What’s on the web

Citation

(2006), "What’s on the web", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2006.08120aag.001

What’s on the web

Page turnerswww.trainingpages.com

Founded eight years ago, Training Pages is the UK’s largest independent directory of training on the web. Initially the business (and web site) in Information Technology and Business and Management now it covers the broad sweep of business and commercial training. Training Pages is a division of Ecube Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stockcube plc (the financial services agency).

We were prepared to be sceptical (many listing/directory sites are really poor) but this one is excellent. You can search for courses, either by keywords if you know the ones you want already or you can browse through the categorised listings. The keywords bring up a substantial list of courses – and, importantly, the price is prominently displayed. The vast majority of course listings on the site are added, maintained and kept up to date by the training companies themselves (so do not expect unbiased reviews). Training pages claim to work through and edit these at regular intervals to ensure access to the most accurate and timely information possible. Certainly the ones we looked at were current and accurate. A very good site, fast and easy-to use.

Free what?http://training.freeskills.com

This looked promising: “Free and low-cost online training courses, featuring government funding, full tutor support and nationally recognised qualifications … ” All you do is enter your postcode and it comes up with a list of free courses. So we entered a couple of random postcodes and “There are currently no funded courses available in your area”, came up. Ok maybe the areas weren’t appropriate. We tried central London. The same message appears. There aren’t even any online courses available. Hmmm.

Useful resourceswww.fenman.co.uk

Founded in 1988 as a publisher of training resources for use by learning and development professionals, Fenman Ltd is now one of the dominant publishers of training materials and training DVDs/videos in the UK. As you would expect, this is a customer-focused product-based site. Information is easy to access and the materials are attractively presented. If we were searching for training materials, particularly videos (and we could afford the prices) we’d look here first.

Managing stresswww.stress-counselling.co.uk

Stress at work is a major (and costly) problem for individuals and organisations. This site is a useful place to start if you are looking to understand the problem or access information and resources on managing it. The only problem is that it is full of irritating pop-ups, inappropriate animation and, for some reason, the text is mostly set in the ghastly “comic sans” font. All of which make searching the site a bit, well, stressful.

And finallyA man walked into a consultant’s office and inquired about the rates for a study. “Well, we usually structure the project up front and charge £100 for each set of three questions”, replied the consultant. “Isn’t that awfully steep?”, asked the man. “Yes”, the consultant replied. “What was your third question?”

Thanks to http://sucs.swan.ac.uk for this.

Contact uswww.emerald insight.com

For a particularly interesting and useful site you could always try our own! And if you have any favourite (or otherwise) sites that you would like us to review on these pages, please drop us an e-mail and we will submit them to our usual rigorous analysis.