Personal Development Plan

Introduction to Assignment

This week we were required to complete a personal development plan for ourselves and to also include a presentation to an organization on the importance of having a training and development plan for its employees.

Video Presentation

Personal Development Plan

Competencies

Strengths

·       Learning strategies (selecting and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things)

·       Critical thinking (using logic reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems)

·       Making decisions and solving problems (analyzing information and evaluating results to choose the best solution and solve problems)

Areas for Improvement

·       Communications and Media (Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods. Including alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media)

·       Virtual training and teaching others (instructing others through the use of a virtual classroom)

·       Oral Presentation skills (presenting information in large face to face environments)

Development Goals

Long Term Goals: Accept a position of increased responsibility on the level of learning and development manager (or beyond). The area of specific interest is in performance consulting.

Short Term Goals: Continue to improve my skills in public speaking, while using my skills to design, develop, implement, and evaluate store sales training.

Training and Development Needs

The table below shares the training and development needs I will require to achieve my long and short term goals.

Development Ideas	Rational for Development
Executive Education (Tuition Reimbursement)	M.S. in Instructional Design and Technology – emphasis in Training and Performance (Walden University) The benefits to the organization are: I will further hone my competencies and skills by applying theory, research, creativity, and problem-solving skills to a variety of technology applications in order to help reshape the way information are created, integrated, and delivered. You will also develop the skills to assess, create, and manage training materials. The combination of these skills will help you to support technology-based training in educational institutions and corporate training environments. Through your coursework, you will gain the experience needed to efficiently and effectively use technology and multimedia tools, including Adobe Captivate and Adobe Creative Cloud applications (Walden University, 2017). Noe states Verizon Wireless tuition reimbursement program resulted in increased morale and helped to attract new and retain current employees (p 380). By completing this degree I could be considered an asset for the organization's succession planning strategy.
Mentoring Relationship	A mentor would help provide me with career support. For example, career support to include but not limited to, coaching, protection, sponsorship, and provide challenging assignments (Noe, 2013). What I could provide to the mentor is helping them develop their interpersonal skills, communication skills, and increase their self-esteem and worth in the organization (Noe, 2013).
Job Experience	New job assignments can help take advantage of my existing skills experiences, and contacts, while helping me develop new ones (Noe, 2013). This could support the short term goal above to build sales training for our salespeople.
Job Rotation	Job rotation would give me the opportunity to try a series of job assignments in various functional areas, which in turn will make the training courses I build stronger supporting my short term goal above. Noe states job rotation helps employees gain an overall appreciation of the company’s goals, increases their understanding of different functions, develops a network of contacts, and improves problem-solving and decision-making skills (p 389).

High Tech Training

Introduction

This week’s assignment we were asked to explain the impacts of five selected technologies has and will continue to have on how people learn and interact, and the implications of this for training.

The five technologies I choose to focus on are mobile learning, distant learning, simulations and games, virtual reality, and social media. Let’s take a look at what I found through my research.

Mobile Learning

In the New Horizons report, put out by the New Media Consortium 2017, cited a study done by McGraw-Hill Education and Hanover Research of over 2,600 US colleges students, nearly two-thirds were using their smartphones to study. They predicted mobile learning will grow by 2020 to $37.6 billion (p 40).

What I struggle with is visualizing mini-courses being effective on the smartphone-size screen. So what would be the best type of learning when using mobile? That is when I found a study done by IBM. The results verified my hunch that learners are not going to use their small little smartphone screen for mini-courses. What IBM found from their study of 400 employees they surveyed and interviewed, is employees in nearly all of IBM’s business units across all geographic regions were using their mobile phones almost exclusively for in field performance support from colleagues and access to late-breaking information (Ahmad, and Orton, 2010).

The implications for mobile training is it will allow us an easy way to get up-to-date information to learners and employees, it can be useful for enhancing transfer of training through providing follow-up; it brings training to learners who constantly travel, or don’t have the time to attend face-to-face classroom courses or programs (Noe, 2013). Now let’s take a look at distant learning.

Distant learning

Distant learning for this blog will focus on the virtual classroom. With supporting technologies like Adobe Connect, Webex, and Skype we are able to help organizations to have a competitive advantage over their competition by reaching their geographically dispersed workforce. Saving them on financial burdens related to training like travel expenses. Through the use of a virtual classroom, we can provide information about new products, policies, or procedures, as well as deliver skills training and expert lectures to field locations (Noe, 2013). Simulations and games are growing in leaps and bounds over the years and work well as a supplement to mobile and distant learning so let’s take a look at that next.

