http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ A search of MERLOT materials Copyright 1997-2013 MERLOT. All rights reserved. Thu, 23 May 2013 11:06:03 PDT Thu, 23 May 2013 11:06:03 PDT http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/images/merlot.gif http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ 44 34 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730156 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''This course will provide you with a comprehensive introduction to spreadsheets. The course is designed for first-time users with very little or no exposure to the subject. For this course, you will use Microsoft Excel as the software. The course will explore the following fundamental topics: an introduction to spreadsheets, terminology in Excel, components of a spreadsheet, what a cell consists of, and the creation of a spreadsheet for practical use. You will examine sample files, videos, and books that will enable you to gain practical knowledge about spreadsheets that can be used in daily life, either at work, school, or home.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730166 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''Welcome to the exciting world of Payroll Administration! What you’ll learn in this course is essential to your understanding of the human-resources concept of payroll as it is interpreted from a business perspective. In applying the theoretical principles of the course in real-world ways, you should gain a better understanding of yourself and your work environment. The goal of this course is to help you develop the fundamental skills critical to payroll operations, and to help you understand state and federal compliance. This will provide you with a foundation for becoming more versed on the depth of payroll as an intricate component of human-resource management, and business overall.Fundamentally, the concept of payroll is rooted in both human-resource management and accounting principles. From a human-resource management perspective, the concept of payroll embodies compliance, which includes the identification of the relationship between the employee and the employer. There are a number of legislative acts that must be adhered to, as they assist in formulating how payroll is executed. Payroll is also an accounting concept, as all businesses are required to properly track and record their financial transactions. In most businesses, payroll is the single greatest expense they will incur. Therefore, it becomes beneficial to understand the foundational elements associated with payroll applications.The process of payroll can be divided into four major areas:Government compliance (includes, but is not limited to): reporting based on the amount of payroll dollars; depositing of taxes collected from the employee, sometimes matched by the employer, or sometimes deposited by only the employer on the employee’s behalf; and providing summaries of annual payroll activity of each person who received any compensation from the organization.Employee processing (includes, but is not limited to): new hire administrative actives and paperwork, tracking and reporting payroll changes, collecting and properly filing payroll data.Payroll processing (includes, but is not limited to): data entry, reconciliation, and distribution of reports.Employer compliance (includes, but is not limited to): the issuing of W-2’s.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730167 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''The purpose of Introduction to Human Resources Management is to provide a general overview of the concepts and applications of the many parts of Human Resources (HR). This course is for the entry level HR Generalist who wants to explore how the interdependence of the major topics in HR are created and implemented. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to apply your knowledge to real world HR issues. While general topics such as benefits and compensation will be covered in other Human Resource Management courses, this course will focus primarily on the employee life cycle and each of its phases. The employee life cycle is central to most of the functions and purposes of HR. It is important to start at the beginning of any life cycle in an effort to understand how each component is dependent on the next.To begin with, you will take a look at the history of HR and determine the major events and champion theorists who brought HR to its humble beginnings. The course will then cover the employee life cycle by first looking at the areas of recruitment, selection, and hiring. Each area will be defined, described, and broken down into its measurable parts. Next, after you have hired your employees, you must send them to the next phase of the life cycle: orientation. This is where employees learn the written and unwritten rules of the company’s code of conduct. In addition, an overview of employee services and benefits and how the role of HR impacts these services and benefits will be investigated. In this course, you will also explore the HR role in performance management. This is an area wherein clear expectations, policies, and management training are aligned with the performance management system used by the company, which in many cases are created by HR.This course will address many different HR laws that govern the topics mentioned above. Understanding how HR law impacts each area of the employee life cycle is crucial to the legal and financial obligations of any HR Department. Human Resource Departments play a very important role in creating a fair and legal working environment for its employees while keeping the company out of the court system. Managing this balance is always quite the challenge for any HR employee.Lastly, you will look at an in-depth approach to global human resources by understanding the current trends and challenges in the workplace. In Unit 8, you will survey important training topics in HR that will keep companies proactive and viable in an ever changing economy.