How does this book work?

Beyond the Podium is divided into two parts. Part I offers the basics about training and development. In it, we define and position training, focusing on eternal verities, such as the elements of great training no matter the delivery mode, and instructional design, analysis, and evaluation.

Chapter 1: Welcome to training

In this chapter, we describe the reasons for the book, how it works, how we're defining training, and why we think the topic deserves your attention and enthusiasm. Download Chapter 1 now.

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Chapter 2: How do we figure out what to do?

This chapter is about performance analysis. It serves as the underpinnings for the shift from training to performance, where analysis helps professionals figure out what to do and then sell solution systems within the organization.

Chapter 3: What is great training?

Some things don't change all that much, and here we visit the enduring aspects of the work. The examples are modern, including e-learning sites, but the emphases on meaning, purpose, activity, and humanity remain.

Chapter 4: How do we prove our contribution?

We provide a lively tour of the options that range from goal based to goal free evaluations, from Kirkpatrick to Phillips, and from interviews to focus groups to online data gathering.

Part II

This section looks at learning and performance technologies, informal learning, knowledge management and the future.

Chapter 5: What does performance have to do with it?

In this chapter we discuss the halting shift from training to performance. Why? How? Who? Where? Why should a trainer or HR professional attend to this issue? How can we retain a commitment to learning and also enhance performance?

Chapter 6: What are our technology options?

Here we survey the possibilities, applauding the options and admitting to the constraints. We'll look at the upsides and downsides of familiar media, such as audio and video, and introduce videoconferencing, DVD, and wireless technologies.

Chapter 7: What about the Web?

Chapter 7 is nothing but net. Here we look at the implications of the Internet for the things training and development professionals have always wanted to do. Our enthusiasm, however, is tempered by caution. We also review what's necessary to begin to take advantage of e-learning and online performance support.

Chapter 8: How do we use informal learning?

What is informal learning and how can professionals nurture it, not snuff it? We look at the many ways informal learning is currently happening in organizations, and how to play positive roles in the movement.

Chapter 9: How do we use knowledge management?

Here we define knowledge management and encourage a big tent view of training that includes many approaches and tools associated with KM.

Chapter 10: Where to from here?

This chapter presents eight thorny and intriguing topics looming on the horizon:

	E-business and training and development
	The object of all this
	New roles and permeable boundaries
	Taming choices
	International vistas
	The knowledge cocoon
	Career self reliance
	Sorting a pile of this from a pile of that.