Simulations and Games

How many of you go home after a long day of work pull out the iPad or other device and start playing Candy Crush? Be honest. I know there are millions of you out there because my Facebook account is always getting a request for more lives. Would you look at this game as a learning tool? This puzzle game actually helps in developing thinking skills. In the article Candy Crush Saga by Learning works for kids they point out not only that this game is highly addictive but it promotes flexibility and planning when it comes to building one's thinking skills (Gadget, 2017). Who would have thought? The U.S. Army uses simulation technology to teach counterinsurgency techniques to battalion commanders. The key with simulations and games is how to use the fun and motivational aspects of games to help employees acquire knowledge and skills (Noe, 2013). The implication to training is its cost savings in travel expenses and the ability for the learner to practice in a safe environment. Simulations and games is a great transition into the next technology virtual reality.

 Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) enables learners to step into an immersive, computer-simulated alternate world where sensory experiences can occur (NMC, 2016). Just like simulations, virtual reality allows the learner to practice dangerous tasks without putting themselves or others in danger (Noe, 2013). At the 2017 Training Conference in San Diego, I had the opportunity to play with the technology that will support virtual reality. Though the cost of the camera and goggles are extremely affordable the software to edit the video and put it into a 3D state is not quite there yet. I expect by next year that we will be seeing the kinks in the software worked out and a price that will make this an affordable tool to use for training. Finally, let’s turn the spotlight on social media.

Social Media

The world of training seems to be exploding with new approaches to informal learning. Social Media fits nicely with an informal learning approach take a look at YouTube for example. The other day my headlight went out on my Buick. Instead of taking it to the shop and being charged an ungodly amount of money to have it repaired, I turned to search on YouTube for a video to show me how to replace it. After investing $30.00 for the light, 20 minutes of my time watching the video and getting the screw to finally come lose, my new light was in and working properly. I was then able to leave a comment to some helpful tips I uncovered while replacing my light with anyone else that would review the video. The impact on social media training is instruction is augmented by information and collaboration (Stolovitch, 2010). What a quick way to learn! Watch, do, and share the experience. Wala! New light installed in my car.

Conclusion

Media and technology can substantially improve the efficiency of training and learning. However, Stolovitch warns technology has little to no impact on the effectiveness of training (p 182). There, of course, is exceptions to his warning. Stolovitch adds technology can become effective in training when the skills and knowledge to be acquired are of a technological nature and are taught using the technology for which the skills and knowledge are required (p182).

References

New Media Consortium. (2017). New Horizon Report 2017 Higher Education Edition. Retrieved from https://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2017-higher-education-edition/

Ahmad, Nabeel, and Peter Orton. “Smartphones Make IBM Smarter, But Not As Expected.” T+D 64, no. 1 (January 2010): 46–50

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

Gadget. (2017). Candy Crush Saga. Retrieved from http://learningworksforkids.com/playbooks/candy-crush-saga/

New Media Consortium. (2016). New Horizon Report 2017 Higher Education Edition. Retrieved from https://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2016-higher-education-edition/

Stolovitch, H. D. (2011). Telling ain’t training: updated, expanded, and enhanced, 2^nd edition. American Society for Training and Development

Planning for Needs Analysis

Assignment Introduction

In this week’s assignment, we were to explore a company from a list that was provided to us. We were asked to try to get a sense of the organization's products and/or services, consumers, management philosophy, and strategic objectives. Then we were to recommend how we would approach the needs assessment specific to stakeholder we would need to get buy-in from, types of questions we would ask during the organizational, audience, and task analysis phases, what documents or records might we request to see, and what techniques would we employ.

Intel

The Organization I choose to explore was Intel. Intel offers both product and services to a large range of customers. The customers could be from business, education, or consumer and can be located globally. The products and service they offer are anywhere from processors, devices, networking and communications, to software and services. This by no means is a complete list of all their products and services but gives you a good idea that they are a tech organization. The management philosophy started with Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore which is “go off and do something wonderful” and included a hands-on work environment (Intel, 2013). Their strategic objectives are to power the majority of servers and the cloud, allowing businesses to transform their industries by quickly sharing data, storing information, and making content accessible from anywhere in the world (Intel, 2017).

