High-Tech Training

High-Tech Training

Five selected technologies that have had and will continue to have an impact on how people learn are:

¨      e-Learning: e-Learning, which includes online learning makes it possible for learners to interact with the learning content in real-time (e.g. with an instructor), and, if they are so inclined, with other learners at the same time. As the trainee exhibits learner-control for practice, pacing, feedback and accessibility, he or she brings to bear influences on content (the design of text, video, graphics, and sound; collaboration with peers, other trainees, experts and advisors; and sharing of information, learning practice communities, and projects (Noe, 2013). e-Learning can be designed to complement and enrich a company’s business strategy, is accessible any time and almost any place removes obstructions to geographic location of dispersed employees. E-Learning training is delivered to employees faster and in a shorter amount and stays current because of easy updating (Noe, 2013).

¨      Social Media: This technology is very interactive but more informal (lack of a specified start and end time) in scope and consists of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and YouTube as well as wikis and blogs. Links to resources such as videos, webinars and articles are easily uploaded by professionals and non-professionals (caveat emptor) and allows for the free exchange of content and ideas (Noe, 2013). Users can determine future training needs, reinforce learning, coach, be coached, and mentor, and schedule and register for learning and social events. Blogs and wikis are webpages and websites respectively that permit authors to post entries and readers to comment on those entries. Wiki designers create, edit, update content, collaborate and share knowledge (Noe, 2013).

¨      Mobile Learning: This method of learning takes on more of a just-in-time-related-to-performance role rather than a formal knowledge seeking characteristic. For example, employees at IBM are using mobile learning to jump start and transform the sales/client relationship. Mobile learning users have access to critical information such as reference checklists, cultural information in high-growth markets in Brazil and China (Ahmad, & Orton, 2010). Mobile is most effective in short (less than ten minutes), easy to use and meaningful bursts with content relevant to the employees’ job performance (Noe, 2013).

¨      Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS): Intelligent Tutoring Systems (artificial intelligence) veer from other forms of technology with these features: An ITS has the ability match instruction to individual learner needs, communicate and respond to the trainee/student, model the learning process for the student, adjust content delivery based on the trainee’s past performance, and complete a self-assessment in order to modify the content delivery and feedback (Noe, 2013).

¨      Simulations and Games: Simulations require trainees to make decisions resulting in consequences, some possibly life-altering, in a non-threatening, yet realistic training environment. The training is interactive using the same rules required in the actual performance of the job (Noe, 2013). As an example, Nurse Anesthetists are using simulation to help train them for surgery. The training involves using a lifelike mannequin to teach nursing students the correct method for administering anesthesia. The mannequin is designed so that when a breathing tube is inserted it responds functionally in the same ways a human body would to changes in blood pressure, breathing and ventilator settings (WorldNow, 2015). The pressure to perform gets real as professors and peers watch, mentor and learn but with none of the nerve-wrecking tragedy that might occur if a mistake is made with a human being.                  

References

Ahmad, N., & Orton, P. (2010). Smartphones make IBM smarter, but not as expected. Training and Development, 64(1), 46–50.

Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

WorldNow, (2015). Retrieved from http://raycomgroup.worldnow.com/story/student-nurse-anesthetists-use-high-tech-training-methods

A Dedicated Review and Needs Assessment of Steelcase Incorporated

A Dedicated Review and Needs Assessment of Steelcase Incorporated

My review of Steelcase’s website and their 630 dealers in over 800 worldwide locations, 2014 revenue of $3 billion and approximately 10,700 employees gives the impression of a well-run company. The needs assessment process is conducted to determine whether training is needed to correct and solve a performance problem. One measured approach would likely be from a Return-on-Investment (ROI) perspective in “Planning, Data collection, Data analysis and Reporting” (Phillips, & Phillips, 2006).   

Steelcase Inc. casts themselves as the global leader in the office furniture industry. The company offers workplace products, furnishings and services through an independent dealer network. Services include the Applied Research and Consulting (ARC) group which utilizes a user-centered, strategic approach to the workplace that delivers measurable results to clients; Workplace Surveys based on research and knowledge of the workplace; Financial Services financing options to meet ownership or leasing needs; Performance Management for large organizations with multiple locations, which offers a strategic approach to managing the complexity of doing business in order to drive down and control costs; eBusiness to streamline facilities management and furniture procurement tasks as well as provide a customized portal with web-based tools to address needs; and a Phase 2 Program for office furniture that is no longer wanted or needed (Steelcase Inc., 2015).

Consumers Served: Steelcase’s portfolio of solutions addresses three core elements of an office environment: interior architecture, furniture, and technology (Steelcase Inc., 2015).

