The Mindtools L&D Podcast

What’s the evidence telling us about effective questions for learning? How can we apply it?  In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma is joined by fellow Custom team members Ross Garner, Sam and Alison to discuss key takeaways from Patti Shanks’ book, Write better multiple-choice questions to assess learning.   We discussed:   The role of questions in learning   What makes an effective question  How to overcome challenges in writing them.  We talked about how we used open questions as part of a project with Scottish Enterprise. Find out more about the project here: Award-winning blended learning for Scottish Enterprise case study.  In WILTW, Ross excitedly told us about the five attempts (and injuries!) that Bond’s stuntman took to nail the crocodile shot in Live and Let Die. You can watch them on Twitter: twitter.com/michaelwarbur17   Gemma’s discovery about the Summer Time Act came from an episode of the BBC’s podcast You’re Dead to Me called ‘The History of Timekeeping’.  Further details came from the BBC article, “The Builder who changed how the world keeps time”.  For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.    Connect with our speakers    If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:  Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT   Sam Brown - @SbrownMT   Alison Perrott - @allyperrott  Gemma Towersey – @gemmatowersey 

Will avatar-based training replace virtual classrooms? Would it make any difference if L&D didn’t even exist? In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross D, Owen and Nahdia tackle these questions from listeners Ian Younger (@ian5611) and Craig Taylor (@CraigTaylor74). In WILTW, Owen mentioned the article ‘Good’ posture doesn’t prevent back pain, and ‘bad’ posture doesn’t cause it by Peter O’Sullivan, Leon Straker and Nic Saraceni. The episode of the Ezra Klein Show which featured a discussion of ‘Larping your job’ was The Office is Dying. It’s Time to Rethink How We Work. For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.   Connect with our speakers   If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter: Ross Dickie - @RossDickieMT Owen Ferguson - @OwenFerguson Nahdia Khan -@NahdiaKhan  

Discover the invaluable hacks that could revolutionize your career in learning and development. The hosts discuss the importance of diverse experiences and effective problem definition. Listen to insights on navigating L&D challenges and evolving trends in content consumption. Uncover the history of animation with the fascinating story of the first feature film, and delve into the mystery of lost Civil War gold. Plus, explore habit formation with the innovative Not Boring Habits app.

Explore the impact of digitalization on learning culture in organizations, learn about top-performing organizations' characteristics, and practical advice from the Annual L&D Benchmark Report. Discover recommended experiences like the Abba Voyage concert and insightful articles on temperature perception differences.

Have learners engaged? Learnt what we set out for them to learn? More importantly, have they bought that learning into how they perform? Is this having the wider impact we wanted? All the questions. So, how do we, as learning professionals, measure the impact our learning experiences have? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma discusses with teammates Claire, Sean and Tracey, about measuring impact. We discuss: what measuring impact means tools and methods we use some of the challenges involved. During our chat, Sean mentioned that more than 95% of CLOs know it’s important to measure impact, but less than 5% know how. The statistic came from this blog netcomlearning.com/blogs/55/10-ways-to-measure-the-impact-of-learning-for-the-ultimate-roi.html In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Gemma spoke about the first woman who summited Mont Blanc, Marie Paradis. You can find out more about her here chamonixallyear.com/lady-legends-women-in-mountaineering For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:  Gemma Towersey - @GemmaTowersey Claire Gibson - @Claireisdigital Sean Brown - @Seanbrownhrtech Tracey McDonald – @Traceymcdonald

Rather than defaulting to pre-pandemic habits, or continuing with pandemic arrangements, we now have an ideal opportunity to rethink how and where we work. This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Nahdia and Gemma talk to Gem Dale, author of How to work remotely, about working well, in and out of the office. We discuss: why we need to be strategic and purposeful in how and where we work challenges for organisations and managers in balancing organisational and individual needs skills for effective remote working. In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Nahdia told us why some houses in Amsterdam are so narrow amsterdamhangout.com/why-do-houses-in-amsterdam-are-so-narrow/ Gemma mentioned an episode from the language learning podcast series Coffee Break German coffeebreaklanguages.com/2022/07/cbg-mag-2-06-labskaus For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  To find out more about Gem, see hrgemblog.com/ and her book koganpage.com/product/how-to-work-remotely-9781398606111 Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:  Gemma Towersey - @GemmaTowersey Nahdia Khan - @NahdiaKhan Gem Dale – @HR_Gem

