EXPRESS: Onboarding Salespeople: Socialization Approaches

The effective training of salespeople is crucial to a firm’s success; there is arguably no more critical type of training than a salesperson’s onboarding. In this study, the authors leverage a natural field experiment in which a firm’s newly hired salespeople can undergo onboarding through either a decentralized program or a centralized program to examine the relative impact of each program. Drawing on organizational socialization theory, the authors consider whether an onboarding program that incorporates both individualized and institutionalized socialization tactics (the decentralized program) can develop salespeople into higher performers by encouraging them to take a more innovative and adaptive approach to different facets of the sales role. The findings reveal that salespeople who underwent the decentralized program achieved approximately 23.5% higher sales performance than those who underwent the centralized program. The performance benefits of the decentralized program were amplified for salespeople whose managers had a narrower span of control. In addition, these performance benefits were appreciable for those salespeople transitioning from another job but negligible for those transitioning from school. A scenario-based experiment enriches the field experiment’s findings by showing evidence of the theorized mechanism underlying the sales performance benefits observed: the fostering of an innovative role orientation.

Updating Training in the Medical Field

This chapter briefly reviews the literature that explores the training technique of deliberate practice and the related constructs, training outcomes of achievement goal orientation, self-efficacy, perceived instrumentality, and reflective practice. This work explains how educators can use and measure these variables to enhance current training methodologies. As part of creating more effective training, the TARGET model, developed by Ames, will be utilized to discuss potential ways to enhance training outcomes in a post-COVID-19 world. Specifically, suggestions are offered for enhancing online training using deliberate practice combined with the TARGET model within a medical setting where there are limited resources.

Comparative Study on the Effect of Two Different Sequential Combination Training Methods on Fat Reduction

In this paper, overweight or obese young women with sports experience and body fat rate > 30% were divided into groups to compare the effect of "HIIT" and "aerobic" exercise in different sequence combination training methods, and analyze whether "HIIT + Aerobic" is more effective than "aerobic + HIIT". The aim is to provide more effective training programs and establish scientific fitness awareness for overweight or obese young women who have sports experience.

Effective Teacher Professional Development Programs. A Case Study Focusing on the Development of Mathematical Modeling Skills

A concern in Mathematics Education is the professional development of the teacher and to promote effective training programs. The literature provides principles guiding the design of such programs, which were considered for an instruction intended to strengthen the teacher’s practice in relation to the development of mathematical skills. The objective of this work was to study if the designed program was effective, in relation to the impact on the teacher’s teaching. A case study on a group of in-service teachers focused on the ability of mathematical modeling (MM) and their perspectives of this skill was carried out. This was divided into three moments: before, during, and after the program. The findings show that, before the program, teachers conceived modeling from epistemological, pragmatic and conceptual perspectives; during the program, they focused on the pragmatic and educational perspectives; and at the end of the program, the group was stripped of the pragmatic, epistemological and conceptual perspectives to move towards the educational and socio-critical. They were also able to justify the choice or disassociation of one or more of them. The study advances towards the concretion of more specific and robust professional development programs for mathematics teachers.

Two-Branch Attention Learning for Fine-Grained Class Incremental Learning

As a long-standing research area, class incremental learning (CIL) aims to effectively learn a unified classifier along with the growth of the number of classes. Due to the small inter-class variances and large intra-class variances, fine-grained visual categorization (FGVC) as a challenging visual task has not attracted enough attention in CIL. Therefore, the localization of critical regions specialized for fine-grained object recognition plays a crucial role in FGVC. Additionally, it is important to learn fine-grained features from critical regions in fine-grained CIL for the recognition of new object classes. This paper designs a network architecture named two-branch attention learning network (TBAL-Net) for fine-grained CIL. TBAL-Net can localize critical regions and learn fine-grained feature representation by a lightweight attention module. An effective training framework is proposed for fine-grained CIL by integrating TBAL-Net into an effective CIL process. This framework is tested on three popular fine-grained object datasets, including CUB-200-2011, FGVC-Aircraft, and Stanford-Car. The comparative experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework can achieve the state-of-the-art performance on the three fine-grained object datasets.

An Assessment of Quality of Service Extended by Select Agriclinics and Agribusiness Centres in Union Territory of Puducherry

The establishment of Agri clinics and Agribusiness Centers is a Government of India Scheme implemented through NABARD and MANAGE, Hyderabad for promotion of rural entrepreneurship through effective training and handholding of the graduate youth. Agri-Clinics are intended to provide expert advice and services to farmers on various aspects to improve crop/animal yield and increase farmers’ revenue. This study was conducted to assess the quality of services provided by the Agri clinics and agribusiness centers in the union territory of Puducherry. 90 farmers were personally interviewed using the service quality instrument - SERVQUAL to explore their expectation and perception of service quality provided by the Agri -clinics and agribusiness centers. The results indicated that the level of quality of the services provided by the Agri clinics is not to the expected level of the sample farmers i.e., all perception ratings were lower than their expectation scores. In all five dimensions of service quality, a gap was observed between farmers’ perceptions and expectations: Tangible: -0.93, Reliability: -0.89, Responsiveness: -0.78, Assurance: - 0.58, Empathy: -0.61. The results indicated that much more service improvement activities are needed for improving the service quality. The Agri-clinics need to modernize facilities and equipment to reduce the gap between farmers' perceptions and expectations.

