In this section:

How it works...

OLLI trains your staff in communications principles and techniques that promote clarity, creativity, and the weaving of individual contributions together into community knowledge. These include: a carefully honed approach to facilitation from the standpoint of "guide on the side," rather than the more common "sage on the stage"; insight and practice with threaded discussions as a venue for giving and receiving feedback, building consensus, and exploring new dimensions of an issue; questioning techniques for generating both insight and participation, while valuing diverse styles; the use of schedule features of online software to build team accountability; and ways to craft text messages that humanize the online community while promoting excellent results.

Unlike many training firms, we are able to introduce these online interactive skills to your entire management, professional and technical team as a group, thanks to the design features of our online learning software, and our ability to "scale up" training programs while carefully ensuring quality. This breakthrough approach has been made possible by the availability of new groupware technologies. It eliminates the "offsite syndrome" in which a minority of employees are exposed to new skills and attitudes in an offsite training, but cannot sustain either learning or motivation back in the office environment.

OLLI is an acknowledged leader in bringing training into context, allowing teams and organizations to learn in coordination with their peers and with reference to the real challenges of their business. In setting expectations about using the tools -- from basic "netiquette" to levels of participation -- they don't need to "get onto the same page" later. Common assumptions and expectations are established from the beginning, in conjunction with the development of needed skills. People become familiar with the experience of learning as a team, building confidence while gaining interactive skills for the networked environment.

To adapt these capabilities for the needs of your organization, OLLI develops customized software applications, training design, and technical assistance packages in collaboration with senior management, consultants or a human resource team.