ASTD 2008 Tag? Let’s Use astd2008

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.

Technorati Tags:

Project Management for Training

I am teaching a new class that begins next week — Project Management for Training. The course description is listed as:

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 teaching this class, as I am able to bring my skills as a senior instructional designer (my full-time title) and project management (what I primarily do right now) and merge them with my expertise in adult education and human resource development (two of my graduate degrees).

After working in this field for some time now, this this seems to be my life recently . . .

project management

I am interested in seeing if anybody has any useful references or websites they want to share, as well as any stories about how they have seen project management brought into the training function. Any thoughts?

Technorati Tags: ,

Disciplinary Perspectives on Evidence-Based Practice: The More the Merrier

Research and Theory for Nursing PracticeAnother editorial I wrote with two of my colleagues, Joanne Singleton at Pace University and Rona Levin at Pace University and Visiting Nurse Service of New York, was just published in the current issue of Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, Volume 21, Number 4. Entitled Disciplinary Perspectives on Evidence-Based Practice: The More the Merrier, we considered the question:  What does evidence-based practice mean and how is it defined and used by various disciplines?

Do I smell a research thread around evidence-based practice, especially in the area of scholar-practitioners? Let’s see, where is my copy of Donald Schon’s Reflective Practitioner?

Is HRD Research Making a Difference in Practice?

Human Resource Development QuarterlyThe first article I have published as the lead author just came out in the Winter 2007 issue of Human Resource Development Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 4. HRDQ is the research journal of the Academy of Human Resource Development. The editorial is entitled Is HRD Research Making a Difference in Practice?, and I wrote it with my writing colleague, Robin Yap.

As scholar-practitioners, we are very interested in the bridge between research and practice, and how that affects organizations and how people function within them. We discussed the value of scholar-practitioners, those people who seek to bring the findings of research into practical use, so that decisions and processes within organizations have more than simply best practices to follow–they are supported by sound research that is in turn built upon applicable theory.

Our conclusion is that it is critical for the field of HRD that research positively impacts practice. After all, if it does not, then it belongs in the fascinating and grand but practically useless world of Plato’s Forms.

Technorati Tags: , ,