Richard J. Wagner

Vark preferred learning styles and online education

It has become evident that students have diverse preferred learning styles and effective instructors must design and deliver courses to meet the needs of those students. This study investigates the four physiological learning styles of visual, aural, read‐write and kinesthetic as they apply to online education. Findings suggest that online students are more likely to have stronger visual and read‐write learning styles. Further, read‐write learners and students that were strong across all four learning styles were likely to evaluate course effectiveness lower than other students while aural/readwrite learners and students that were not strong on any learning style were more likely to evaluate course effectiveness higher than other students.

Outdoor‐based Experiential Training: Improving Transfer of Training Using Virtual Reality

Outdoor‐based experiential training has become a popular technique for training managers by directly involving them in the training process. Outdoor‐based programmes offer training in a fresh and motivating setting, tend to eliminate many of the role conflicts from the day‐to‐day work setting, and emphasize many of the interpersonal skills so important in today′s work setting. Unfortunately, the value of these programmes is often questioned by many trainers and managers. Do the skills learned in the outdoors actually transfer to the work setting, or do they simply work only in the outdoors? Presents a new addition to the outdoor training programme called virtual reality training. While not for all organizations, virtual reality training recreates the participant′s own work environment in a developmental setting, and helps to increase the transfer of training to the work setting. Presents actual examples of virtual reality programmes so the readers can evaluate the effectiveness of this type of training fo...

Can the value of training be measured? A simplified approach to evaluating training.

Measuring the value of any training intervention has long baffled trainers and managers alike. Complex models for calculating the return on investment offer little help in attempting to measure the results of these programs. Unfortunately, while the difficulty in measuring these programs has not lessened, the need to justify training costs in the health care field has increased dramatically. In this article, the authors offer a perspective of how 1 hospital dealt with this complex issue and offer a guide for a simpler approach to measuring the value of training programs that can be used by trainers and managers without resorting to complicated formulas.