Will at Work Learning

Thinking about SMART Goals

In Thiagi's Newsletter this month, he has a wild stream of reflections about SMART goals.

Kind of funny. Nice to have the broad perspective.

Check it out here...

Great Job for Readers of this Blog

Because you dear readers must care that learning interventions are research-based, this job may be of interest:

JOB DESCRIPTION

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center 

Position Title: Director of Learning Sciences Program in the Department of Surgery

Department/Section: Surgery

Reports To (Position Title): Vice Chair of Education and Chairman of the Department of Surgery

Expectations for All Employees:  Supports the organization’s Code of Excellence and Values by exhibiting the following behaviors:  Integrity, Respect, Compassion, Excellence, Stewardship and Community.

Age Specific Care Requirements:  N/A

Position Summary: 

The Department of Surgery at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has embraced a goal of international recognition for innovative learning strategies that foster the acquisition of skills and knowledge.   Current initiatives include developing surgical residents as educators; improving the lecture experience through flipped classroom, simulation, and team based learning; and enhancing the intraoperative teaching experience.

We are seeking a Director of Learning Sciences to help develop and implement a strategy that creates and sustains a community of learners to meet this goal.  A background in medical education is not essential. In the process of this endeavor, the Director would work with our clinical education faculty and students to foster and promote opportunities for interactive learning, including networked learning and team-based learning, as well as to support active learning by providing multi-modal learning opportunities.  It is anticipated that Director would provide guidance on effective teaching and learning strategies, particularly with regard to educational technologies. We seek a leader who can develop relationships across Harvard University (Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Business School, as well as Harvard Medical School’s Office of Global Programs, Center for Educational Technology, and Department of Continuing Education).

Reporting directly to the Vice Chair of Education and Chairman of the Department of Surgery, the Director or Learning Sciences is responsible to assess needs, plan, develop, implement, and evaluate educational activities, including those directed at Harvard medical students, surgical residents, and postgraduate continuing medical education.  The position will focus on the application of state of the art and emerging instructional technology related to online and classroom learning, intraoperative learning, including both instructional design and assessment..  This position will work closely with faculty from different divisions and will also work collaboratively with a range of departmental offices focused on research programs and faculty development and promotion.  The position may also interact with faculty in the Learning Technologies Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and across the University as needed.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities

Resident and Medical Student Education:

1. Implement and evaluate rotation specific (synchronous) educational activities and instructional technology to improve learning outcomes related to acquisition of technical skills and enhanced clinical decision making.
2. Apply state of the art and emerging instructional technology to improve quality and content of asynchronous didactic lectures and assess impact of these initiatives. Research and test instructional technologies.
3. Guide the usage synchronous and asynchronous delivery technologies.
4. Create / assist in the creation of course-related digital content
5. Advise faculty on technology components of multimedia assignments and provide troubleshooting to students on multimedia projects.
6. Assist faculty in design and deliver highest quality education, including use of instructional technology and coaching sessions on teaching and learning, as needed.
7. Contribute to consultations with community regarding meeting pedagogical challenges through the thoughtful and appropriate use of technology.
8. Collaborate with faculty to improve intraoperative teaching experience and assess impact of these initiatives with and without the application of instructional technology in the operating room setting.
9. Initiate a program to enhance the capacity of surgical residents to serve as educators for fellow residents and medical students through curriculum design directed at small group discussion and case method teaching.  In the process, it is anticipated that resident presentation skills will be enhanced and residents will acquire skills in teaching through application of simulation and educational technology.

 

Postgraduate Continuing Medical Education (CME)

Collaborate with faculty to develop innovative CME offerings, such as traditional courses, online programs, and other postgraduate education that generates income for the department

 

Other

1. Consult on preparation of grant proposals and manuscripts in surgical education.

2. Assist in the design and evaluation of resident, fellow, and faculty education research projects.

 

Qualifications/Skills & Knowledge Requirements:

The appropriate candidate for this position will have 5+ years of experience in education with a minimum of a MA degree. A Masters in Educational Technology is strongly preferred.  The ideal candidate should have excellent computer, writing, communication, and organizational skills, and be able to manage a multitude of tasks and meet deadlines.  Candidate needs to be proficient with MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint and needs to be adept using web-based applications.

 

Supervisory/Management Responsibility:

Responsibilities may include managing Harvard Presidential Instructional Technology Fellows, as well as an administrative assistant who will also be responsible for supporting the surgical faculty Harvard Medical School promotions process and other faculty professional development initiatives.

 

Thought Leaders Webinar Through eLearning Guild

Sign up today for the eLearning Guild's Thought-Leaders series -- where they've asked me to reflect on my 15 years bridging the gap between research and practice. It's not until September, but sign up is now open.

Click here to view details and to sign up...

The description begins this way:

As workplace learning-and-performance professionals, we live in world of shiny toys, blinding clouds of floating ash, and darkness. While we have passion and good intentions, we are unable to maximize performance because we are infected with misinformation about how learning really works.

Should be fun!

Case Question -- Concept Mapping, Question Answering, Multiple Sessions

In this scenario, John and his best instructional-design team have to decide whether to utilize concept mapping, question answering, or multiple sessions instead of just presenting material in the normal way. Can you help them make the best decisions?

Stealth Messaging for Chief Learning Officers (and other learning executives)

After years of being embedded as a consultant in organizations who have struggled to move their stakeholders beyond a training-centric model to a performance-improvement approach, I finally realized that our painstakingly slow progress might be due to our own failures in getting our messages heard.

