American Federation of Teachers - 14 Best Practices:

1.      Faculty must retain academic control.

2.      Faculty must be prepared to meet the special requirements of teaching at a distance.

3.      Course design should be shaped to the potential of the medium.

4.      Students must fully understand course requirements and be prepared to succeed.

5.      Close personal interaction must be maintained.

6.      Class size should be set through normal faculty channels.

7.      Courses should cover all material.

8.      Experimentation with a broad variety of subjects should be encouraged.

9.      Equivalent research opportunities must be provided

10.   Student assessment should be comparable.

11.   Equivalent advisement opportunities must be offered.

12.   Faculty should retain creative control over use and re-use of materials.

13.   All undergraduate degree programs should include same-time same-place coursework.

14.   Evaluation of distance coursework should be undertaken at all levels.

Week 1
Introduction to Training
Jan 24-30, 2005

Welcome to HRMN 406 – Employee Training and Development. This course will enable you to develop a training plan and training materials for classroom or online instruction.

Start reading the textbook as soon as possible. The early chapters are an excellent foundation for the tasks ahead. Most chapters are about 50 pages so allow enough time each week to read the text, participate in conferences, and work on assignments that are due at three weeks intervals. Print the schedule from Syllabus > Course Schedule. To print the contents of any page, right-click inside the page and click Print in the context-sensitive menu.

Conferences and assignments follow the chapter sequence in the book so keep up-to-date as much as you can. Better still, read ahead. Later chapters in the textbook are lengthy and detailed. If you do not have time to read them in their entirety, scan them for main ideas and use them as a reference source for conferences and assignments.

Note the grading system. You start with 1000 points. 900+ is an A, 800+ is a B, and so on. My goal is to get you the highest possible grade based on your performance in the course. You can be late without penalty (if you are late you are already penalized because you are behind schedule). Also, you can redo one assignment to make up lost points.

Email or phone me if you need help, guidance, or clarification. If life is giving you a raw deal, talk to me about ways to complete this course rather than bail out, which would cost you time and money to repeat. I can bend to your schedule, guide you, cajole you, or whatever you need, but ultimately you have to do the work.

Assignments 1-4 take you through the stages of developing a training plan. In the Final assignment you combine and edit them into a total training plan. You also generate a training plan for your final proctored exam. This is not an exam in the traditional sense. It is a simulated real-life experience where management gives you a specific set of requirements and you have three hours to generate a customized training plan. Like the real-world, you can use your textbook and notes. (For the exam, you will not be able to use a computer or the Internet).

My mentor, the late Guy Bensusan, was a proponent of peer learning. He loved to be the sage-on-the-stage, but he found a rich resource within his classes that made teacher domination an interference. Learners are themselves a major resource. Their collective experience, knowledge and skills dwarf even the great Guy Bensusan. This course in Employee Training and Development draws heavily on class members sharing ideas and experiences from the real world. We are products - and sometimes victims - of training and education. Everybody knows how it works. Everybody knows how to make it better. In HRMN 406, we assess, design, create, implement, and evaluate at least one lesson to show the world, or an employer, we can do it right.

Some confidential information will help me to better support your needs. Please email and tell me if you are using WebTycho for the first time, if you have a disability that influences how you learn, if you are traveling or currently reside outside the continental United States, or if you are in a security zone where you cannot easily access the Internet. Alert me if family concerns or work pressures throw you off schedule. Tell me if you are about to graduate or preparing yourself for a specific job.

Share things you want everybody to know around the Water Cooler, or when you introduce yourself in Week 1. Last semester we had two births with baby pictures and that was a treat. Share the joy!

My goal is to make this a quality experience where you leave highly motivated, with an abundance of relevant knowledge, experience, skills, and techniques; a great portfolio, a good grade; and whatever it takes to make you a better professional and get you a better job. Of course, you have to do the work!

As needed, contact me at dperrin@itdl.org and cell phone (7x24) at 805-300-8080. Go to the Class Members menu, click the box next to my name, and send me an email with a few sentences about your goals and expectations for this course. I look forward to working with each one of you through the coming months!

When you are ready, go to Conferences – Week 1. Along the way, you might want to visit the Water Cooler.

Don Perrin

They fired the cook!!!

Well, not exactly. They never hired a breakfast cook for the Kellogg Center in Pomona. The pantry manager had already bought makings for waffles with strawberries and cream - enough inventory to last for weeks. It was estimated there would be 200 people for breakfast each morning. Approximately 40 people would order waffles between 7:00am and 9:00am.

The only staff member was the pantry manager, who ordered, stored, and set out the food, and two people who poured coffee and cleared tables.

