Employee Learning and Development

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Setting a Bookmark in your e-Learning

How often do you find your training time interrupted? Or perhaps you need to break your training time into small time increments to fit your busy schedule? Using the Exit button to close the SkillSoft course player enables you to "bookmark" your place in the course. Just think of it the same way you would when reading a book, you place a bookmark where you left off. The bookmark feature in your SkillSoft courses gives you the same benefit. When you leave a course using the Exit button, you place a bookmark. Then you are given the option to return to where you left off.

Maximizing Search-and-Learn: Keyword Searches

If you've ever searched for content using SkillPort's Search-and-Learn, you know that search results are only as good as the keyword used. The most common type of data search is the Keyword Search, which is how Search-and-Learn locates content via SkillPort. To ensure you get the most out of every search conducted via SkillPort, some helpful information about how searches work and a few "tricks of the trade" are provided below:

The SkillPort Search-and-Learn engine ranks all search results not only by the number of occurrences of the search term, but also by their location. Results found in titles and headings are given greater weight than occurrences in the body of the text. Not only are search results listed in relevant order, but sections and topics within each course, book, or simulation are also relevancy ranked, presenting the top four for single-click access right to the content. You may specify words or phrases alone or grouped in Boolean combinations (phrases are words enclosed in quotation marks). The search engine is not case sensitive.

The following are examples of valid search expressions:

• Advanced project management - A word proximity search. Content with the words closest together are ranked higher.
• "Advanced project management" - An exact phrase search. Content must match the phrase exactly to be part of the search results.
• Advanced and (project management) - A Boolean expression. Boolean operators are AND, OR, NOT.
• "Advanced project management" near technology - A proximity expression. Content containing the exact phrase with word nearby are ranked higher.
• Project plan* - A word truncation expression. The * is a wildcard character. You can use it at the end of a word, but not at the start or in the middle.

Searching for specific Learning Events

For the best results, search for the learning event's ID number (e.g. a course number). If you are searching for a learning event by its title, place the title in quotes to conduct an exact phrase search. This is particularly important if the title contains a Boolean operator (i.e., AND, OR, NOT). Example: "Budgeting and Financial Management: Planning Your Budget"

Save Time While Building Skills - Testing Out

Did you know that you can test out of topics in your SkillSoft courses, and focus only on the subjects you don't know? To do this, the next time you start a new course, instead of going right into the first lesson, take a minute or two and click on the "Course Test" link at the top right of the course menu page. This will start a test that covers all of the learning objectives contained throughout the course. When you have completed the course test, the course menu page will show you which topics you scored highly in, and which you will want to access the content for an review. Doing this before launching into the course lessons allows you to focus your time on only those areas of the course that are new information or unfamiliar to you, and can reduce the overall amount of time you spend in a single course.

Online Job Aids

Job aids are performance support tools that complement learning and assist in the use of knowledge and skills in the workplace. Job aids vary significantly in format and content, depending on their purpose. Generally speaking, job aids can be informational, procedural, coaching guides, or decision-making assistances.

They are particularly useful for activities or procedures that aren't easy or practical to memorize, and for refreshing knowledge previously learned but infrequently used. Job aids are course "takeaways" that can be used as they are or edited and customized to meet specific learner or customer needs.

Academic Credit

Are you looking for ways to complement your degree program or provide continuing education credit toward professional licenses? Check out the academic partnership programs with Drexel University and University of Phoenix (for credit courses), and our partnership with George Mason University (CEU and non-credit programs).

Launching Courses Directly from My Report

On a daily basis, employees address numerous work related tasks and must also find time to fit in online training. Whether to increase their skill set or simply to acquire a new chunk of knowledge they require in order to perform their job, this training time needs to be maximized as much as possible. So imagine you're a learner that wishes to go back in to a course you were taking last week or even just yesterday and with everything going on you just cannot remember the title of the course or where you left off. What can you do?

In SkillPort, each learner has his or her own Learning Record Report. This report is easily accessed by going to the My Reports Shortcut. Each course or simulation that has been started will appear in this report along with various usage statistics. Along with each course is the Last Accessed Date for the course. Once the learner identified the course they were taking, they can simply click on the course title in the report and it will immediately take the learner to the course summary page where they can launch the course.

Completion Certificates

Certificates of completion provide a great way to motivate your learners by giving them a sense of accomplishment. If enabled on your site, your learners have the ability to print a certificate when they complete a learning event that is tracked by SkillPort, such as a course or simulation.

To print a completion certificate:

• Have the learner go to their "My Report" section of the home page and click the Create Certificate link next to the name of the completed learning event.
• Instruct them to follow the onscreen instructions for printing the certificate.