Why The Newkirk Group Learning Center
Product and Services are Valuable
Putting Training and Development on a Business Basis
The Newkirk Group Learning Center reinvents the Training and Development Organization. Through self-directed V-Learning, the focus shifts from training and development as a perk for past performance to learning and softskills acquisition as a necessity for future performance. In shifting the focus from instructor to learner, our approach puts learning on a business basis. We ensure that knowledge transfer is enduring rather than situational. In our view, professional training and development must be business oriented, efficiency oriented, reliability oriented, management oriented, productivity oriented, improvement oriented, and mission oriented.
Our Business Advantage
The Newkirk Group offers V-Learning support that saves clients millions of dollars in the elimination of up-front sunk costs. We are a quicker, simpler, more responsive, effective, efficient, and less expensive business partner.
Our Internet Assistant Action Learning process employs specially developed learning content and delivery technology to leverage the power of the Internet to provide attractive cost to profit ratios and ROI in professional learning.
Seeking the optimal ROI, The Newkirk Group has aggressively integrated its large library of learning content, consisting of thousands of learning modules, with state-of-the-art information technologies and a powerful Learning System to form the framework of its powerful Internet Assistant Action Learning architecture.
"We empower people and enable strategies."
Raymond L. Newkirk
Competitive Uniqueness
Differing from academic training and education programs which take years to complete and often offer inappropriate content, The Newkirk Group Learning Center delivers learning designed for immediate application using content derived from previous application in authentic workplace environments. SMILC offers learners only the essential knowledge required to improve performance. We offer relevant courses based on demands of work and focused on the workgroup specific bases of competence.
Our Internet learning model provides cost effective instruction through courses that learners take any time and any place on a 24x7 basis. Our innovative learning architecture delivers courses focused on student learning and workplace application rather than on teacher presentation and convenience. We do this by: (1) building workplace-authentic skills more than academic theory, and (2) designing value-added learning programs geared to rapid performance improvement.
"Successful Internet delivered learning immerses one
in the learning experience and provides opportunities
to practice in a safe environment."
Our Competitive Anomaly
The Newkirk group Learning Center does not require clients to implement an expensive framework for V-Learning. This is an attractive benefit for clients. Our Internet delivered, self-learning completely immerses the client in the learning experience and provides opportunities to practice in a safe environment. Other benefits the Learning Center include learning programs empowered by:
- The concept of safe failures to reduce the danger inherent in learning from mistakes;
- Content making generous use of expert models and storytelling;
- Workplace authenticity, and
- The power of reuse after learning.
"Design is the missing link in E-Learning success."
Ray Newkirk
The Learning Center and Design Inquiry
The Learning Center designs learning opportunities. We believe that design is the missing link in E-Learning success. Leveraging the design experience of the Systems Management Institute, we employ design inquiry to explore the different learning environments and develop our many certificate programs. Through design inquiry, we evolved a powerful and eminently practical learning architecture.
The Learning Center and Social Cognition
The Learning Center reflected on the theories and discoveries in Social Cognition when designing its Internet Assistant Action Learning structure. We explored theories of Self-Discrepancy, Knowledge Accessibility, Agency, Change of Standard Effect, Activity Engagement, Regulatory Mode, Regulatory Focus, Regulatory Fit, Regulatory Motivation.
The Learning Center and the Theory of Regulatory Fit
The Theory of Regulatory Fit is particularly important to the success of the Learning Center. Informed by this Theory, we recognized that a high level of regulatory fit with a learner’s regulatory orientation is important in building a successful Virtual Learning program. For the Learning Center attention to regulatory fit offers many benefits. It increases the learner’s strength of motivation, inclines learners toward distinct means for goal attainment, encourages learners to evaluate their decisions and goal pursuits more positively, inclines learners to imagine feeling better about a good choice and feeling worse about a bad choice, and encourages learners to assign value to the object of a decision. Our programs are compatible with the variable goal pursuit means of learners, from the eagerness means of promotion-focused concerns to the vigilance means of the prevention-focusedmeans. Since value from fit positively impacts the quality of life, we add value by enabling learners to experience regulatory fit.
The Learning Center and the Problem of Learner Motivation
Motivation perpetually challenges everyone, even the most involved self-directed learner. In distance education, motivation becomes an even greater problem. As a Virtual-Learning company, We understand the challenge it faces in motivating learners to enroll in and successfully complete a program of study via our Internet Assistant Action Learning format. Guided by the theory of regulatory fit in Social Cognition, we have designed our learning programs to reinforce the learner’s decision about continuing education.
"When people use goal pursuit means that fit their regulatory orientation,
they feel alert and energized, they feel good about what they have done.
Regulatory fit adds value to a person’s life."
E. Troy Higgins