The enterprising manager plugged in the waffle-maker beside a jug of rather liquid waffle dough, a bowl of strawberries, and a bowl of cream. She wrote a sign and posted it above the waffle maker.

The waffle maker became the focus of attention. People gathered around and conversed while they made their breakfast. Clients liked it so much the Center had to buy a second waffle iron!

What the Pantry Manager created was a Performance Aid. No training was necessary.
Performance-aids and checklists are widely used in the workplace and at home.

Respond to this conference by naming

1. Five performance aids in your workplace

2. Five performance aids in your home

3. One or two "non training" solutions other than
    performance-aids and checklists?

Try to avoid responses given previously by other students, and have fun!
 

The Learning Styles Inventory identifies four learning styles –
directive (traditional), inquiry (Formulative), creative, and interactive.

People learn in all modes, yet one style is usually dominant or preferred.

The lecture is a directive style of learning--a step-by-step development toward a goal set by the instructor. This style is not for everyone. Students who are curious explore and work things out for themselves. Students who are creative are frustrated by slow and linear presentation. Students who prefer team learning are stifled by lectures and lack of interaction. The result is that curious, creative, and interactive learners - non-traditional learners who act independently or in dynamically formed groups - are considered to be inattentive, disruptive, disobedient, or even poor students. Brilliant persons like Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and Whoopee Goldberg belong in this category. Their different approach to learning caused them to be learning disabled in a traditional classroom.

Harvey Silver noted that mismatch between teaching styles and learning style may be as frustrating as trying to write with your other hand! He diagramed the relation between different learning styles as shown below. Because the inventory is based on Jung’s theories and the Myers-Briggs Personality test, Myers-Briggs terms S-T-N-F are used in the descriptions.

The Learning Styles Inventory

DIRECTIVE (Traditional Classroom)

A Sensing-Thinking person (S-T) fits the traditional DIRECTIVE model of teaching and learning via lecture-demonstration, presentation, and tutorial. This learning style fits persons who are practical, matter-of-fact, and work oriented. This is the dominant instructional mode for adult learners and does not well serve the needs and preferences of those who are inquiry oriented, interactive, and creative.

FORMULATIVE (Independent Exploration)

An iNtuitive-Thinking person (N-T) has a mind that is FORMULATIVE or inquiry oriented. This learning style fits upper cognitive endowed persons (highly intelligent) who are logical, ingenious, and curious who learn best through exploration and experiment. This is the most natural way of learning since curiosity leads to experiment, or trial and error, and the results are learned. This person tends to be self directed and proceeds ahead of the instructor in examining and developing his or her own learning. What may seem to be an oppositional, very divergent, or baffling student behavior masks the powerful learning that could take place. In the hands of an insensitive teacher this learner is set up for discouragement and failure. The same person may excel in a science fair or a self directed project.

INTERACTIVE (Team Activities)

A Sensing-Feeling person (S-F) is INTERACTIVE and fun to know. This learning style fits persons who are sympathetic, friendly, and cultivate group harmony. This person is gregarious, likes to work collaboratively and is a productive team member. He or she functions better as part of a team than working alone. In school this person may be ideally identified as the helper to students new to the class or experiencing some lesson difficulties; and an eager helper to the teacher in problem solving whatever the situation may be.

CREATIVE (Multiple Intelligences and Divergent Thinking)

An iNtuiting-Feeling person (N-F) is invariably insightful, imaginative, and CREATIVE. This person is recognized as an innovator, inventor and artist in his or her chosen disciplines. Creative persons often seem disorganized because their minds move rapidly and simultaneously in divergent paths. Some do not fit well in traditional learning environments and may fail or do poorly in required courses because they do not meet scheduled deadlines; have trouble organizing information; or produce products divergent to the instructor’s intentions. Fortunately they are capable of taking care of their own learning even if they do not respond well to traditional methods of teaching. However, as suggested above, they often suffer consequences and may dislike or drop out of school despite high academic potential.

Integration of Learning Style Preferences

In traditional or directive learning, the instructor controls lesson goals and presentation. In the other three quadrants, students participate in goal-setting and assume greater responsibility for learning. Harvey Silver advocates teaching-around-the-wheel which means combining a variety of teaching-learning styles within a lesson to involve a wider range of students. Note that WebTycho integrates all four methods of teaching and learning. Incidentally, our teaching and managing styles tend to reflect our learning style preferences because both are tied to personality.

Project 3 #1

Rate your personal preferences for each learning style as a percent for each style that total 100%. Click Respond and post your data in the following format:

%Directive_____, % Formulative_____, % Interactive_____, % Creative_____.
 

