Improving Nuclear Training with Engaging Presentations
- 1. Course Overview: Improving Nuclear Training with Engaging Presentations By eMedia Innovations -Copyright 2012 – All Rights Reserved Content Designed and developed by an INPO certified Technical Instructor, this 90 minute course was designed to help instructors in the nuclear power industry create and deliver better training presentations while saving time and effort. Input from several Instructional Technologists at multiple nuclear power plants indicated that the most requested topic for continuing training from instructors is how to make presentations more engaging and effective. This course was designed to address these requests. The course consists of three lessons: 1. Lesson #1: Unfounded Theories vs. Actual Research One of the goals of training development is to prepare effective training sessions without wasting time and effort. This lesson presents several common training presentation theories and the research or lack of research surrounding them. Instructors completing this lesson will be able to describe the various learning theories supported by research and how these can be applied to save effort and money and provide more effective training. 2. Lesson #2: Applying Research Principles Building on the information provided in the first lesson, this lesson provides practical examples of excerpts from training presentations for evaluation by the instructors. Appropriate research principles are applied throughout to evaluate different types of slides from a typical nuclear training presentation and show how each slide should be revised to optimize learning. Instructors completing this lesson will be apple to apply sound training research to improve the effectiveness of training presentations. 3. Lesson #3: Embedding Web Pages & Media Adding illustrative videos, animations, explanatory graphics, or interactive documents into training presentations not only add instructional value, but also make the training more interesting and engaging. Creating such inserts can be extremely time consuming, and often requires expensive specialized software. By using existing materials readily available on the web, and embedding them inside PowerPoint, training presentations can be greatly improved and considerable development time can be saved. Instructors completing this lesson will be able to embed multiple media types into training presentations and will be able to describe why embedding is more effective. Benefits Although this course was specifically designed for nuclear power instructors, it also has been proven to benefit anyone in the nuclear power industry who develops or presents PowerPoint presentations, like subject matter experts or vendors. By taking this course, personnel can produce more effective and engaging training presentations using techniques that have been proven to increase learning. Also, they will stop wasting time including material that has been proven to decrease learning.
- 2. Each lesson is designed to adhere to the SAT (Systematic Approach to Training) Process utilized by the nuclear industry. The ADDIE process endorsed by INPO was used to develop this material. Lessons include: learning objectives, WIIFM (What’s In It For Me), Operating Experience, Human Performance Tools, and a quiz with printable results/score. Additionally, job aids have been included, where appropriate, to allow instructors easy reference to key information after completion of training. Nuclear power plants that adopt this course can expect: An increase in scores from student critiques of PowerPoint training presentations An increase in effectiveness of PowerPoint training presentations A reduction in the time required for instructors to build PowerPoint training presentations Collaborative Discussion Forums Each lesson includes an online collaborative discussion forum, allowing instructors and subject-matter experts from throughout the nuclear power industry to exchange training ideas, best practices, PowerPoint files, comments on the lesson, suggestions for future lessons/revisions, etc. Each lesson slide shows the number of comments that have been added to that specific slide, and provides a direct link to those comments. Additionally, all personnel can quickly access the frequently asked questions (FAQs) and responses. Formats To ensure this course can be effectively utilized by as many people as possible, in as many situations as possible, all course material is provided in a variety of formats. All of these formats were carefully selected to eliminate the need to install any additional software. PowerPoint Slideshow Version (2003 PPS file) Most nuclear power personnel will probably choose to utilize PowerPoint slideshow version. As many nuclear power stations have not yet upgraded to PowerPoint 2007 or 2010, this version is available in PowerPoint 2003. To maximize learning, all on-screen visuals are time-synchronized with audio narration. To simplify use, all audio, video, and flash media files are automatically loaded and played from the internet – all users need to do is launch the PowerPoint slideshow. PowerPoint PPT Versions (2003 and 2007 PPT files) Online Flash Version (Articulate Presenter) Video Versions Two video versions of the course lessons are also available. The .MP4 video file can be downloaded and copied to virtually any smart phone/mobile device (e.g. iPod Touch, iPad, etc.) for mobile training/review, while the .FLV version is suitable for playback on any modern PC . PDF Versions Two Adobe Acrobat PDF versions of the lessons are available: one for printing or quick review from any PC, the other for downloading to a smart phone/mobile device as a reference e-book.
- 3. About the Authors Amber Watson Amber is a senior technical instructor with over 5 years’ experience providing Technical Training at multiple nuclear power stations. Her profile is available at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/amber-watson/7/7a6/912. Jack Jensen Jack is an instructional design consultant with over 20 years’ experience designing and managing training solutions for various government and corporate clients. His profile is available at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jackjensensa. Pricing Pricing is subscription based, with a single price of $3,000 allowing all personnel at a single nuclear power site to access to all course and support materials for an entire year. Assuming an average of 60 instructors per site, this equates to only $50 per instructor for an entire year of support. However, this subscription price is for all personnel at a specific site. If 100 other on-site PowerPoint users also take advantage of the course, for no additional charge, the per-user price would be only $18.75 per year. Course materials can be accessed on-line, or downloaded and accessed off-line. Each site has the option for a single sign-on for all personnel, or individual accounts for each user. For More Information Contact Jack Jensen at 210-325-5504 or jjensen@eMediaInnovations.com. Or, visit NukePowerLearning at http://www.nukepowerlearning.com/tng.