What stakeholders would I want to make sure I have buy-in from?

I would want to include upper-level managers to determine if training is related to the company’s business strategy and if so, what type of training is required (Noe, 2013). Mid-Level managers would be included to attain the financial goals for the particular units they supervise (Noe, 2013). Finally, I would want to include SMEs to find the possible gaps in knowledge and skills and job incumbents that are currently performing the jobs to tap into their knowledge about the job (Noe, 2013).

The type of questions I would ask and to whom during the organizational, audience, and task analysis phases?

Organizational Analysis Questions

Upper-level Management

• Is training important to achieve our business objectives?
• How does training support our business strategy?
• What are the threats to our talent base?

Mid-level Management

• Do you want to spend money on training?
• If you want to spend money on training what is the budget?

Audience Analysis Questions

Upper-level Management

• Do employees in specific functions or business units need training?
• What do employees need to do to accomplish our business objectives?

Mid-Level Management

• Who should be trained? Managers? Professionals? Core employees?

SME

• Do you see anyone other members of the organization that isn’t on my list that should also be included in the training?

Task Analysis Questions

Upper-level Management

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

Mid-level Management

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

SME

• What tasks need to be performed?
• What is the necessary equipment needed to perform the task?
• What are the conditions under which the task needs to be performed?
• What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for successful task performance?

Job incumbents

• How frequently is the task performed?
• What tools are used to perform the task successfully?
• What role performs the task?
• What are the steps to performing the task successfully?
• Is there currently a process or procedure document on how to perform the task successfully?

What documents or records might I request to see?

The type of data I would request to see would be historical data, which should include performance date levels. This data would help with establishing what current state looks like and how we can get to the desired performance upper-management is looking to obtain (Noe, 2013). Also if there are help desk calls, assessment result, focus group documentation, interviews, and other companies training practices (Noe, 2013)

What techniques would I employee and why?

The technique I would use for performing the needs analysis would be to schedule a meeting with upper-management first so I could begin the organizational analysis. Since the organizational analysis identifies whether training suits the company’s strategic objectives and whether the company has the budget, time, and expertise for training it should be conducted first (Noe, 2013). The audience analysis and task analysis can be conducted simultaneously because it is difficult to determine whether performance deficiencies are related to a training problem without understanding the tasks and the work environment (Noe, 2013).

Reference

“Intel CEOs: A Look Back.” Intel Free Press, March 20, 2013. http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/intel-ceos-a-look-back/4967/

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

The Truth about Training

What might you say to convince an individual that training is important, not complicated, or even necessary?

The truth about training starts with a look at the forces that influence working and learning. In this day and age, we are seeing training and training departments being affected by the globalization of business, demographic changes, new technology coming at the speed of light, and economic changes.

Let’s talk about the influence of the demographical change organizations are facing. This is the first time in history where the workforce is made up of five different generations. Companies that can increase and embraces diversity will also gain a competitive advantage over their competition. Leaders need to be aware though that members of each generation may have misperceptions of each other, causing work place tensions and misunderstandings. Also, they will each be looking for something different from their leaders and the organization that employs them. This is where training needs to start revolutionizing itself.

For an organization to be competitive it needs to enhance its capacity to learn, adapt, and change by becoming a learning organization. The most important aspects of a learning organization are the ability for employees to learn from failure and from success. This is where the diverse workforce will be most innovative. Leadership is going to have to develop new skills that will teach them how to be mentors and coaches in a learning organization. Learning and Development departments will also have to support diversity training for its workforce to cut down or eliminate misperceptions, work place tensions and misunderstandings among the different generations. Training must be strategic. It must align with the business strategy and support the business outcomes the stakeholders are looking to achieve.

Finally, an emphasis needs to be put on evaluating your training programs and events. Find what is working, learn and change what isn’t giving the organization the results they want. 

The Truth about Training Podcast

Project Management Week 6

Analyzing Scope Creep

Introduction

For this week’s blog, we were asked to share a project that experienced issues related to scope creep.

Description of project that experienced scope creep

I was assigned to analyze an old training module and figure out what would be involved to update this training to the new process. At the beginning of the project, it was decided on that all videos would be removed and the eLearning module would be retired. The poster that the service techs used as a reference would now become a training tool by store managers along with remaining as a reference tool for service techs. The process on the poster would need updating. 

What specific scope creep issues occurred?