Management philosophy: Steelcase maintains a strong commitment to integrity and doing the right thing for customers, employees, business partners, associates and neighbors (Steelcase Inc., 2015).

Strategic objectives: The strives to “act with integrity, tell the truth, keep commitments, treat people with dignity and respect, promote positive relationships, protect the environment, and excel” (Steelcase Inc., 2015).

In order to obtain and maintain the appropriate buy-in to training, it will be necessary to include the following stakeholders: Upper and mid-level managers, trainers, independent dealers, and employees.    

During the organizational phase of the needs analysis the following questions will be asked (Noe, 2013):

v  Organizational Phase Questions

Ø  Upper-Level Managers should answer the following questions:

·         Is training important to achieve the company’s business objectives?

·         How does training support the business strategy?

·         What are the threats to the company’s talent base?

Ø  Mid-Level Managers should answer:

·         Do I want to spend money on training? If so, how much?

·         How will training and development help meet my business needs?

·         Are we retaining top talent?

Ø  Questions to Trainers’ include:

·         Does the budget exit to buy training services?

·         Will managers support training?

v  Person Phase Questions

Ø  Upper-Level Managers:

§  Do employees in specific functions or business units need training?

§  What do employees need to do to accomplish our business objectives?

Ø  Mid-Level Managers:

·         Who should be trained?

o   Managers?

o   Professionals?

o   Core employees?

Ø  Trainers

·         How will I identify which employees need training?

v  Task Phase Questions

Ø  Upper-Level Managers:

§  Does the company have people with the knowledge, skills, and abilities or competencies needed to compete in the marketplace?

Ø  Mid-Level Managers:

§  For what jobs can training make the biggest difference in product quality or customer service?

Ø  Trainers

§  For what tasks should employees be trained?

§  What knowledge, skills, ability, or other characteristics are necessary?

Documents to review should include but are not limited to company as well as unit mission statements; the current training regimen, course listings, and training results; current instructor qualifications; regulatory documents; job and competency descriptions; copies of past projects and plans for current and future projects; lists of partners including dealers and their ranking by various categories (customer service, sales, etc.) (Noe, 2013).  

Given the proper amount of time to assess needs, techniques put to use in the needs evaluation include observations to generate current relevant data; manager, trainer, employee, dealer, and customer questionnaires to get an overview of how well and if the company is meeting its mission and objectives; interviews to determine if an alternate perspective of company operations emerges; use of online technology to gain a view of operations outside of the human element; a review of historical data related to past and current performance and practices; and any benchmarking documents to determine if Steelcase measures its training against other companies. If time is constrained, a rapid needs assessment will be conducted choosing assessments based on uncovered pressure points such as performance problems, internal or external requests for training, or new products, employees, or technology, (Noe, 2013). The Standards of Performance Technology Guide also incorporates this approach with its “focus on results through a “systematic assessment, analysis, and design of solutions” (Chevalier 2008, pg. 6).  

References

Chevalier, R. D. (2008). A brief history of performance improvement. Performance Improvement, 47(6), 5–11. doi:10.1002/pfi.20002

Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Phillips, J., & Phillips, P. (2006). Return on investment measures success. Industrial Management, 48(2), 18–23. 

Steelcase Inc., 2015. Retrieved from http://www.steelcase.com/

Getting at the Truth About Training

Getting at the Truth About Training

 Good morning, I would like to take ten minutes of your time to discuss an asset area potentially more valuable than the equipment and financial inventory that you and many other businesses depend on daily. The asset is human capital, the lack of which, if not managed properly, could ground your business to a halt.

Human capital is more difficult to tie to Return on Investment (ROI) than finances and equipment and includes tacit knowledge, such as innovation, leadership, body language, and intuition; formal and informal education, especially informal education exchanged among employees; work-related know-how, and work-related competence possessed by high performance employees, which, by the way, leaves with them when they leave (Noe, 2013).

Our discussion of how a specially designed training program can contribute substantially to your company’s value and competitiveness can, if you wish, go beyond these intangible assets and include the positive effects of training on financial and physical assets and at the same time, support your organization’s overall strategy (Noe, 2013). 

Please listen to an audio version of this post by clicking the link below which will take you to my Dropbox website. Then click on the same entry title in Dropbox to listen to the audio file.

Win 

The Truth About Training

Reference
Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Scope Creep

Looking Back at Past Project Issues and Scope Creep

Scope Creep is that ever present metamorphosis of growth that encroaches on projects and which, if not controlled, has the ability to exponentially delay milestones and deadlines, increase budgets, and affect timelines. Well-meaning clients, project team members, and other stakeholders can knowingly or unknowingly contribute to scope creep as numerous suggestions are made which, they believe, will “improve the project’s resulting output” (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008, p. 346). Contributions to scope creep can also come from outside of projects.

