Top 4 Steps to Improve Performance Appraisal in Company

Employees are the soul of company and keeping them happy is the most important thing to consider. Offering a better working environment, handsome and timely package are certain things that need to be followed in the right way. Effective and well manage data base in a huge firm is important for keeping a close watch over services of employees efficiency and performance. This ultimately helps in performance appraisal of the employees and keeping them happy for long term.

There are software that allows the company to keep track of the performance of each employee and following it for long term. However, this appraisal solution is later divided into 4 different steps which are mentioned below:

· Assessing Job Performance:  The ratings of the employee’s performance entirely depend on the company’s performance.  However, the evaluation process is quite hectic. The process involves observing and keeping the record of each employee by using performance appraisal software which brings down the issues. The solution helps in tracing productivity, problem solving abilities and quality of work primarily; also factors like attitude, co-operation, communication etc.

· Ratings and Rankings: Once the rating is done, the assessment is processed by superior authorities, which consist of team or individual. Through the help of software, they post their comments and suggestions for the same. The comments section contains improvements, suggestions, goals to be achieved, potential of employees, etc.

· Remarks: The software also helps to improve the efficiency of the employee. Employers can generate a separate column to put down remarks through which employee need to work on in order to improve their performance. This certainly helps in working hard on required points and stay focused on the work. While evaluation, it is advisable to give examples of strengths and weaknesses of the employees this will help on working on the same in a better way.

· Seeking Feedback: The software also comes with feedback section that will help the employee to give feedback and approach the authorities regarding the assessment. They can also raise question regarding the same.

The main aim of having performance appraisal software is to get connected with employee through evaluating them and helping to keep their performance well for long term. Using of such software will certainly boost the working environment of the staff and take the company to the forward level.

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Common Misconceptions Regarding Flipping Classrooms

Flipped classrooms are a great way of expanding the learning curve of students. Using this technique, students get to spend more time critically analyzing topics. Frequent discussions regarding topics in class help students learn more effectively. Moreover, students actually get to clear their confusions with the teacher in class. The idea behind flipped classrooms is to enhance interaction with students.

It focuses on clearing students’ concept regarding different subjects. Students also learn to become independent as they get used to learning about the topic at home. There are many misconceptions regarding flipped classrooms. These misconceptions are a reason why flipped classrooms are discouraged in general.

These misconceptions need to be cleared to enable a better understanding of flipped classrooms. Let’s look at some of the most common misconceptions regarding flipped classrooms:

1. Flipped Classrooms Are Based On Video Lectures

This is one of the most common misconceptions regarding flipped classrooms. This misconception arose because most flipped classrooms use media presentations. The only reason video lectures and media presentation are used is because students find it easier to learn this way. However, flipping classrooms doesn’t necessarily mean that students have to watch video lectures. A classroom can be flipped by asking students to read a particular topic at home or research on a particular topic of a subject. The aim of a flipped classroom is to encourage the students to study at home and discuss what they have learned in class.

2. Flipped Classrooms Eliminate the Need for Teachers

Flipped classrooms are not an alternative to teachers. Students may study at home using interactive means or books. But they need a teacher to provide guidance to them in class. This is one of the reasons why flipped classrooms have excellent turnarounds. Teachers can spend more time on actually coaching students about the aspects they don’t understand. The learning and lecturing part is received by the students at home.

3. Students Get Disorganized In Flipped Classrooms

Flipped classrooms are thought to make students disorganized. This is because when they are studying at home they have no supervision at all. However, the result of a flipped classroom is quite contrary to this. Flipped classrooms do anything but make students disorganized. In fact students, learn to become more independent. They learn to grasp the concept for various courses on their own. Moreover, if they have any confusion about a topic, the teacher is always there to guide them in class. Students get a sense of responsibility when using flipped classrooms.

4. Students Will Have No Peer Support

Since students do most of the studying at home, it is believed that they won’t have any peer support. On the other hand, there are other students during discussions in class. However, the main concern is peer support at home while studying. But this problem is solved with the help of online forums. Many institutes that have adapted flipped classrooms have online forums where the students can interact. These forums allow the students to post their queries there. The forum is monitored by the teacher who answers any questions the students may have. Moreover, the teacher can also make a note of the common queries and prepare a class discussion accordingly. In addition, these forums enable students to interact with each other to discuss problems they may have.

5. All the Subjects Will Need to Be Flipped

This is one of the major reasons why teachers avoid flipping classrooms. They believe that they alone cannot flip their subject unless the other teachers are doing so as well. However, this is not the case. In fact flipping a classroom can be done with just a single topic as well. The aim is to have the students prepare for the lesson at home and discuss the topic in class.