A decision was made by management that they wanted to replace the old videos with animated .gifs. This innovative solution would require our developer to obtain this new knowledge and skill for developing animated.gifs

How did you or other stakeholders deal with those issues at the time?

The PM sat with the developer to estimate how long it would take to acquire this knowledge and skills to actually created the animated .gifs. She then adjusted the timeline, budget, and scope of the project and called a meeting with the stakeholders that would make the final decision to move forward with this approach.

She shared the new timeline they would be looking at for completion of the project, how this innovative idea was out of scope for the original agreed upon project, and the estimated cost the idea would add to the project for the developer to require the necessary knowledge and skill to build the animated. gifs.

Had I been in the position of managing the project, what could I have done to better manage these issues and control the scope of the project?

One of the challenges I saw at the beginning of this project is that there was never really a planning meeting with the core team. There also, needed to be further audience analysis to be done. How much time did they have to train? How are they performing the repair now? Also, there was never a brainstorm meeting with IDs and Developers to see if there were better solutions that could be implemented. The update was pretty much dictated to by the performance and learning advisor. 

Once I had the information from the analysis and the brainstorming meeting I could then build a better project plan with a well defined scope, timeline, and estimated cost that management could share with stakeholders.

Week 4 Project Management Assignment

Project Schedule Estimating Activity Duration

In week 4 I was a task with conducting a web search and locating at least two resources that would be useful in planning and ID project's schedule. I was then to explore the sites and consider how I might use them to help plan a project's schedule, budget, or break down a project's tasks. Finally, I am to write a brief description and evaluation of the resources available on each site. Share the most helpful thing I found about each site and how I might use it.

The first site I found was Chapman Alliance. Chapman Alliance can be found at http://www.chapmanalliance.com/howlong/. What I really like about this site is it gives the ID a baseline for the average of how long it takes to create learning. They broke creating learning down by industry. Then even broke it down further by what type of learning is being development. They base creating learning off the ADDIE model and provide the reader with percentages of times for each phase and what type of task will be performed to develop specific training like instructor-led and eLearning.  Chapman even included an average cost comparison summary in their PDF presentation. I strongly suggest if you are just getting into instructional design or you are working for a company that is just starting to build their training department that you take the time to review their presentation.

The second site I will share is Smartsheet. This is a collaboration application that allows you to plan your projects out at a detailed task level, assigns resources, assigns completion dates, check the task as completed, and allows the whole team to collaborate in real time. This site can be found at https://www.smartsheet.com/. I have been using this project-planning tool now for over two years and I find for what I need to track it is pretty sufficient. If you are working on a large-scale project like implementing SAP you may want to look at a more robust application.

References

Chapman Alliance. (2017). How long does it take to create learning? Retrieved from http://www.chapmanalliance.com/howlong/

Smartsheet. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.smartsheet.com/

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Project Management & Training Week 3

Communicating Effectively

Description of assignment this week

This week we reviewed the same message delivered using three different forms of communication modalities. The three forms were email, voice mail, and face-to-face.

The message consisted of Jane contacting Mark to get the data from a missing report that Mark had in his possession. Jane was asking Mark if he could giver her an ETA on receiving the report since the data in the report was needed for her to complete her task on time.

Interpretations of the message delivered in each modality

This week we learned when it comes to written communications it should begin with a clear purpose, state the situation, include possible solution, indicate if a sign-off is required, specify the form that the response is required to take, and keep tone business friendly and respectful (Laureate, 2016). After reviewing the three delivery methods of the message from Jane to Mark I felt that it did a pretty good job of included these requirements. The interpretation from one modality to another did seem different to me.

In the email version, I could not tell the tone or body language that would have been associated with the message. So I was unable to tell if Jane was upset with Mark taking his time getting her the missing report.

When I listen to the voice mail version I was able to tell that Jane was pleasantly requesting the missing report and didn’t seem like she was frustrated with the length of time Mark was taking to hand over the missing report.

Then I reviewed the face-to-face version of the message and I was left feeling that Jane is getting a little frustrated that she cannot seem to get a copy of the missing report from Mark by visually seeing her facial expressions.

Changes in interpretation from one modality to the next of the message

Dr. Stolovitch discussed that effective communications are influenced by spirit and attitude, tonality and body language, timing, and the personality of the recipient (Laureate, 2016). After reviewing all three communications modalities it is clear that it can be difficult to figure out the tonality and body language of the author of an email has compared to having the same communication with them face-to-face. At least with a voice mail, you can possibly figure out by the tone of the voice being used as to the possible feelings of the communicator toward a situation.

