“Instant feedback is one of the big items that students want,” says teacher Jared Campbell of Melbourne, Florida. Campbell, one of our SuperStar presenters for the big LERN annual conference in New Orleans, Dec. 2-5, will speak on Motivating Digital Natives. He will demonstrate how to use text messaging in class to involve your participants.

You will be as excited as we are about the big annual LERN conference when you see the brochure. Register by Aug. 1 and save $100. The print version of the brochure is being mailed in early July. Contact us at info@lern.org if you don’t receive it by the end of July. But you can

Youth programming and summer camps are a strong part of lifelong learning programming, according to an exclusive new survey by LERN. A whopping 854 LERN members responded to the survey asking for your focus of programming. The results were tabulated by these institutional settings: -Parks and Recreation -Community education in Public Schools -Continuing education in

Saying that “cheating doesn’t exist anymore” in learning, Senior LERN Leaders meeting in Tucson are proposing LERN create 21st-century competencies and attributes for your program’s students and customers. The demise of cheating is one example of new learning skills for the new economy, with collaborative learning being shown to be more productive than individualized study

“Social media has flipped out many marketers in our field,” Suzanne Kart told participants at LERN’s annual Executive Leadership Institute in Tucson recently. “People are stressed out about marketing today,” she says. She advises lifelong learning programs to focus on the top eMarketing priorities that generate registrations, rather than trying to have a presence on

Staffing issues are becoming multi-dimensional now for lifelong learning programs, according to executives at our events this spring and LERN on-site visits to lifelong learning organizations.  In fact, there will be a whole track of sessions at the big LERN Annual Conference in New Orleans Dec. 2-5, on the subject of staffing. Here are some of

It’s almost the end of the fiscal year and many LERN members are looking to LERN to help maximize the bang for the buck with the dollars remaining in their budgets. Here are some ways you can get the best value for your year-end budget dollars: Register NOW for a LERN Institute or the Annual

Over 100 professionals in Parks and Recreation responded to our exclusive LERN survey on job titles.  Here’s the chart with the results. The most common job title is “Supervisor,” with over 30 percent of LERN members in Recreation having that job title. The second most common title is “Coordinator,” with around 25 percent of LERN

Over 500 continuing educators responded to our exclusive LERN survey on job titles for continuing educators in higher education.  Here’s the chart with the results. Clearly “Director” or “Manager” is the leading job title, with 50 percent of all continuing educators reporting that as their job title. The second most popular job title is “Coordinator,”

Over 100 community educators responded to our exclusive LERN survey on job titles for community educators in public schools.  Here’s the chart with the results. The most common job title is “Coordinator,” held by 30 percent of community educators.  The second most common job title is “Director of Community Education,” held by almost 30 percent

The purpose of point of sale materials is to give the Contract Training sales representative something to guide an introductory in-person meeting and something to send out or leave behind to familiarize clients and potential clients with the breadth of services of the Contract Training unit. In this article, I’ll refer to these materials as

 Dealing with difficult situations with leaders is one of the top issues for Gen Y, according to participant questions in the hot new UGotClass Certificate in Leadership Development. Here’s four good questions Gen Yers asked, and the answers. Q1. What would be a good course of action when one asks the leader a question and

Thank you!  Over 1,000 LERN members responded to our membership survey in just two days this spring.  Thanks for the great information that will help us serve you better. One of the questions we asked was your Job Title.  We have the results, by constituency. Parks and Recreation professionals. To see job titles of LERN

This month’s home page is devoted to the top stories coming out of LERN’s annual Executive Leadership Institute, held this spring in Tucson. Top leaders in the field of lifelong learning cited as the top trends for executives topics falling into four areas.  New in 2015 is the arrival of “Learning” as a chief area

This year’s Executive Leadership Institute became the first LERN event where participants were given and encouraged to chew gum. While slightly tongue in cheek, new research shows that chewing gum improves both learning and test scores, according to Julie Coates, one of North America’s foremost authorities on learning. More importantly, the premiere of gum at

By Dr. Layne J. Harpine, LERN Vice President If you do all your own work and never delegate, you eventually hit a production ceiling.  You can only work so many hours in a day and there are only so many tasks you can accomplish in the hours you work. Without delegation, you limit your productivity and

Certificates continue to be a huge growth area.  And you have more upward potential in creating and offering more certificates. From two recent LERN events, here’s our small but first survey results on how many certificates continuing education programs are offering right now. Half of programs said they offer between one and 10 certificates.  Only

Only half of LERN member programs have their website mobile optimized, eMarketing expert Suzanne Kart told lifelong learning executives meeting this spring in Tucson. Over the next year or so, a high priority for your lifelong learning program should be to make your website mobile friendly. Kart says that Google has now changed its search

The Beginning Rider motorcycle class, as instructor Scott Collins told us, would be led by him, but also by us, the students. In groups of four we studied the course reading materials – either individually or as a group, it was up to us.  Then we discussed the most important elements of the unit assigned