I am a former president of a local high school athletic booster club (not where I work). The athletic booster club supports all athletics in the school building by among other things running the concession stands during games, supplementing equipment purchases and awarding scholarships. All of these issues will not be discussed in this forum. The president serves for two years and when I took over the student activities coordinator  assured me that I would not have to “do that much.”

We began our work with an initial meeting in July of 2011 when our board elected officers and filled committee positions including vice president, secretary and treasurer. As the school year began things ran fairly smoothly. A key component of the booster club is parent volunteers and the club took advantage of opportunities to recruit additional members through parent nights, individual athletic meetings and other after-school activities. This process is not very complicated and required positioning booster club members in strategic locations and setting up tables in the foyer to receive parents. As the school year and my tenure as president progressed, my duties became a little more demanding with preparations for monthly meetings, conducting those meetings, maintaining the membership list and being mindful of upcoming school and booster club events taking precedence. In Practitioner Voices: Resource Challenges, Troy Achong (Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.) discusses the issue of aligning calendars, (even if it is your own) and the vast amounts of time that activity alone can consume.

Scope creep first arrived in the form of my having to designate someone else to take notes of our meetings because our secretary often did not show up. Project managers report that “coping with change is at the top of their list of important problems” (Portny, et al), and one or two times I had to conduct the meeting, take meeting notes at the same time, and then get those notes out to our general membership.

One of the athletic booster club’s most important positions is that of concessions chair. The person in charge of concessions has to pick up items from our participating merchants, keep track of the merchandise, make sure that the concessions stands are well stocked for football and basketball games and run the stand during games. “Avoiding scope creep is not possible, however installing a change control system allows a project manager to monitor, control and reduce distress” (Portny, et al, p.346-347). Our concessions chair was great at managing the merchandise in concessions, but was unfortunately, was gruff and could be abrasive to members even as they volunteered at games. I remember a particular evening when the chair and a booster member got into argument over the way she was speaking to him and I had to separate them. The chair called me later and it was clear that she thought the member was wrong. I told her diplomatically, that the argument should never have occurred, especially in the concessions stand in front of patrons, and that both of them were wrong.

Balancing my volunteer calendar (I am also an active volunteer in my college alumni association) with my work calendar took some effort but I kept that balance by building in time for it after school and on weekends. The note-taking issue was an adjustment that had to be dealt with regularly throughout my tenure as president and one of the executive members always volunteered to take meeting notes. We kept communication open with the general membership by emailing meeting notes to them. “Savvy project managers develop comprehensive monitoring systems” (Portny, et al, p.346), which would have helped here. The general issue with the concessions chair was by far the most strenuous of my two-year term. The other members shared the same concern before my arrival and while I was president but no one else wanted to handle concessions so were in a grin and bear it situation. My term as athletic booster club president ended in June 2013 and due to my work schedule and my Walden University obligations I did not have adequate time to volunteer during the 2013-2014 school year. However, I understand that some of the same problems existed this past year and the athletic booster executive board has made some changes resulting in the concessions chair stepping down.

Looking back, the techniques learned in this course, specifically, instituting a change control system, would have allowed me to do a better job of anticipating these issues and identifying their impact on the membership body (Portny, et al). I did take time to speak to some members directly about their concerns however I did not document these conversations. A change control system may have possibly yielded the following benefits: “install a process for accepting changes, communicate those changes to all concerned parties, and require that changes be approved in writing by the membership (Portny, et al).   

References

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Practitioner voices: Resource challenges [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Effective Communication

How You Communicate Effectively Versus What You Communicate Effectively!

As I reviewed the three modalities of communication in this week’s resources I was reminded of my most frequent form of communication which is email. As a result, this week’s blog task not only has me reflecting on the modalities of communication contained in this assignment but how I have structured and communicated my messages in the past whether via email, voice mail or face-to-face. Although I take pride in carefully considering the words contained in the messages I send (“excuse me”, “please”, “I appreciate”, and “thank you” are a regular part of my communication vernacular), I have rarely taken time to consider the effect my messages have on my audience, instead, choosing to focus on getting the message to my recipient(s) so they either get the information they need or they get the information to me that I need. In our video on “Communicating with Stakeholders” Dr. Harold Stovolitch describes communication as “diplomacy” and project managers who “identify and engage stakeholders”, and whose job it is to keep conflict to a minimum, as “diplomats” (Laureate Education (Producer), (n.d.).    

Of the three message modalities reviewed, the voice mail message best conveyed the true meaning and intent of the message. Jane’s tone sounded to me as if she was asking for my help versus the email, which, it seemed to me, was trying to tell me what to do. A lot of how I initially receive messages has to do with the person’s role within a situation however, having accepted and committed to the project, I now have a responsibility to act on the request no matter the modality used to communicate the message, or what Jane’s project role is (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008, p. 299).

