And now, the end is near... TZ editor Jon Kennard surveys the year gone by.
So as a year comes to a close we've rounded up the most popular content on site, and it makes for interesting reading. What makes a great coach? came out as our most-read piece of the year, five suggestions for making training more memorable came a close second, with the future of training is not training in third. Our most popular blog post was The Advantages and Disadvantages of eLearning with a very respectable 8000 reads (!), and Wednesday 4 September was our busiest day on site (we're still working out why). Elsewhere, we saw a healthy mix of the usual buzzwords and bugbears, with some new pretenders to the throne too. Coaching was well received (as always), as was leadership, and LMSs and mobile also garnered a fair bit of attention. Big Data changed from abstract concept to buzzword to watchword, and the continuing popularity of infographics showed that they will be an important part of how the TZ community digests info for a while yet.
The Bring Your Own Device philosophy was implemented in businesses everywhere (TrainingZone HQ included) for convenience, ownership and, of course, economic reasons. The knock-on of this SHOULD be that it will kick-start an accelerated development of device-agnostic learning tools and performance support measures. But we'll see.
And then there were MOOCs. When I first heard about them I was so excited, envisioning a utopian education future for my daughter in the 2030s. Then I did some research and looked at a few stats and took a more realistic view. But still, 7% of hundreds of thousands of people round the world can't be wrong. The concept is going to get stronger and more solid. The wider the uptake the quicker the progression towards a better working model. There's a revolution in education and it's happening around us, and the business world needs to get involved and stay involved.
So what will 2014 bring us? Big Data will remain a foreign language to many, and I still think video has some way to go before it's part of the modern language of learning rather than just some advanced regional dialect. One thing is for sure, L&D people don't like to sit still so there are always exciting developments ahead.
See you on the other side.
JANUARY
The future of training is not training
Looking ahead to training in 2013
How to adopt a challenging coaching style as a leader
FEBRUARY
The three dimensions of coaching
MARCH
Five suggestions for making training more memorable
Leading with personality pt1: Extraverts or introverts?
Three steps to more innovative L&D
APRIL
How to improve your performance at work
Experiential training to disturb thinking and shift mindsets
The three attributes of champions
MAY
Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement: Nine leadership thoughts
Great leaders: Can they be made as well as born?
Do we have a leadership issue?
JUNE
Mobile learning: The shortest lived technology fad ever?
There’s an app for that - but what kind?
JULY
The art and science of evaluation
AUGUST
Soft skills for a hard new world
Seven habits of highly aligned learning departments
SEPTEMBER
Top tips for handling difficult people
Depression in the workplace: A guide
Apprenticeships: Dispelling the myths
OCTOBER
Six tools for collaborating remotely
Future leaders: Are you sure you know how to pick them?
Why we need to shout about apprenticeships
NOVEMBER
Failure: A training manager's perspective
What can emotional intelligence do for you?
How do you motivate an apathetic workforce?
DECEMBER
Don’t make innovation your top priority next year
Do your leaders know the importance of saying sorry?
The Seven Habits - revisiting one of the business book classics
