The Baby Boomer And Continuing Education

Increasingly, older students, even those over 50, are choosing to acquire more education. For some, learning has become a matter of great pleasure in the later half of life, while others see it as the time to return to school to earn a degree to facilitate a new career. Baby boomers are known for valuing education and are more likely to pursue it, formally or informally, in post-career years.
The entire body of adult education studies is being referred to as 'lifelong or continuing education'. There are thousands of learners all over the world, who find that going back to college to earn a degree, or continue their business education is an exciting way to spend their time after a career and years of raising kids.
Today, someone retiring at age 65 is likely to live to be 80 or more. Jobs and technology are changing fast, and employees may explore different careers during a lifetime and the ever-growing job segments require a much higher educational background than the current jobs they hold. As a result, older adults are postponing retirement and are turning to college courses as a way to gain the knowledge necessary to maintain their creditability in their currently held positions, or retrain for the new careers they want.
The job market is changing fast and mature workers are returning to school to acquire the tools to cope with it. Workers today realize that they must re-educate or be left behind. Many older workers are enrolling in vocational courses like management training, and computer applications, technical seminars; sales, telecommunications upgrade, and engineering upgrade courses.
Even professionals like doctors, dentists, and nurses are taking courses to stay informed, while teachers, paramedics, and attorneys, are retraining to maintain certification. Many older workers, wanting to begin a second career feel that they need proper credentials to qualify for the type of job they want to do. Most workers in their middle age feel that ongoing and continuing education enhances their opportunities and provides insurance against becoming obsolete. Retraining and continuing education is seen as a positive way to increase job security and achieve promotions, maintain their market value, and prepare for career changes.
Different baby boomers have different reasons for returning to school for continuing education, professional and vocational training, or part time courses. For some, it is a result of a professional interest, ignited by experience in their field of work, which, they feel, will make certain ambitions, like a career change, attainable. Many older adults are just setting out to fulfill their life long goal of getting a college degree that they may have had to temporarily give up as a result of other commitments.
Most universities these days consider continuing education to be a core educational responsibility. They are willing to make their knowledge, expertise and contacts available to enable interested mature workers to update, and deepen the knowledge they have acquired from professional experience, or to complement it. Individual seminars and continuing education programs, increasingly meet this responsibility and universities are also establishing corresponding courses of study.

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Education Versus Training

Many people don't understand the difference between education and training. Education is giving out information and communicating to your trainees. Training is about practice and building skills. Today's younger generation of employees wants to be trained, not educated.
Problem is, if we don't educate them before we train them, it could lead to problems. Think about how you learned to drive. You need knowledge of the laws and then the actual training of getting behind the wheel. Same can be said for learning about the birds and the bees--if the education part isn't done effectively, the training could lead to undesirable results!
Mark Flores, director of ops for Chuck E. Cheese's, uses the macaroni-and-cheese example to demonstrate the difference. We've all made mac & cheese plenty of times in our lives, but if we don't follow the instructions exactly, we might get macaroni soup, crunchy macaroni, or something else other than what we intended. So how do we deliver education and training to ensure consistency?
Manuals. Boooooooooring! We do need documentation, but make it fun! Include tons of photos and minimal text so it's more of a comic strip look. People are more likely to remember what they see versus what they read, so retention of information is better. Additionally, it's easier to translate into other languages.
Videos. Better than reading for most employees, but they need to be short segments (3--5 minutes maximum) with tons of visual image changes. Our employees today are used to watching CNN with talking video, a crawler message along the bottom, and the weather forecast on the side--all while having four online chats with their friends. Long, drawn-out videos lose their attention quickly. Watch a segment and go practice what you learn. You can watch the next segment after that.
Online. Golden Corral, White Castle, Sea Island Shrimp House, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Chuck E. Cheese's are all using or testing e-learning. Since it is self-paced, it goes at the speed of the learner. Be careful: As we've seen with e-books, it's not too comfortable to read a book on a PC, so keep the text to a minimum. Review questions can be built in as a checkpoint for the learner to advance to the next section. Great way to replace video and print, but it's still not "training."
Tests. We all hate tests! To ensure consistency in tests, keep them simple and visual (use as many pictures as possible), and use multiple-choice, ordering, or true-false format to ensure consistency in grading. Most of our employees no longer take fill-in-the-blank or essay tests. Ensure they have the basics down. Do all your trainers actually grade tests the same way?
All the above forms of "training" are really just education, yet most managers think it's training. We didn't get our driver's license after reading the book, watching the video, and passing a test--we had to demonstrate our skills to the authorities before we received permission to drive. Education is the necessary evil that must come first, though.
Do we follow the same format with our employees? Many companies do not--we just memorize a bunch of useless information the guest cares little about and then we're ready. You need to be validated on the skills it takes to do the job and re-validated periodically in the future. Knowing the job and doing the job are two entirely different things--and the guest notices.
Skill Validation
Having the new employee demonstrate skills for a manager shows you two things: how good the trainer was, and that the employee can do the functions of the job. We all might think we have the same definition of "greet the guest" or "suggestive sell," but when we see our employees in action, we find it's all across the board. If we don't coach them through the skill, they will simply do what they see at other restaurants (which often isn't good). Conduct these validations every 90--180 days to keep standards top of mind.
People train people. Just because someone is a good employee doesn't mean they will be a good trainer. The proper tools to educate will help, but the payoff is in the trainer demonstrating, coaching, and validating the skill of a new employee. To illustrate this point to your team, ask your trainers to train you on how to tie your shoes or put on a shirt. Act like you know nothing about it. Point being, it's a simple task we can all do in our sleep--like ringing up orders or making burgers--but it's incredibly hard to train someone else how to do it.