My thoughts regarding what this activity implied about communicating with members of a project team.

Depending on the modality used to deliver the message the message can be interpreted differently. Important communications should be done with all team members through a virtual or face-to-face meeting. Once this type of communication is completed it is important to document what decisions were made, how decisions will be implemented and by who.

How will this new knowledge help me communicate more effectively with others in the future?

As an instructional designer I must switch and put on my project manager hat I need to make sure that I communicate clearly, concisely, and with a focus to help my project team stay focused and on target. There will always be room in misinterpreting a communication so it is important that any decisions made should also be documented.

References

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

Project Management Week 2

Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

This week’s blog focuses on the importance of the Post-mortem analysis of a project. Recently I was involved in not only being the instructional designer, developer, and facilitator but the project manager for a training project. Let me share a description of the project with you.

A brief description of the project.

I was asked to build a training project for our regional administrators on what their new roles and responsibilities would be in supporting store managers in the use of the new learning management system (LMS). The training would also require that the regional administrators perform tasks within the LMS. I was given five weeks to analyze, design, develop, and facilitate training for 26 regional administrators spread across the U.S. using a virtual classroom, course training materials, and an LMS sandbox that was forever changing since it was being configured as training was built. If you’re a practicing instructional designer I’m sure you’re chuckling right about now and feeling my pain.

What contributed to the project’s success or failure?

Dr. Van Rekom stated this week that one of the challenges of a project is setting the scope of a project right at the beginning (Laureate, 2016). Without documenting what is in scope for a project or out of scope can cause scope creep. Scope creep can increase the time, budget, and scope to any project.

In the case of the administrator training project, I had documented that the scope would include training 26 regional administrators over 4 sessions that would be 2 hours in length. The success of the project would be measured through level 1, 2, and 3 evaluations. By the time it came to deliver the first session management had the training audience up to 76 participants. Many of these participants would never have access to perform the task within the new LMS and did not have access to the sandbox. This kept them from participating in any of the sandbox activities, which in turn caused confusion the first day and I was unable to get through all the training task for that particular session. From the level 1 evaluation, I was able to show management that by adding the additional participants the regional admins that were supposed to learn their new responsibility tasks within the LMS felt the class was too large for adequate learning to take place.

Also within scope was to train the regional admins on how to run out of the box reports from the LMS. To accomplish this training task the reporting function would need to be working properly 1 week before training started. As the project moved forward it was quite obvious that the reporting function was not going to be working properly before training began. This issue was brought to the stakeholder’s attention and it was decided that training for reporting would take place anyway. Once again from the level 1 evaluation we found that the regional admins found this part of the training as a challenge since they were unable to see what the reports would look like once ran.

Being able to measure for success and documenting the results really helped to share with the stakeholders the importance of not creating scope creep within our projects.

I also learned that no matter how well you state what is in scope you can only support it so far management will always have the final say. This is a heads up to any of you thinking about becoming an ID or PM.

Which parts of the PM process would have made the project more successful? Why?

During the beginning of any project, you are identifying your project team and assembling them before the kick-off meeting. This allows the project manager to document in the project plan each team member's role and responsibility. Part of the process during a kick-off meeting, as a project manager, is to obtain specific commitments from each team member. In the case of the regional admin training, I believe that not only did I document management's role and responsibility, I thought I had also obtained their commitment to support what was in and out of scope for the project. Apparently, this was not the case.

Conclusion

When performing your post-mortem review take the time to analyze each phase in your project plan. If there are many project team members send out a list of questions prior to the meeting to give those analytical thinkers time to form a response (Greer, 2010). This will allow them a chance to come to the meeting prepared to share what they thought worked well and what didn't during the project. Once you have all responses documented you will be able to see if the challenges during the project were because of team dynamics and/or technical process challenges. If there are more than three improvements that need to be made. I focus on the top three for the next project.

Reference

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Practioner voices: Overcoming ‘scope creep’ [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Greer, M., (2010). The Project Management Minimalist: Just Enough PM to Rock Your Projects! Laureate Education. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201740_02/MS_INDT/EDUC_6145/artifacts/pm-minimalist-ver-3-laureate.pdf