Now that these misconceptions are cleared, you will know how beneficial flipped classrooms are.

Author Bio :
David Miller is an educational researcher who has vast experience in the field of teaching, Online testing and training. He is associated with prestigious universities and many leading educational research organizations. He’s also an ed-tech veteran, currently pursuing research in new eLearning developments and contributing author with ProProfs.

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How to Turn a Static Website Into a WordPress Theme?

Still a number of business owners are running a static HTML website. But when it comes to making changes in the static site, it becomes mandatory for the website owner to have HTML programming knowledge. So, if you lack coding skills you must migrate your static site to a dynamic platform. WordPress is a highly popular dynamic platform and its popularity is not going to abate too soon. You don't have to throw all your HTML and CSS files away when moving to WP platform. Rather you can convert your HTML files to WordPress.

When converting HTML files to Wordpress theme, generally WP default theme named TwentyThirteen is being used. To carry out the conversion you'll need a copy of HTML as well as CSS files for your current site, which will be later converted to WP theme format. There are various choices you get in terms of the program, which is used to make edits in your file. Well, you can choose text-editors such as Notepad and Notepad++ or rather use Dreamweaver instead. For this purpose, you can take up HTML to Wordpress Service.

Here's a step-by-step procedure following which you'll be able to Convert HTML to Wordpress Theme.

Step 1: Creation of Files and Folders

Begin with creating a new folder on your system’s desktop. Next, give a name to the folder. Choosing an easy to remember name won't let you forget where the folder is saved, such as the name of your WPTheme. Once you've named your folder create two files namely style.css and index.php, and add both these files to the newly built folder.

In order to make your WordPress platform recognize the files you've just created, make sure to create a comment block for the style.css file including the information like theme name, URI, a brief description, version, author and author URI.

Later, verify whether the TwentyThirteen theme is set to be your active WP theme or not. Subsequently, in the WP admin panel go to Appearance and then the Editor. Open your style.css file and copy the content from it, and paste it into the newly built style.css file.

Step 2: Create new PHP files

To Convert HTML to Wordpress Theme in the second step you'll need to open WP theme editor, wherein your existing theme will be segregated into different parts – the header, footer, sidebar and main index. You can make use of the same components for building some other WP themed site. For doing so, you'll need to divide the components into different PHP files. Next, all you need to do is to copy of the code of each HTML section and place them in their respective PHP files.

Get logged in your WP admin panel. Open the theme editor followed by the file in which you want to copy the code. For instance, open header.php file of your static website; copy the code and then paste it into the newly crafted header.php file. Follow the same procedure for rest of the files.

Step 3: Use Newly Created PHP files to fetch data

To bring in data from newly crafted PHP files, open the index.php file in your WP theme folder saved on your desktop. Add PHP code to your file top and just after the tag, as show below:

<?php get_header(); ?> This is my first PHP code </body>tag. <?php get_sidebar(); ?> <?php get_footer(); ?>

Now you have constructed your own WP theme. But wait! Your theme is developed, but you may find it to be blank. You'll have to add content to it.

Step 4: Add your content

Now you may have to add content in your theme. How will you display the content in your tailor-made WP theme? For this purpose, you require WordPress’ loop function – The Loop.

Installing the loop function, requires copying the following code into your index.php template.

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?> <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?> <div id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?> ” <?php post_class(); ?>> <div> <div> <?php the_time( ‘M j y’ ); ?></div> <h2> <a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2> <div> <?php the_author(); ?></div> </div> <!–end post header–> <div> <?php if ( function_exists( ‘add_theme_support’ ) ) the_post_thumbnail(); ?> <?php the_content(); ?> <?php edit_post_link(); ?> <?php wp_link_pages(); ?> </div> <!–end entry–> <div> <div> <?php comments_popup_link( ‘Leave a Comment’, ’1 Comment’, ‘% Comments’ ); ?></div> </div> <!–end post footer–> </div> <!–end post–> <?php endwhile; /* rewind or continue if all posts have been fetched */ ?> <div> <div> <?php next_posts_link( ‘Older Entries’ ); ?></div> <div> <?php previous_posts_link( ‘Newer Entries’ ); ?></div> </div> <!–end navigation–> <?php else : ?> <?php endif; ?>

Step 5: Initiate your Theme

To set-up your theme, visit a FTP client and sign in to your website directory.

Go to wp-content>>themes folder.

Upload your new theme folder to this folder. Open your WordPress admin panel, go to Appearance>>themes tab. Your theme will now be visible just click on Activate.

That's it, you are done!

About Author:

Sarah Parker is a developer comes technical writer at Designs2HTML Ltd. She loves to share relevant and useful tutorials on WordPress markup conversions on Twitter to treat technical professionals with required stuffs.

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