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World Top Landscape Designer Schools

Here are some of the top landscape designer schools which we are delighted to share with all,
1. The Anna Gresham School of Landscape Design
This famous school has been teaching landscape design worldwide for over nine years. They have established the global reputation of being the top in the field of landscape design education. They are the landscape designers ourselves and training world class landscape designers is their dedicated mission.
Their comprehensive study program of theory and practice covers every aspect of landscape and garden design. By working through many real design assignments, one will learn and practice all the necessary skills of a landscape designer.
2. Penn Foster Career School
There are certain skills you need to begin a career as a Professional Landscaper. The Penn Foster Career School Professional Landscaper Program helps you to learn quickly and conveniently. You'll learn about:
o Plant health, soil, and fertilizers
o Servicing garden tractors and other tools used in landscaping
o Creating landscaping designs using shrubs and ground covers
o How to start operating your own landscaping business
3. Kingston University London
- Architecture at Kingston University highly focused on the design, reflecting the course's context within an art and design-based faculty. The curriculum builds on the fundamental creative processes of observation and making, and its ethos could be summarized as "thinking through making". Completion of this degree automatically gives RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Part 1 exemption priviledge - the first step on the road to becoming a professional architect.
Many courses at Kingston University are vocational, which means that they are:
- are specifically designed to prepare you for your chosen career
- offer you the chance to gain valuable work experience in industry or commerce
4. Harvard University - graduate school of Design ( GSD )
Landscape architecture instruction at the GSD fosters students' inventiveness and creativity and cultivates the skills required for informed decision making. Landscape architects increasingly serve not only as designers, but also as advocates of landscape conservation. They are called upon to create landscapes that respond to the broad range of human habitation in diverse cultural and ecological contexts.
Students are encouraged to draw from historical precedents, design theory, civil engineering, and site analysis. Instruction also emphasizes the process of land planning, ecological analysis and the study of social, economic, legal, environmental, and policy issues affecting the whole design process.
The design studio provides the core of learning and inquiry; instruction and research emphasize critical analysis and a breadth of understanding in design, visual studies, theory, history, professional practice, and scientific research.

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Culinary Schools in New York City - A Beginner's Guide

If the state of New York is the Mecca of the country's food culture, New York is probably its Masjid al-Haram. Visit the top five enclaves of the city and you can easily identify the different cuisines they specialize in. Manhattan, for instance, is known for world cuisine, while Queens is famed for its Asian specialties. Another testament to the brilliance of the city as a food culture center is the number of top cooking schools in New York.
The three top can be found in the city. At its forefront is the French Culinary Institute (or the FCI) in the SoHo neighborhood of the city. The school, founded in 1984, offers courses in culinary arts and pastry arts, as well as various programs on restaurant management. Unlike other culinary schools, the FCI has courses in food technology, wine studies, and food journalism, making it among the most rounded culinary schools in the city. Dan Barber (Time Most Influential People list in 2009) and Bobby Flay are among its esteemed alumni.
Meanwhile, Institute of Culinary Education is one of the few top culinary schools in New York that offer programs for recreation students (or students who simply want to learn how to cook). It has over 1,000 recreation courses on Asian cuisine, wine education, and pastry techniques, among many others. Besides the usual culinary arts and pastry and baking arts diploma, the school also offers a diploma in culinary management, making it one of few culinary schools that focus a program that concentrates on management.

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