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730187 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''This course provides students with an introduction to the core technologies used to communicate information on the Web: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Whether managing an employer’s website, producing an online resume, or starting a web-based business, knowing the fundamentals of how information is structured and presented on the internet is a crucial skill for the contemporary workplace.Today, many technologies exist to facilitate the creation and management of websites, including development environments like Adobe Dreamweaver and Content Management Systems like WordPress andJoomla! Even though mastery of the basics of HTML and CSS is easily attainable, these labor-saving technologies have discouraged many professionals from learning crucial coding skills. With a basic understanding of how HTML code is created and transformed, professionals are better able to produce or transform websites according to precise specifications, whether they use a fully-featured development environment, a Content Management System, or write code from the ground-up using a simple text editor.Moreover, these skills enable professionals to troubleshoot minor problems and to intelligently communicate with clients, collaborators, Information Technology staff within a company, or outside contractors in order to maintain, modify, or produce complicated web-based projects.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730190 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''With the expansion of law and the legal process into so many areas of everyday life, the responsibilities of the legal profession have expanded to meet new challenges. For example, the advent of the Internet since the early 1990s has raised a multitude of new legal issues related to various areas of intellectual property, including copyright, patent law, and trademark law. In recognition of the fact that many law-related responsibilities can be handled by well-educated and trained non-lawyers, the legal profession has increasingly come to depend on the assistance of paralegals. Paralegals perform key functions within a law office from drafting legal documents to investigating cases and interviewing witnesses. While they are no replacement for lawyers, paralegals have become recognized as key components of a well-functioning legal office.This course will introduce you to the basic knowledge and skills required of paralegals. You will familiarize yourself with basics of the American legal system, as well as the substantive areas of law that are addressed within this system. You will also learn and apply skills, such as researching legal issues, interviewing clients and witnesses, and drafting motions and pleadings. By the end of this course, you will have a clear understanding of what a paralegal does, the skills needed to be a successful paralegal, and what it will take to begin a career as a paralegal.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730186 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''The management and processing of information is an essential practice in a business environment. All organizations ranging from social groups, small businesses, non-profits, and large corporations have a need for information to be analyzed and processed. These organizations require that business analysts or other key employees demonstrate a mastery of information management and processing in order to address critical business problems such as business planning, inventory management, and organizational forecast planning. In particular, these skills are needed to perform data and information analyses and present the findings of such analyses to help guide business-related decisions.This course will provide you with a structured introduction to the key tools and techniques used in information management and processing. If you have ever been asked to organize information, analyze data, or create a presentation to help your organization make a business-related decision, then this course will help you develop or improve these essential skills. This course will also provide you with an understanding of practical approaches and techniques, such as integrating content from various sources and constructing graphs to show data relationships that are often used to process and present information in business decision-making. You will use the standard office suite tools that most companies use. You will learn how to select the best tool to address your specific business need and how to integrate content produced from the other tools. At the conclusion of the course, you will have mastered the processes of integrating data using the standard information management and processing tools and techniques.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730133 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''This course is the first in a series of four courses under the Job Search “umbrella” that include Job Search Skills, Resume Writing, Interview Skills, and Professional Etiquette. The Job Search Skills course is intended to give you a solid beginning to this exciting time of self-exploration with finding a job. Whether you are seeking your first job, wish to take the next step in your existing career, or desire to begin a new career, you will obtain the necessary information about yourself to turn this desire into a successful job search. If, for example, you think of yourself as a product that you are trying to market to potential employers, you will realize that you can only be successful if you know the product thoroughly and how this product can meet the needs of the consumer (the employer). This course will guide you to information on how to target jobs and/or careers that are desirable and realistic for you and that fill a need for employers in today’s challenging job market.