Are you a Human Resource Management (HRM) professional or manager? If not, do you know one?

I am redesigning and teaching a graduate Human Resource class in the Fall, Research Process and Methodology at New York University, and I am looking to speak (briefly) with HR professionals to ask them one simple question:

1. What research skills or methods do you or your team need to know and understand to do your job?

If anybody can direct me to any responses, please either email me at jk904 (at) nyu (dot) edu or please comment below. I want to meet the needs of my future students, and what better way to do this than by asking people already in the field?

Thank you.

The New York Times had a recent article entitled Who Is the Walrus? that I have been thinking about and processing for the past few weeks. The more I reflect on it, the more I realize how assumptions quietly sneak back into preparation and delivery of teaching and learning with adults.

Now, I have worked in and around adult and organizational learning for most of my professional life, and every now and then something comes along to wake me up again to various assumptions and the like that I hold about learners. I know about andragogy, hegemony, postmodern paradigmatic structures, critical theory, and the like. I have studied all of these things and they have helped to transform my worldviews on teaching and learning.

Nevertheless, it is easy to fall back into the pre-learned status quo and teach as we learned. Enter, the walrus.

The article on walruses raised my thinking quit a bit, and I can’t help but think there is a lot here for us to learn about teaching and learning. So, what can walruses teach us? Here are three thoughts:

1. Big scary things aren’t always as they seem. Yes, walruses can way over 2000 pounds and can approach very quickly, but as the author learned they are not as intimidating as they appear. In fact, he learned they like to play, are highly social, and are so intelligent that scientists use the term “creative” when discussing walruses. They don’t quite charge–they come over to play and love to have their faces blown on. How easy it is to miss this because we can’t get past the size, tusks, and noise? How often do we do this with learners, perhaps because of their organizations, hair styles, or use of professional language? Throw in culture, history, and status (using whatever measure is at hand), and you get the picture?
2. Some things that appear mean are really only happy. It is easy to draw conclusions about the tusks and how the walruses bang into one another as if they are fighting. In reality, the tusks help them get onto the ice and out of the water. Fight? Walruses are so social and so like the company of other walruses that they climb all over one another, and if no walruses are around, will even seek out other moving objects (such as, sadly, a ship). Do we at times misunderstand what our learners want or have to offer, especially those who are (for whatever variety of reasons) different from us? Can we misinterpret their questions, as well as their learning needs, distractions, and levels of commitment to education they had no role in creating?
3. Noise to some can be considered singing to others. A male walrus can be heard from 10 miles away, and can sing in complex forms using all body parts for days at a time. This singing is for the female walrus who can, amazingly, seem to distinguish the love song through all the noise of all the other walruses. Not everybody likes opera or rap, but some people really get into one or the other (or even both). Things that may appear like a confused mess can really be complicated processing by learners (ever seen a Philip Glass opera?). Have we ever thought something was wrong or nonsensical because we don’t get it, though our learners fight to affirm their experiences (that we in turn can easily dismiss)? How often have we ever claimed (even internally) that we know our learner’s context better than they do, and then handily proceeded from there?

I am still considering how much I learned with this article and the next few weeks of attentive reflective practice. While my perceptions and appreciation of this wonderful animal has shifted and grown, I so very want to bring this into my professional and academic work. Failing to do so will leave me unable to reach out to my learners in ways they need. 

After all, learning is most valuable when we reach the learners where they are in and as themselves. 

I am teaching a new class that begins tonight, Project Management for Training.

How many times has somebody in the training and development, or workplace learning and performance fields (not to mention human resource development, industrial / organizational psychology, organizational development, etc.) been told to develop a class in this or that without being equipped for managing the process itself? This is what this course is focused upon, project management of the training development and delivery function. Think about it — trainers and designers and developers and project managers are all skills and jobs in their own right, but in the learning function, they are often combined without recognizing all that is really involved. 

The description:

Whether you’re conducting a single training session for a small audience or multiple sessions for a large group, a training program–like a project in any other discipline–must have an effective plan to guide and track progress. This class provides you with a planning process and teaches you techniques to prepare and deliver training projects consistently and effectively. Focusing on logistics, rationale, scope, timescales, risk management, and budget, you acquire the skills to communicate with the training project’s stakeholders to ensure optimum performance.  

I am looking forward to working with my learners over the next six weeks. BTW, I wish I would have had this course when I started in the field (and I am not saying this just because I am teaching it!).

If the ASTD 2009 call for papers were not enough, the call for papers for AHRD (Academy of Human Resource Development) 2009 is also online and available. AHRD is one of my main professional organizations, and I was not able to attend it this year. The major change? Longer full papers can be submitted as well as Refereed Presentations and Scholar-Practitioner Presentations.

I am interested in doing some research and submitting it, though I have to narrow down my ideas!

BTW, the submission dates for AHRD is August 25, 2008 and the one for ASTD is July 15, 2008.

It seems the discussion that has been going on (cf. Gina, among others), on where Learning 2.0 is (and I recently posted about this with some very inciteful comments). Her last post, and my response to Jim Groom on his reaction to my thoughts has me going in a new direction.

With talk about Web 2.0 and Learning 2.0 and Academic vs (&?) Corporate use of individual and engaging learning applications, I am now thinking about the cost issues and ROI.

