There is a lot to learn in the Cognos suite.
Fortunately, there are a lot of resources to help you too. IBM and Market Street
both provide online and classroom based training, but today I wanted to share
with you a few free resources that are available to you as well.

Call me old school, but I like to start with
the manual. You can access the User guide for most products through the help
menu. The information center is also available online for 10.1.1 and 10.2.

If you have a more technical question, you
may want to look on DeveloperWorks. There are lots of great technical documents
posted here. For community support, find a Cognos group on LinkedIn. There are
quite a few different ones out there, the largest being IBM Cognos BI
Professionals. You can also search Cognoise.

Believe it or not, there are hundreds of
Cognos videos on YouTube, just search Cognos.

There are so many resources available;
sometimes you just need to know where to start!

As 2012 comes to a close, it is a good
opportunity to reflect on your accomplishments in the past year. What are you
particularly proud of? What could you have done better? It is so easy to be
consumed by our daily tasks that a year can fly by before we even know it! I’m
proud to have created 7 new courses for Market Street Solutions myLearning. We
are building a great curriculum for Cognos users.  We have also brought our users together
through our User Group meetings. It is great to be part of a community that
faces the same challenges in the workplace as you and is willing to share
solutions to overcome those challenges. If you are looking for a community of
Cognos users, consider attending one of our meetings or joining our group on
LinkedIn. If you are looking to connect with other trainers, attend a meeting
of your local ASTD chapter or join the national group.

The end of one thing always brings the
beginning of another. What are your goals for 2013? I know I’ve got 6 more
courses waiting for me in 2013. But don’t forget to invest in yourself. Did you
know through MOOC (massive open online courses) you can take a college course
at Harvard or MIT for FREE? There are also many courses available through
ITunesU. The proliferation of mobile devices is making learning more open to
everyone. Take advantage of it. You are worth the investment!

E-learning has been around for years, but as
technology changes so does the training world. Mlearning is the new buzzword,
or mobile learning. So much of our lives are lived connected now. With the
explosion of tablets and smartphones, it seems obvious that mlearning is the
next step in the evolution of elearning. Perhaps we are just taking our queue
from the Business Analytics world where users are demanding access to content
from their mobile devices.

Training should be a part of your
organization’s larger mobile strategy. Think about your users and how they will
be accessing content. Do they need on demand knowledge while in the field or
will they be taking courses while they have a few extra minutes at the airport?
As our attention spans get shorter, chunking becomes increasingly more
important in mobile learning. Another consideration is to make your existing
elearning platform mobile-friendly. Through video hosting with Vimeo, the Market
Street myLearning site is able to scale the videos to your device eliminating
the need for multiple version of the same file and making me a very happy
developer. Getting started with mlearning isn’t hard, but you have to start
somewhere because mlearning is here to stay!

You may have noticed a trend in presentations
recently, they are going visual. A single image on the screen can be used to
express a big idea. Steve Jobs was excellent at this. He could capture an
audience or tell a story all with a single image. I’m no Steve Jobs. But I do have
some friends that create excellent presentations. An ASTD colleague, Nikolas
Laufer-Edel, works with presenters for TEDx in Vancouver and teaches
presentation design. There is a great video on his blog for “Five Steps to
Great Presentations” (http://blog.nik.ca/post/13275085637/ill-take-you-through-the-fives-steps-of-preparing).
If you do get a chance to check it out, notice his use of visuals. Yes, there
still is some text on the screen, even main talking points. It’s a good goal
for what mere mortals like you and I could hope to achieve. His presentation is
a great example of using visuals to communicate your ideas and avoiding Death
by PowerPoint! 

What brings learners to your classroom? Are
they new on the job? Are they required to attend training? People attend
training for all sorts of reasons, whether they want to or not! Adult learners
are often self-motivated. Unfortunately, they might be more motivated to check
their email during class than to pay attention, but hey, that is still
motivation. As a trainer, it is your responsibility to foster an environment
where motivation is valued and directed toward the learning event. In his book Creative Training Techniques Handbook,
Bob Pike discusses five ways to squelch motivation:

1.    
Have Little Personal Contact

2.    
Get Participants in a Passive
Mood and Keep Them There

3.    
Assume the Class will Apply What
is Taught

4.    
Be Quick to Criticize

5.    
Make participants Feel Stupid for
Asking Questions in Class

As you can see, trainers can do a lot to
influence motivation. I’m guilty. Number three. Being a software trainer, the
fact that the users will apply what I teach is a given, but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t
tell them how they will benefit from using this software or give them an
example of how they can use a specific functionality to make their jobs easier.
Helping learners make those connections will motivate them to apply what they
learned, when the time is right.

The majority of learning in the workplace
happens outside of the classroom. This can be informal on-the-job learning,
knowledge sharing through social networks or any variety of learning
environments. We invite you to step out of the classroom and join our User
Group Meeting on June 26^th in Nashville to learn from IBM Business
Analytics leaders, Market Street Solutions consultants and your fellow Cognos
users. Through presentations, panels and roundtable discussions we hope to facilitate
your learning and networking. For more information about this learning
opportunity please click here.

I recently had the opportunity to attend the
American Society for Training and Development’s (ASTD) International Conference
and Exposition. It was a wonderful learning opportunity. I have so many action
items to implement, and I am excited about the opportunities. One of the key
take-aways from the Learning Transfer Guaranteed session by Fort Hill was that
the purpose of Learning and Development is to drive business outcomes. If we are not delivering performance
improvement directly linked to the business outcomes, we are probably not
adding value. Read that again. That is a strong statement to make.

As a technical trainer I’d like to think that
link is easier to make. Organizations are implementing systems that are
intended to improve performance or enable a strategic objective. If people are
not using those systems optimally, then the organization is not getting the
full return on their investment.

There is also the people side of the
equation. Change is hard. People don’t always want to learn a new system, but
if the system is delivering value it’s not going anywhere and the people using
it must adapt. Facilitating that change is a key role of a technical trainer.
Technical trainers help people learn systems so they can do their jobs easier
and faster. That is certainly valuable!

Whether you are implementing BI, upgrading,
or maintaining a system but adding new users, you should consider how training
fits into your overall project plan. The goal of training when rolling out any
new technology is to minimize a loss in productivity. Ideally, after the users
have successfully adapted to the new system, you will experience an increase in
productivity.
 

Not training your users could be more costly
if they experience a loss of productivity or worse yet, choose not to use the
new system because they have not been adequately trained. A case study of a BI
implementation revealed that users who were not provided formal training did
not have the time or desire to learn on their own (http://www.information-management.com/news/2238-1.html).
 

If you are in the dark about how to create a
training strategy, it may be a good idea to start by thinking about your
training goals. What do you want your users to learn? What do you want them to
be able to do once they complete the training?

You should also consider the needs of the
user. If they are technically savvy, self-directed training solution might be
the answer. If they need some more hand holding, consider an instructor-led
course.  Other factors will determine the
type of training you may provide, such as number of users and the time you have
available.
 

You should also consider customizing the
training to your organization. This can make training more effective and
memorable (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/plan-your-end-user-training-strategy-before-software-roll-out/6045557).

After all of the work you’ve done to implement a
new solution, training be the last thing on your mind, but for the success of
your project, it is a milestone worth marking.