Project Week 2 #1

Find the mission statement for the organization where you work or write one. Alternatively, write a mission statement for the organization you selected for your project.

1.   Click Respond and change the header title to <Your Name> Mission Statement. Write your mission statement

2.   Review two other mission statements posted by class members and Respond with suggestions to clarify the mission and sharpen the focus.
 

The Design Team

How would you define a Trainer, Instructional Designer, and Learning Architect?

Trainer

The Trainer instructs the learner using predetermined lesson plans, curriculum and instructional materials. The trainer adapts the lesson to maximize effectiveness, and guides, motivates, instructs, mentors, tutors, and evaluates students.

Instructional Designer

The Instructional Designer is a creative person with writing, curriculum, and media skills. The designer produces courses, lessons and workshops to meet a specific set of objectives. This involves selection and organization of content (KSAs), integrating content with appropriate methods of teaching and learning, and production of environments to facilitate learning.

Learning Architect

The Learning Architect (a relatively new term) coordinates design of total learning programs beginning with needs assessment of stakeholders and practitioners - community, employers, instructors and students. For many companies, their market is the global community
 

Setting Goals and Objectives

An overall mission statement provides a focus for prioritizing goals and objectives:

Mission Statement

A mission statement is the essence of what an organization desires to accomplish in terms of products and services, clients, community, and purpose.

Strategies

Strategies define how the mission will be accomplished and how to match the organization's internal operations to the external environment.

1. Set up short-and long-term business objectives for the organization;

2. Determine courses of action to achieve those objectives;

3. Establish schedule, management, and accountability systems; and

4. Allocate resources for each phase of the strategic plan.

Strategic plans attempt to maximize opportunity and minimize market uncertainty.

Goal Statements

Goal Statements describe the intended accomplishment or end result. For example, the National Institutes of Health, Heart and Lung Division, have a goal to:

Eradicate heart disease as a cause of death in the United States.

Implementation requires objectives that are observable and measurable. A standard determines when the objective is achieved. The following objectives are intended to reduce the cholesterol level of a defined population by an average of 50 points:

Note how these objectives describe outcomes. Mager tells us there are three parts to a well-written objective:

1.       The outcome is stated clearly and without ambiguity.

2.       The conditions under which it is measured are stated.

3.       Criterion performance is stated.

Note that objectives start with an action word with a precise meaning. Mager points out that words like appreciate and understand are too vague for measurement purpose.

Let us examine the first objectives based on Mager's model.

Label all packaged foods for nutritional content, fat, and calories as specified by the Food and Drug Administration.

1.   The outcome is a nutrition label on packaged foods;

2.   The condition - what is considered to be food and what is on the label - is specified by FDA.

3.   The level or criterion is ALL packaged foods have nutrition labels.

This program was conducted 30 years ago with than intensive campaign involving print, electronic, and face-to-face communications for a defined community - Stanford CA. The program achieved its goal and results persisted for about 18 months.

Levels of Learning

Choosing the right action word establishes the level of learning. For example, knowledge is the base level for cognitive learning. Concept formation is the next higher level. The hierarchy, according to Benjamin Bloom, is knowledge, concept, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Each level requires an increasingly broader base of knowledge and experience.

 
When you are writing objectives, select an action verb at the appropriate level from the list on the next page:

The portal for Bloom’s Taxonomy is: http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/guides/bloom.html

It provides the following useful definitions:

Knowledge: terminology; specific facts; ways and means of dealing with specifics (conventions, trends and sequences, classifications and categories, criteria, methodology); universals and abstractions in a field (principles and generalizations, theories and structures): Also defined as remembering (recalling) information.

Comprehension: Grasp (understand) the meaning of informational materials.

Application: Use previously learned information in new and concrete situations to solve problems that have single or best answers.

Analysis: Break down information into its component parts, examine (try to understand) organizational structure to develop divergent conclusions by identifying motives or causes, making inferences, and/or finding evidence to support generalizations.

Synthesis: Creatively or divergently applying prior knowledge and skills to produce a new or original whole.

Evaluation: Judging the value of material based on personal values/opinions, resulting in an end product, with a given purpose, without real right or wrong answers.

Note: There are Two Other Domains for Education and Training Objectives:

Affective Domain (emphasizing feeling and emotion) and
Psychomotor Domain (motor skills)

Project 3 #2

1. Apply Mager's criteria to the health objectives listed in the Conference on Eradicating Heart Disease and rewrite them as necessary.

2. Based on the mission statement you created in week 2, write one goal and three objectives that meet Mager's criteria. Pay attention to action words used to describe the performance or outcome, and state the cognitive level of each objective (knowledge, comprehension, application, etc.) based on the action required.