Pediatric Powered Mobility Training: Powered Wheelchair Versus Simulator-Based Practice

Background: Many children with physical disabilities lack independent mobility. Powered wheelchair mobility can be a viable option, but users must be proficient drivers to ensure safety. To become a proficient driver, children need opportunities to practice. As is often the case, powered wheelchairs are scarce and direct therapy hours dedicated to powered mobility are often limited. Alternative options are needed to enable safe, unsupervised practice. Simulator-based learning has been shown to be an effective training method for powered mobility and other skill-based tasks for adults. The goal of this study was to compare two training methods of powered mobility, powered wheelchair practice (control group) versus simulator-based (experimental group) practice to determine whether simulation is a feasible and effective method for children and adolescents. The hypothesis was that children practicing on either modality at home supervised by a caregiver would similarly improve their powered mobility skills. Method: Participants included 36 children and adolescents (23 males, 13 females) with cerebral palsy and neuromuscular diseases, aged 6-18 years (mean age: 10 y, 7 mo, SD: 3y, 7 mo). Data were collected and compared at baseline and after 12 weeks of home based practice of powered mobility via a powered wheelchair or a simulator. Thirty participants completed the study and were included in the analysis Powered mobility ability was determined by the Powered Mobility Program (PMP), the Israeli Ministry of Health’s Powered Mobility Proficiency Test (PM-PT) and the Assessment of Learning Powered Mobility use (ALP). Participants (21/30) were interviewed after study completion by an independent researcher concerning the child’s and parent’s experiences regarding practice time and user experience (e.g., satisfaction with training program, views of its importance). Results: Both the powered wheelchair and simulator-based practice groups achieved significant improvement following the practice period as assessed by the PMP and PM-PT assessments, with no significant difference between them. A significant improvement was found in the ALP assessment outcomes for the powered wheelchair group only. All participants practiced for the required amount of time and both groups reported a similar user experience. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that simulator-based practice is an effective training option for powered mobility for children aged 6-18 years old with physical disabilities. Simulator-based practice can provide a safe environment to practice driving skills that could endanger the child (e.g., out of doors). This is the first study, to our knowledge, that compares two different wheelchair training methods. Trial Registration: The study protocol for this clinical trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under the ID NCT04531488 and the title “ Simulator Based Powered Mobility Training of Children With Special Needs ”(Protocol ID: 004-17, URL: https://rb.gy/dfeslr).

Fusion-Based Semantic Segmentation Using Deep Learning Architecture in Case of Very Small Training Dataset

Semantic segmentation is a pre-processing step in computer vision-based applications. It is the task of assigning a predefined class label to every pixel of an image. Several supervised and unsupervised algorithms are available to classify pixels of an image into predefined object classes. The algorithms, such as random forest and SVM are used to obtain the semantic segmentation. Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN)-based architectures have become popular for the tasks of object detection, object recognition, and segmentation. These deep architectures perform semantic segmentation with far better accuracy than the algorithms that were used earlier. CNN-based deep learning architectures require a large dataset for training. In real life, some of the applications may not have sufficient good quality samples for training of deep learning architectures e.g. medical applications. Such a requirement initiated a need to have a technique of effective training of deep learning architecture in case of a very small dataset. Class imbalance is another challenge in the process of training deep learning architecture. Due to class imbalance, the classifier overclassifies classes with large samples. In this paper, the challenge of training a deep learning architecture with a small dataset and class imbalance is addressed by novel fusion-based semantic segmentation technique which improves segmentation of minor and major classes.

Functions of responsible for training in digital systems for industrial safety

The functional capabilities provided by the digital production safety training system for those responsible for training allow the software complex to be maintained in a stable operational state when exposed to emergency situations, to fulfill all the necessary needs of responsible users with the authority to create effective training programs and to test the knowledge of workers on production safety, to quickly form up-to-date digital reporting documentation for the organization.

Learning to Lead: What Constitutes Effective Training for Student Leaders in New Zealand Secondary Schools?

<p><b>Student leaders in New Zealand secondary schools may include tutors, head students, sports and cultural captains, mentors and prefects. This study is based on the premise that student leaders can provide inspiration to other students and work skilfully to shape the culture of a school. The possibilities that stem from the role of student leader can be endless, yet there seems to be little evidence of consensus regarding what kind of training should be provided for student leaders.</b></p> <p>This is an investigation of student leadership training programmes. The main purpose is to discover what constitutes effective training for student leaders. This study is designed to provide educators with examples of what effective training could involve. It is a multiple-case study of three different New Zealand secondary schools. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, an observation and a survey. The study uses a distributed leadership framework and thematic analysis of data.</p> <p>This study reveals some aspects of effective student leadership training and, based on findings, includes recommendations for components of future training programmes. The analysis highlights the importance of creating a school environment that supports student leadership. The findings also reveal the value of designing leadership training programmes that adhere to principles of experiential learning.</p>