As my long term clients know, I have a pragmatic approach to learning. I chose the name "Sector Learning Solutions" for my business because I wanted to emphasize our focus on learning as a continual process, instead of a means to an end. At Sector, we are governed by the belief that the training we provide is not over at the end of class. If we truly want to provide an effective solution to your learning needs (and yes, we truly do), an ongoing series of events is necessary to retain new skills so that the ultimate outcome of producing 
positive change in your life through efficiency, productivity and job satisfaction can be achieved.
To this end, I am continually working to improve the classroom experience, and generate new ideas to increase overall reinforcement and retention of learning. Graduates of Sector's Innovation Workshop understand that one must continually seek improvement to avoid becoming complacent. The classic business novel Good To Great (Jim Collins, 2001) sums up this principle in the first chapter by stating: "good is the enemy of great."
Our most basic approach to helping clients retain knowledge has been to follow the guidelines of our Learning Guarantee, which includes thirty days of free email support from our instructors. This "email us and we will help you" approach still stands, but is rarely used by clients.
So, about 18 months ago, I got together with my friends at WCS Webconferencing Solutions to devise a way to effectively host refresher classes online. Although I firmly believe that face-to-face interaction is the most effective method of communication I understand that facilitating refresher classes onsite at Sector is not the best option for the business or our clients. Running free monthly refresher sessions online requires no travel time and no classroom space. Furthermore the ability to interact in real time and compliment explanations with graphics, diagrams and live video makes the process an effective method to communicate concepts.
Therefore I am pleased to unveil our new online learning-retention program: Ask-an-Instructor, which will be available to all of our clients in two parts:
- Unlimited online access to the Ask-an-Instructor forum is included in the price of every course. This is a new tool we have to facilitate communication between learners and instructors, and to capture answers to client-generated questions. As a user you can search for answers from a database of information, or if you can't find what you seek, submit a question, which will be answered in no more than two-business-days. Anything we teach is up for discussion.
- We will hold monthly online instructor-led Ask-an-Instructor sessions that use all the features of an online eClass, including screen sharing, polling, and sharing web pages to:
- answer some of the more interesting and frequently asked questions from the Ask-an-Instructor Forum
- show some new tips or tricks
- address any questions from the participants
Our first session will take place on: June 25, 2010 from 9:30 am-10:30 am. The sessions are free, but please click here to register online so we can track registration numbers.
Can't make it to the webinar? We will be recording each session and posting the video in the Ask-an-Instructor forum for future reference.
What are your comments, ideas, or suggestions? Please comment here or email gerry@sectorlearning.com.