To make your objectives, only one person should be accountable for each goal or objective, recommends operations and staffing authority Greg Marsello. While many people may be involved in marketing or programming, group accountability in lifelong learning is not effective. If everyone is accountable, then no one is accountable. Instead objectives get met when a

LERN’s book, “How To Teach Adults,” now in its Fourth Edition, has now been translated into Russian with over 400 books distributed in Russia in the last few months. In all, the book has sold over 100,000 copies, making it the top book ever on the subject of teaching adults. The book is the text

You asked for it! Your top certificates are now offered for optional graduate and undergraduate credit. The UGotClass news just keeps getting better.  Last year our Top Partners asked for more of our courses to be offered for optional graduate and undergraduate credit. Here’s why: 1. Many businesses will pay for training for employees if

“You can only stay on track for three months,” operations and finance authority Greg Marsello told lifelong learning executives. From consulting with the most successful programs all over North America, he recommends lifelong learning executives hold quarterly reviews for their staff, and for themselves. Those quarterly objectives come from your annual objectives, Marsello notes. “Take

Sept. 8 – Oct. 30, 2015

Dr. Layne Harpine of Emerald Isle, North Carolina, has been named the next LERN CEO.  The announcement was made to Senior LERN Leaders meeting in Tucson this spring for the annual LERN planning retreat. Harpine will become CEO in 2019, as part of a LERN Management Team Transition plan for the next 10 years. “On

Here are LERN presenter Fred Bayley’s top new Customer Service tips from LERN’s Program Management Institute and CPP training in Savannah this spring. When improving customer service focus on the few major items that will make a significant difference. 20 percent of your customer service impacts 80 percent of our customers. Focus on the significant

Discover easily adaptable operational ideas to implement in your organization and understand why improving staff productivity by centralizing operations is critical to your success by attending LERN’s newest webinar “Operations matters: Best practices for increasing customer satisfaction.” You will take away practical, specific techniques to engage staff and simplify processes and learn the best practices

Fully one-third of participants attending LERN’s Marketing Institute are in the process of doing a web page redesign, reports LERN’s Associate Vice President for Marketing Suzanne Kart. Kart also noted that the new Google search update focusing more on mobile search – combined with the fact that more people will access the Internet from a

“Poor decisions are being made by too many administrators regarding the performance of a class, event, or contract,” says Greg Marsello, LERN Senior Vice President for Organizational Development. Marsello travels around Canada and the United States each week and sees program financial data.  He reinforced the unfortunate “news” at the Operations and Staffing Institute in

Lifelong learning and continuing education students are becoming more demanding, says Holly Klotz, presenting at LERN’s Operating and Staffing Institute this spring. Klotz provided these three top news and tips from the Operations Institute: Organizations are realizing how important having effective software (particularly for online registration) is to their survival/success. Students are becoming more demanding

Cut the dogs, said participants in LERN’s Contract Training Institute.  You can’t be everything to everybody, and that’s ok.  Then, after telling potential clients about your other customized programs, refer any clients seeking your dogs to the competition. You should “stomp the competition” or get out of that particular line of business if you can’t

From this year’s Advanced Programming Institute in Savannah, here are the top new issues and trends for programming professionals. Consolidation of data. Data sources do not always talk with each other, so getting reports valuable to programming professionals is often difficult. The new issue was raised by Kevin Carter of the College of Extended Studies

“Automation can be salvation for the busy eMarketer,” Susan Hurrell of Modern Earth in Winnipeg told her participants in LERN’s eMarketing Institute this spring.  “Using tools like Hootsuite to pre-plan and preschedule your messaging for multiple channels means you don’t have to do the same things twice, or three times, or more,”  she says. From

For all the fans of Julia King Tamang, all is going well at the start of her three year Retreat. Her Sealing Ceremony was a wonderful day and LERN consultant Kassia Dellabough attended. Julia is working hard to learn how to sleep sitting up in a box. Each morning she is up at 3:30 a.m.

Blended courses are now emerging in the field of lifelong learning. Some half of participants at the LERN Advanced Programming Institute reported offering some blended courses, and a third of participants at the LERN Executive Leadership Institute in Tucson (photo from conference hotel resort) also said they are now offering some blended or hybrid courses.