Now, take a deep breadth — I am not a proponent of measuring ROI, especially with applications that are difficult to even explain to the uninitiated newbies. But, if I wanted to (read between the lines — perhaps my organization won’t do anything without an ROI study), what could I do? It is already enough of a challenge to demonstrate how any expenditure can provide an ROI, especially after Corporate America (to limit my sweeping statement a bit) lost its shirt in the rush to embrace all things eLearning a few years back. With those calculations out the window as really involved and interactive elearning takes much longer to develop (and thus determine its ROI), as per Bryan Chapman whose blog post lists these amounts (which I am reproducing from his ASTD 2008 presentation handout, which he claimed during his session was a bit outdated):

34:1 Instructor-Led Training (ILT), including design, lesson plans, handouts, PowerPoint slides, etc.

33:1 PowerPoint to E-Learning Conversion. Not sure why it takes less time then creating ILT, but that’s what we discovered when surveying 200 companies about this practice

220:1 Standard e-learning which includes presentation, audio, some video, test questions, and 20% interactivity

345:1 Time it takes for online learning publishers to design, create, test and package 3rd party courseware

750:1 Simulations from scratch. Creating highly interactive content

then what do we do?

If we have enough trouble determining pure ROI (meaning a financial return, not the unmeasurable peace of mind knowing the new orientees get the approved HIPAA training and nothing else), then how on earth can we measure successful implementation of Learning 2.0?

Now, off to go and Tweet about this now.

There are some interesting discussions that are occurring around the edublogosphere right now about corporate learning vs. edupunk. I just commented on items that Gina and Tony discussed, with their thoughts partly in response to Jim’s and recent thinking about edupunk ideology. As an aside, all three of their blogs are well worth reading for different perspectives on Learning 2.0 (and if I may, Jane is also doing some interesting work in this area).

In a nutshell, they are all discussing corporate and academic learning using Web 2.0, which is (oversimplified, I know) fundamentally what Learning 2.0 is all about. While we can debate the hows and whys of this, I am more immediately interested in the wheres right now. Where is all this happening? I struggle to get my graduate and undergraduate students to use Twitter, a wiki, del.icio.us, and a host of other technologies, and while some do adopt them, most are not interested in anything other than what they are already using (which, once again in a Nutshell, means YouTube, and to a lesser extent, Facebook). In my corporate work, the issue is similar–many people struggle even using internal podcasts, much less blogs or anything Ajax-based. It would seem short-sited to only use what students already use (somewhat like teaching them only what they are already comfortable doing, which would even more limit education, but I digress).

Where are these teaming populations busting at the seems to use corporate and educational Web 2.0 elements in learning? I live and work and consult primarily in Manhattan, and this is where most of my learners are as well.

I am wondering if the questions we are considering are perhaps too limited. Perhaps we should be asking “where?” these learners are, as I am wondering if these social and networking and learning and sharing technologies out there are not more proliferate in less demographically busy areas, such as New York? Can it be that Web 2.0 is more popular where people are not so concentrated, due to necessity? Thinking pragmatically, why should I take an eLearning class when we have enough people and expertise for face to face instruction? Why should I post to a discussion board when we can discuss it face to face in class (which is how most NYC academic institutions seem to prefer to operate)? Do I really need to post my pictures when I see all of you and can send you a link? Doesn’t RSS work better when I don’t readily have access to what I need?

Thinking about this in another way, how many people do I follow and speak with on Twitter who live near Manhattan? How about the bloggers I follow (as I heavily use RSS to process the information overload I face), are they also here? With exceptions to be counted on less than one hand, the answer is no.

Yes, I am intentionally taking a contrarian position here, and those who know and work with me know I have a passion for integrating technology so thoroughly into learning that they are no longer seen as parts of a whole, but just “learning.” Instead, I am hoping to move this discussion forward by considering another element I think we need to more actively consider.

The May issue of T&D (Training and Development, the ASTD monthly magazine) had an interesting article on networking and the value of establishing and promoting business networking. While the article is not online, there is a related podcast for this).

The article by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon focuses on the phrase “unconnected employees,” by which they mean “employees who lack the skills to build effective business relationships.” As I find business and academic networking a challenge, I thought at times they were writing this article about / for me!

They describe 8 ways that employees who do not network can hurt a business:

1. They get off to a slow start as new hires
2. They are less productive
3. They don’t make it their business to recruit
4. They don’t know how to make their expertise known so it can be used, and so they can advance in their careers
5. They are less successful as managers
6. They make poor decisions
7. They aren’t creative and innovative
8. They fail to bring back business intelligence from conferences

Wow, do I have a lot of work to do, especially having just returned from the ASTD conference last week!

While I am not sure how the authors created their list (there was a mention in the article about the literature, yet I would like to have seen something a bit more methodological so I can read more about this, especially from an evidence-based perspective), the list does in fact seem to make some sense to me. The authors speak briefly about each of these, though I hope they consider writing a follow-up with more concrete suggestions for how to address each of these.

To take a concrete first step in addressing these issues in my own professional practice, I revised my LinkedIn profile and am committing to try to leverage the system. Take a look at it; any suggestions are most appreciated!

Come to think of it, since ASTD does not seem to be promoting Web 2.0 connections with its members, it should not surprise me that I cannot locate a conference tag to begin tagging my blog (and liveblog) posts and Tweets.

Thus, I will take the lead and create a tag for this year’s conference ~ astd2008. I invite anybody else to use this while blogging, submitting to Technorati, using via Twitter, del.icio.us, and the like.

I am attending the ASTD 2008 International Conference & Exposition next week in San Diego, and have been trying to locate others in the workplace learning and performance field who blog and also Tweet who may want to schedule a meetup. Thus far I have located Tony Karrer and Beth Griese, neither of whom I have previously met. There have to be others attending the largest training and development conference who blog and Tweet, haven’t there?

I wonder why ASTD is not furiously working to catch up and connect its members in the Web 2.0 sphere?