Innovatia Training Blog

My name is Brent Belding and I am a 4^th year Business student at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. I am currently working towards a major in Marketing and Human Resources, and am working as a Product Coordinator at Innovatia as part of the co-op program.

When asked to do a blog for the Training department, I thought it would be good to write about how learners my age prefer to receive their education.  Students like me are the future face of business and will help shape how Innovatia, as a learning provider, will cater to our needs.

There are different ways in which students my age today like to learn:

Online Learning: This type of learning has become more and more popular over the years. There are a number of reasons why this method of learning is preferred:

1. They can attend a course anytime, anywhere. This is great for students that work or travel as they can take the course whenever and wherever they can.
2. The courses are student- centered focused. All students learn differently whether it be visually or through hands-on. The student- centered learning offers a chance for all students to learn in their own way.
3. The course material is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means that students can read and re-read lectures, discussions, explanations and comments at their leisure. Frequently, verbal material in the classroom passes students by due to a number of distractions, missed classes, weariness or boredom. These distractions are eliminated when students are able to take the course in the setting which they prefer, and on their own time.

These are just a few reasons why students prefer online learning. I expect this area will grow significantly in the years to come as the adoption of technology as a learning resource continues to accelerate.

Along with online training, there are many different learning technologies available that help teach students what they need to know. The growth of Social has become a great way for an individual to learn. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook allow people to share information and to discuss topics at an almost instant rate of communication.  Blogs are also a great source of information. Blogs allow people communicate, communicate opinions, learn and network on a global scale. Blogs will continue to evolve into the future as a key source of information, discussion and learning. Many of my classes at UNB use social networking as a way to engage students in classroom learning.

This brings me to another popular form of learning for my generation: Blended Learning. This is when online resources are blended with face-to-face interaction between students and teachers to create an offline/online hybrid learning environment. In our experience, a student’s ability to retain and achieve better results is tied directly to an environment where a combination of learning software, classroom interaction and hands-on applications are used.

At Innovatia, we have evolved our eLearning product offers to meet the needs of the next generation of employees by providing instructor-led classroom training, virtual classroom training, and self-paced online training programs for a number of subject areas. We also provide blended learning which combines the best of all three styles to give employers and employees a choice when it comes to how they prefer their learning.

Brent Belding
Product Coordinator- Training

Very soon, the IAUG Global Conference will kick off in Vegas. The Innovatia training team is excited to be preparing for the trip and time out of the office. After all, who wouldn’t like a good trip to Vegas?

We’re busy getting ready, making a list and packing our bags! We have a long inventory of regular conference gear and material that is relevant to our customers, but we also have interesting goodies to give away for those who visit our booth. (It’s booth #1111 by the way).

We look forward to catching up with familiar faces and making new friends. This year, our team is made up of myself – Kerry Olinskie, Corey Hector, and Alex Ferguson. Listening to our customers’ feedback is important to us, so please make sure to stop by and speak with one of our knowledgeable staff! We’ll also have some exciting prizes to give away, including a cruise, and more great prizes to be announced soon. Drop off your business card for a chance to enter!

As technical training moves more and more towards the virtual space, these opportunities to connect face-to-face are more important than ever. So come on out and meet Corey, Alex and myself at the IAUG, booth #1111! Find out more about Innovatia’s presence at the event.

Kerry Olinskie
Program Manager – Training Solutions

Well, day 3 at the MTA. The conference is complete, and what a few days it has been!  We had the opportunity to meet many new customers and re-connected with old friends.

Many people have come by to view our new Business Booster demo of self-paced training, and we have received great feedback – not to mention positive input – for our GENBAND, Avaya and Cisco courses.  We were also lucky to have the chance to drop by Mariner Partner’s booth. They have some great IPTV offerings that are generating a lot of buzz.

Many thanks to those who dropped by our booth. We look forward to seeing you next year!

Jo-Anne Mowry
Team Lead - Training Solutions

I’m on my way to New York City for a vacation with my family and have had a few moments to reflect on the past couple of weeks and some of the obstacles that our team of technical experts encountered and solved with persistence and determination.

Our technical support team worked together collaboratively, and with overtime, each of them building on the other’s expertise to work through the issues as they occurred. They ultimately met and solved the challenges and delivered the product successfully for our customer. It is their dedication and obvious passion for their work that allows Innovatia to produce the high quality service for which we have become known.

Our people and the work they do define us and I am proud to be a part of this firm whose 500 employees work to that high standard every day.

Leslie Magee
Product Manager – Training

This is not my normal blog post, but think it has lots of merit. Today, I want to write a short blog to my daughter. As she gets older, I want to show how proud I am of her.

She recently turned 9 years old and wanted to have a dance for her birthday. We rented a hall and invited over 40 children, along with 10 plus parents to help chaperon. I know what everyone with children is thinking – “are you nuts?!”

Now let me explain why.

Our daughter came to use about two months ago and asked if she could have a dance for her birthday. Like any sane adult, our response was a resounding no. She then went on to explain why.

She wanted to have a dance and invite her grade 3 class and the teammates from her Basketball team. She stated that she did not want any gifts – only cards and money. So the next question was “what are you going to do with the money?”

Her response was without hesitation - she would give it to the Saint John Animal Rescue League. This is a little 9-year-old girl that was willing to give up all of her potential presents for the sake of helping animals. (Well, except one – she asked if we would still give her a gift.)

How do you say no to that?

As a result, we had a dance with DJ lights and all, thanks Dave Duffy. Most of the children danced non-stop for 3 hours. I’d bet they slept well that night! At the end of the night, she had raised over $420 that was donated the shelter. The shelter was not only surprised, but also inspired by her gift. They gave her a tour and t-shirt – and I am still not sure how I managed to get her out of there without a new cat or dog in tow.

At the end of the day, every child had a great time, the shelter is a little better off, and my daughter has started to learn one of life’s many great lessons – that it’s much more rewarding to give to those in need, rather than to receive. Everyone won that day, including me … and I can truly say that I’m one proud Dad.

Kerry Olinskie
Program Manager – Training Solutions

Having ownership of delivering many of the OEM training products at Innovatia, I spend a great deal of my time ensuring that I am up to date on what is happening in the industry. This was one of the reasons I was just at Enterprise Connect.

The challenge is the same, I am sure, with any service: how do you know what information to base your decision on? We have all been there – where we have conflicting data and both are from creditable sources.

I hope that at Innovatia, our customers feel that we have stepped outside the box and listened to their issues. We are not giving them something off the shelf.  We are providing a customized service to each client. In other words, we truly listen to our customer, understand the problem they are looking to fix, and provide a viable solution to the issue.

The benefits for Innovatia are that we ensure the customer is happy with the end result and that it meets or exceeds the requirements we outlined. The benefit to our customer is that they are able to provide meaningful training to help their business grow and succeed. It also helps with employee retention and satisfaction, which in turn helps reduce overall business costs. This is very high level, but we all understand the driving factors.

The biggest factor for us all in today’s markets is how do we do more with less?

In the training world we have become very creative to help our customers with this. We have various methods of delivery including:

1. Instructor lead class room training,
2. Virtual Instructor Lead training on Line.
3. CBT or Video with labs
4. Self paced with or without interaction

Depending on the training required the skill set of the students and skill level required there are always options.

Happy Training!

Kerry Olinskie
Program Manager – Training Solutions