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730137 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''Are you getting ready to apply for a job, or are you already seeking employment? A resume (or résumé) is a brief written account of personal, educational, and professional qualifications and experience that you prepare as part of your application materials for a prospective job. To ensure that your resume is read by the recipient, you will need a cover letter that markets your unique qualifications for the specified job description. In the current global economy, it is essential for job seekers to optimize their chances of being considered and hired for positions that are well-suited to their qualifications and interests. This course will help you effectively develop employment application materials for today’s job market by honing your resume writing skills, providing you with tools to create an impressive resume (or to improve the one you already have), and giving suggestions on developing an effective cover letter. You will study different types of resume and cover letter formats that can be applied to various prospective employment situations and your own personal career goals. You will undertake a critical assessment of the professional skills you already possess, brainstorm and apply the best ways to market these skills in your resume and cover letter, and enhance your application materials by using specific tips and techniques to make you more competitive for the job you seek. By the end of this course, you will combine effective language and design elements to produce a polished resume and cover letter that can be tailored to each specific job application.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730140 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''What images come to mind when you think of the term professional? Do you picture an executive in a fancy suit strutting into a boardroom? Or, perhaps you envision a supervisor walking among cubicles and issuing orders to employees. While it is true that professionalism encompasses how we present ourselves outwardly, the meaning of the term goes far beyond appearances. Professionalism also encompasses inward characteristics and attitudes that affect how others in the workplace perceive us. The professional world can be full of challenging situations, including conflicting personalities, miscommunication, and cultural differences. In this course, you will learn about typical workplace etiquette protocols, communication standards, and cultural awareness strategies in order to navigate these common obstacles as smoothly as possible.By this point in Saylor’s Job Search Skills courses in the Professional Development Program, you have started the process of honing your professional image by producing a tailored résumé and cultivating important interviewing skills. This course will guide you through additional strategies for establishing and maintaining your professional image in the workplace. Whether you are working on a construction site or in a medical facility, practicing professional etiquette will help ensure that your occupational environment is a positive and productive one. You will focus on integrating internal attitudes with external behaviors so that your personal attributes work together to enhance your professional image.You will begin this course with an introduction to professional manners and common courtesy. Then, you will learn how to communicate effectively and courteously via common workplace communication modes – verbal communication, nonverbal communication, and virtual communication – paying particular attention to how technology affects these forms of workplace communication. In the last unit of this course, you will investigate the topic of workplace diversity in order to gain an awareness of differences and how to respond to and respect them.' http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=730142 This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.''Though accounting may seem like a dense and complex subject, this course is designed to present the accounting cycle in an accessible and logical manner. This course will provide you with a solid understanding of basic accounting principles and will introduce you to financial statement analysis. Please note that this course is the first of two courses on the principles of accounting and that each of these two courses is divided into 10 units. Each unit should take approximately three hours to complete and should be completed sequentially for the most logical progression of information. As you work through these units, you will encounter a range of examples and problem sets geared towards providing you with practical applications of the lessons you learn. By the end of this course, you will able to create accurate and appropriate financial statements to convey a company’s financial health.This course begins with an introduction to financial accounting and the various ways in which financial statements allow companies to make intelligent economic decisions. All companies, large and small, prepare financial statements in accordance with specific accounting rules that investors use to determine which stocks are attractive to buy. Accounting principles and financial statements are equally important for companies that do not have public stock available for investors to buy. You will learn all about these statements, the accounting rules that govern them, and the governing bodies that are responsible for accounting oversight.Later in the course, you will be immersed in the details of accounts receivables, inventory, and liabilities. Understanding the link among these components is vital to drawing accurate conclusions about financial statements and making reliable recommendations for improving profitability.This course concludes with two units focused on the analyses of financial statements, which will also introduce several mathematical ratios. The accurate use of these ratios is vital to drawing intelligent conclusions about a company’s operation practices and profitability. Even billionaire stock investor Warren Buffet uses financial-statement analysis to determine his next $100 million stock purchase.The goal of this course is to provide you with a solid foundation of accounting principles so that you can apply this knowledge to real-world accounting examples and be able to comfortably decipher a company’s financial statements and viability.'