A good project manager has already “engaged the project audience,” determined the “stakeholder, distribution, and team member lists,” identified “drivers, supporters, and observers” and gotten commitments including mine (Portny, et al, 2008). All of these factors influenced how I perceived the message and at this point my job is to deliver on my commitment so that my lack of action does not negatively influence the project, other team members or stakeholders; or imply incompetence.

Win   

References

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Communicating with stakeholders [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Aftermath of Catch-up Math

 

As the chairman, since 2008, of the Special Education Department at my high school, I have been concerned about the progress of our students in general in math. However I have been particularly concerned about the progress of our special education students who, as a group, have and are underperforming in this critical core area. In December, 2011 I received an email about a web-based math program called Catch-up Math http://catchupmath.com/how-it-works/ which allows students asynchronous (anytime/anywhere) access and help in basic math, pre-algebra, algebra and geometry with or without the assistance of a teacher (HotMath, Inc., 2014).

After investigating the program, including several conversations with cohorts in my department, emails to a contact in another building, and discussions with my principal, I ordered the Catch-up Math program in January, 2012. As extensive as I believed then that those conversations were I have learned here that they did not even begin to scratch the surface of what should have been described as a far-reaching project; to turn around the overall math progress of many of our 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th graders using Catch-up Math.

To begin, the program’s effect has not been successful. None of the valuable tools and most of the strategies learned thus far in our course was known to me then. A preliminary project analysis would have uncovered the fact that the students from our feeder middle schools (there are two), which teach 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade; students who were by then enrolled in our math classes had already struggled with math, especially pre-algebra (Lin, 2006). This was a known unknown, easily obtainable from several of the middle schools’ prior academic report cards (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008). The preliminary analysis would have also guided my conversations with my colleagues so that I asked the right questions, not just engaged in informational conversation regarding their opinion about implementing the program.

Although the principal approved ordering the Catch-up Math program and was very supportive, I would not describe him as a champion of the project because of his many commitments. As a result, because of the many priorities of administration and attributable to my not utilizing an analysis and other tools associated with project management, administrative support was not as strong as it could have been (Portny, et al, 2008). A scope of the project would have exposed the need to identify and enlist additional stakeholders, to train teachers on the use of the program, and make available advisors to help teachers organize lessons and track student progress (Portny, et al, 2008). In addition to the preliminary analysis, other methods that I would undertake differently at a minimum include framing a Statement of Work, a Scope of the project, and Work Breakdown Structure documents (Greer, 2010) & (Portny, et al, 2008). These tools would have provided more structure, support, direction and ultimately success to the project.

As has been noted, while Catch-up Math has some excellent features, including video support, and more than one hundred students were eventually enrolled in Catch-up Math, the most frustrating part of the project was getting consistent buy-in from teachers and students (Greer, 2010). Use of the program by both groups was inconsistent and lukewarm at best. If implemented properly through the project management process, and, being aware of the many supports available from the vendor, I have confidence that the probability of the project’s success would have been greater. For me this is the most professionally satisfying part of this project (Greer, 2010). 

 

References

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your

projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

HotMath, Inc. (2014). Catchup math. Retrieved from

http://catchupmath.com/how-it-  works/ [Video].

Lin, H. (2006). Instructional project management: An emerging professional practice for

design and training programs. Workforce Education Forum, 33(2). Retrieved from

http://voc.ed.psu.edu/projects/publications/books/Fall2006/WEF_fall2006.1.html

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B.

E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 

 

 

 

Continuing to Move Forward!!!

My Latest Accomplishment!

Hello, I am ecstatically declaring that I am finished with “Foundations of Research” and “Distance Learning”; two of the hardest classes that I have ever encountered and two classes that I was taking simultaneously. These courses challenged me to my limits. Thanks to everyone for lending plenty of solid support both human and spiritual). Further, I have returned to taking one class at a time with no return to doubling up (what was I thinking!!!).

My latest class started Monday and is called “Project Management in Education and Training.” In this class I will be reviewing the purposeful and careful planning elements involved in project management as well as exploring its systematic approaches. The successful project manager uses various tools, procedures, and methodologies that apply to projects in real-world education or training environments. Analyzing the interrelated nature of the triple constraints of time, cost, and scope as well as their influence on the overall quality of the project is an important facet of this course (Walden University, 2014). To more knowledge and self-directed “life-long learning!”

Win

Reference

Walden University, (2014). Retrieved from http://www.waldenu.edu/masters/ms-in-instructional-design-and-technology?tab=curriculum&subtab=online-learning#tabs