.  And of course, attending a virtual class provides the opportunity to experience new technology, techniques and tools that these supervisors can use with their teams.

More info...

Register Here (link to come)

HIGHLIGHTS FROM:

Membership Mixer - January 21st!

Our first event of the year went amazingly well, in spite of the inclement weather.

We had over 90 people registered and those who braved the storm enjoyed food and games that engaged new relationships that will surely help us grow in our service delivery throughout the years to come.

We want to thank everyone who came. Check out the video clips on our YouTube channel.

Program Drawings: ·         D&B Card - Amber Stepp ·         Movie Ticket – Karen Thomas ·         Conference Attendance – Patrick Patterson	The Winners Were...	Communities of Practice: ·         CPLP Flash Cards – Pat Patterson ·         Movie Ticket – Amber Stepp ·         Starbucks card – Mary Scannell
Volunteer List: ·         Starbucks card – Sheri Baker ·         CPLP CD – Megan Debransky	Networking Game: ·         D&B Card – Shanna Frazen ·         3 D&B Cards – Megan Debransky (Top Winner)	Final Drawing: ·         Flip Mino – Crystal Runge

We've got some new additions to the website, so please engage!

What are they? The VOS Blog and VOS Wiki pages.

Our goal is to stay on top of the trending in training and development in order to give you, our members, the straight talk and opportunities to explore what these can do for you in the workplace learning environment you are creating within your company and/or business atmosphere.

Let us know of any training and development workshops that can benefit Valley professionals so we can post them on our calendar of events. Sent the notices to webmaster@vos.astd.org and please join our ASTD-VOS community created from our 2009 Web 2.0 Social Learning Conference and post them there as well. We look foward to a fantastic 2010!

Please take some time, check them out and participate if you would. With the Web 2.0 components and strategies being all the talk about town now (and a growing trend for training and development), we felt it only appropriate to engage them here as well. The permissions should be set for you to be able to participate, but let us know if you have any difficulties. 

Btw... if you have some expertise with SharePoint and would like to volunteer for the Web/Tech Committee, please let us know. Contact the webmaster@vos.astd.org