The last three months have seen enormous changes as the Industrial Age collapses before our eyes.  And the landslide of Gen Y and the 21st Century is now on a roll. One event in the last three months could have even bigger implications for the United States than the Affordable Health Care Act, say “Nine

Any non-peak month when you are not registering for your in-person classes is a great month to email customers about UGotClass. Here are two great groups to target: Those who have taken an individual course that is part of a certificate. Encourage them to enroll in the entire certificate. Those who have taken a UGotClass

Focus on the basics for success: 1 .Print. Put our top certificates and courses in your next print brochure, with course descriptions. 2. Website. List all our courses and certificates on your website. 3. Update. Check for registration links and list new dates and registration info each time 4. Email. Email all your customers about

Exciting new courses and certificates premiere this fall. We continue to build the Curriculum to keep your community’s workers’ learning current with “Skills for the 21st Century.” Just a few of the new courses include Certificate in Accounting and Finance for Non-Financial Managers, Project Management Project Processes, Law for Non-Lawyers, and Change Management Skills for

Well that didn’t last long. The October all-time monthly record, that is. February registrations set a new all-time monthly record, topping October and Up a whopping 24 percent over February last year. It is a good sign for the rest of 2015. Some 122 Partners participated in generating the record setting registrations. Partners ranged from

The North Carolina Association of CPAs is bringing in LERN consultants Layne Harpine and William A. Draves, CAE, for a program review this spring. It’s just the latest association to engage LERN in consulting to boost association education income and profitability. To find out how your association can get an ROI of 10:1, just email

A few of the leading associations are close to “pulling the trigger” and jumping into the next hot new growth area for association education: asynchronous teacher led online courses with a start and end date. LERN has talked to four big associations over the past year about developing and offering their first online courses, and

Responsive design is the hot new trend in eTools and online courses, Dan Belhassen of Winnipeg told a packed audience for LERN’s new Certified Programmer Online for associations this spring. Responsive design involves HTML5 software that will automatically scale to the size of the screen that the user is using, whether it be a cell

Comprehensive faculty development is one of the three big ‘what’s next’ items for faculty development, Michael Lewis told the Third Annual Faculty Development Conference participants this spring. Lewis is in a relatively unique and insightful position in faculty development in higher education.  As Associate Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Development at Saint Louis University

“Text feedback will change your class,”  Jared Campbell of Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida, told the Third Annual Faculty Development Conference participants. Text feedback – – texting the instructor during the class – – is one of the big ways to engage Gen Y and Gen Z in face-to-face classes, he noted. The

The “I can’t do it” response of students challenged by their studies can be overcome, say Dionne Felix and Odessa Jordan of Calhoun College in Huntsville, Alabama.  The belief operates out of a fear, they note.  “The issue is not a particular learning style, but being differently-abled,” says Felix. They created their own definition of

Replace those static photos and written bio’s for your instructors with more lively videos, says John Alexander, an instructional designer with  the College of Extended Studies at San Diego State University. He says when instructors introduce themselves to their online (or even face-to-face) students with a video, it makes the course more engaging. Among other

To implement The Flipped Classroom, Kimberly Helms and Laura Walker recommend: 1.Integrate The Flipped Classroom gradually into your course. 2. Demonstrate the flexibility of The Flipped Classroom to your students. 3. Incorporate educational technology in The Flipped Classroom, the more engaging the online features, the better success you will have. 4. Allocate points and motivate

The LERN Institutes program is heading to Savannah April 16-19 – and here’s a sneak preview of just some of what you will take away when you attend the Marketing Institute. The past decade has brought you many more ways to market your lifelong learning programs. Whether you’re looking at inbound marketing, mobile marketing, search

There are at least six ways your lifelong learning program is leading your institution. Create a win-win situation by letting your institutional leaders know what cutting edge strategies your lifelong learning program is doing that can and will positively impact the greater institution. Even if your lifelong learning program is small. Even if your program

eTools are merging with old tools in the in-person classroom to create a powerful one-two punch for engagement and student involvement in learning. The common element in both is that they are ‘active tools,’ enhancing not only student interaction but often student involvement in the creation of information. Student participation in the creation of information

Here’s a sneak preview of five of the critical income-generating new things participants in the Advanced Programming Institute will learn in the big annual LERN Institutes program April 16-19, 2015, in Savannah. The Institutes are being held in the historic district, home to over one hundred blocks of centuries-old original homes, like the one in

Generational issues in our field took another turn this month as lifelong learning programs are now reporting a new issue:  when students in a class are older than the teacher. Gen Y instructors are now teaching Boomers and Gen X, adults as many as 25 years older than the instructor and with much more life

We warned you about drones in the Nine Shift closing speech at the big LERN annual conference. Now with the news about a drone landing on the White House lawn, near misses with airplanes, and flying over football games, drones are in the news as a big problem. But if you think that’s bad, wait

LERN’s lead researcher Julie Coates has announced the solution to America’s #1 Problem, premiering a new eBook at Pratt Institute in New York City this month. America’s #1 problem today is a skilled worker shortage. By “skilled,” we mean college educated knowledge workers. Georgetown University’s Anthony Carnevale, our nation’s leading training and workforce expert, says

After working intensively with Pratt Institute, the leading design school in the United States, LERN consultants have helped the continuing education unit add $1 million to the bottom line in just one year. The huge ROI results to greater profitability show the value of LERN consulting in the field. LERN consulting can help any lifelong

A new LERN Magazine is now out. It’s probably the best summary of the latest trends, news and advanced practical how-to tips in the field of lifelong learning. You can get a free copy, even if you get another newsletter from LERN. It’s a great visual piece to give to your boss as well. Here’s