People are more satisfied by explanations that contain neuroscientific jargon and images. Why? Because dopamine fires up the hippocampus, and that’s a fact! (Warning: It’s not.)  This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Owen and Ross G are separating fact from fiction as we discuss neuroscience with Amy Brann, author of Make Your Brain Work.  We discuss:  The meaning of neuroscience (as a discipline vs in popular media)  The relevance of neuroscience for HR and L&D  Practical insights from neuroscience.  During the discussion, Owen referenced two papers:  Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477. Online at: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755/  Farah, M. J., & Hook, C. J. (2013). The seductive allure of “seductive allure”. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(1), 88-90. Online at: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26172255/   In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Owen discussed Wordle (nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html), Heardle (.spotify.com/heardle/) and Framed (framed.wtf/)   Ross discussed the Freakonomics series ‘What Can Blockchain Do for You?’: freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/what-can-blockchain-do-for-you/   For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.   To find out more about Amy, see amybrann.com/ and synapticpotential.com/   Connect with our speakers   If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:   Ross G - @RossGarnerMT   Owen Ferguson - @OwenFerguson  Amy Brann – @Amy_Brann  

Who knows why anyone does anything? Well… people who craft psychometrics claim that they can answer this question. And this week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Owen and Ross G are going to find out how! We’re joined by Lucie Ilbury, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Head of Client Enablement at Sova Assessment. We discuss: What psychometric assessments are for The characteristics of an effective assessment How psychometric assessments can be linked to an organization’s competency framework. In ‘What I Learnt This Week’, Owen shared that decisive people are no more accurate than doubters: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/01/its-decided-decisive-people-no-more-accurate-than-self-doubters Then he cast some doubt of his own on that headline, with the actual paper: Zajkowski, W., Bielecki, M., & Marszał-Wiśniewska, M. (2022). Are you confident enough to act? Individual differences in action control are associated with post-decisional metacognitive bias. PLoS one, 17(6), e0268501. Available at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0268501 Lucie recommended the The Psychology Podcast, featuring Whitney Goodman on ‘toxic positivity’: https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/whitney-goodman-toxic-positivity/ For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.    To find out more about Sova and gain access to thought leadership, complementary training courses and a network of experts in assessment, join the community here: https://community.sovaassessment.com/ For Sova e-books, see: https://sovaassessment.com/reports-guides/assessment-fundamentals-ebook Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:  Ross G - @RossGarnerMT Owen Ferguson - @OwenFerguson Lucie Ilbury – LinkedIn

The podcast explores the benefits of storytelling in learning, examples of effective storytelling at work, and opportunities with new technologies. They also discuss repairing electronics, the history of measuring ship speed in knots, and recommend a book for designing better multiple-choice questions.

Our mental wellbeing can depend in part, on our role at work. How do stress levels of colleagues, managers and directors compare, for instance? What is it about those roles that influences stress levels? In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Emotion at Work’s Phil Willcox shares the findings of his latest research report “Managers feel the pinch”. We discuss: The research findings on roles and stress What “levers” influence poor mental wellbeing What we can do to stay healthy You can find out more about Emotion at Work at emotionatwork.co.uk To check out Phil's report, see: emotionatwork.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=09d92d7e2e59615c9c15131b0&id=11b6f33586  For more on our competition, where you could win a six month Mind Tools for Business subscription, see: https://mindtoolsbusiness.com/competition In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross’ nugget about declining eye health in children came from The Economist’s ‘Short-sightedness has become an epidemic’: economist.com/leaders/2022/06/09/short-sightedness-has-become-an-epidemic Phil backed up his research with findings from a paper titled, ‘We have emotions but can’t show them!: Authoritarian Leadership, Emotional Suppression Climate, and Team Performance’:  eprints.lse.ac.uk/104058/1/We_have_emotions_but_can_t_show_them.pdf Owen’s learning came from the UK Government’s research and analysis into online choice architecture called, ‘Evidence review of Online Choice Architecture and consumer and competition harm.’ : gov.uk/government/publications/online-choice-architecture-how-digital-design-can-harm-competition-and-consumers/evidence-review-of-online-choice-architecture-and-consumer-and-competition-harm You can find Ross' blog on choice architecture at: mindtoolsbusiness.com/resources/blog/tips-and-expertise/how-nudge-theory-can-lead-to-better-workplace-learning  Gemma’s magpie facts were from the RSPB’s ‘Magpie life cycle’ webpage: rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/magpie/life-cycle/  For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:  Ross G - @RossGarnerMT Gemma T - @GemmaTowersey Owen Ferguson - @OwenFerguson Phil Willcox - @PhilWillcox