We in the workplace learning field are over-reliant on conveying our messages in a way that attempts to connect to our stakeholders' logical, analytical, conscious cognitive processing. The problem with this -- beside the fact that it is obviously not working -- is that most cognition occurs subsconciously. We've been trying to sing underwater.

I've always been enamored with the idea that we need to find the most important causal factors and focus on those--not on the hundreds of factors that might have minor impact. I've followed this approach in reviewing the learning research -- finding the most important learning factors, not the fad-of-the-year learning factors. But this leverage-point approach applies to our workplace-learning organizations as well. We should be looking for our most potent leverage points and focusing on those.

So, after some lengthy reflection, I have written a book chapter which describes how our leaders -- our chief learning officers, training managers, and other learning executives -- might restructure some of their organizations' standard operating procedures to send stealth messages that resonate at both a conscious and unconscious level with their stakeholders.

You can access this chapter -- which I should warn you is in rough-draft form -- by clicking here.

If link doesn't work for you, go to Work-Learning Research catalog.

 

Speaking on Stealth Messaging

Also, come here me talk about this at the ASTD International Conference next week (May 7-9, 2012 in Denver, Colorado, US). Here are the details:

Tuesday 10:00 to 11:15AM

• Room: Mile High 1F
• Research-Inspired Rubrics to Boost Training Transfer to On-the-Job Performance: The Example of the Course Review
• Co-Presenter: Russ Spaulding of DIA

Wednesday 10:30 to 11:45 AM

• Room: Mile High 1F
• How Learning Executives Can Use Stealth Messages to Change Their Organizations. For Example:  Moving from a Training-Centric Approach to a Performance-Improvement Approach

I'm speaking under the auspices of the ASTD Forum, a group of organizations who meet regularly to share best practices.

Work-Learning Research highly ranked on search engines.

The Work-Learning Research website is ranked as follows:

• #4 on Google
• #4 on Bing
• #7 on Yahoo

When searching for "learning research."

Interestingly, we hardly ever get paid to do research. Mostly we get paid to use research wisdom to make practical recommendations, for example in the following areas:

1. Learning Design
2. E-Learning
3. Training
4. Onboarding
5. Safety
6. Learning Evaluation
7. Organizational Change
8. Leadership Development
9. Improving the Learning Department's Results
10. Making Fundamental Change in Your Organization's Learning Practices

Research for me is a labor of love, and also, a way to help clients cut through opinions and get to practical truths that will actually make a difference.

But still, we are happy that the world-according-to-search-engines (WOTSE) values the research perspective we offer.

And here's a secret. We don't pay any search-optimizer companies, nor do we do anything intentional to raise our search profile (who has time or money for that?). Must be our dance moves or something...

Five Failures Translated into French

My post on the Five Failures of Workplace Learning Professionals has been translated into French:

• FRENCH 
• Original in American English

Many thanks to Frédéric Domon of Entreprise Collaborative.

http://www.entreprisecollaborative.com/index.php/fr/articles/231-5-erreurs-de-la-formation-en-entreprise

Instructional Designers vs. Scientists, A Challenge for You!

Who is better at crafting an instructional message about science, scientists or instructional designers?

I say we instructional designers SHOULD be able to do a better job, so I'm encouraging YOU, my colleagues, to give Alan Alda's Flame Challenge a try.

Here's Alda's challenge:

"We’re asking scientists to answer the question – “What is a flame?” – in a way that an 11-year-old would find intelligible and maybe even fun."

You can read the full challenge by clicking here.

The deadline is April 2nd, so you better get moving!!

To see what you're up against, consider the content, which you can find, for example, on Wikipedia, under the entry for flame.

Some thoughts on how to be successful:

1. Consider pairing with an actual scientist (it's not really us against the SME's!)
2. Use adult learning principles, but not in the stupid, static, uncreative way most of us use them on adults, which is pretty ineffective for adults too. SMILE.
3. Realize that if you really want to win, you may actually have to craft your piece in a way that won't really do all the things that we'd like to do as instructional designers. For example, where we know extra spaced practice would be good, those who judge the contest may not understand all that.
4. Utilize multimedia and visually beautiful images.
5. Utilize language that, like a flame, (a) illuminates, (b) produces emotional heat, (c) and mesmerizes attention.

Good Luck Instructional-Design Team!!

Neon Elephant Award 2011

The Neon Elephant Award 2011 went to a researcher whose work translates complicated research into instructional-design models with practical value.

Click here to see who won...

Click here to learn more about the Neon Elephant Award...

Immersive Learning University -- Upcoming Conference

This is going to be a great conference, first, because I'm doing a keynote address, second, because I'm also speaking on Situation-Based Learning Design, and third, because this conference will have some very unique elements.

In addition to me, the conference highlights other experts in learning and simulation. Dr. Richard Saetti will speak on using cinema and simulations. Brandon Andrews and Dean Fouquet will talk about mobile simulations. Phil Clements will speak on the business ethics of immersive learning. Mike Graham and Ken Spero will discuss how to blend soft and hard skills in simulations. Ron Kantor will speak on social media and immersive learning. And the list goes on.

This conference provides many unique advantages compared with other conferences, which aren't as focused on the development of simulations and immersive-learning environments. First and foremost, the folks who are leading the discussions provide a blend of practical wisdom. These folks don’t just talk about immersive learning; they’ve actually built simulations that work. The conference is designed to have two tracks, one more conceptual—to ensure that we learn the right mental models about simulation design and delivery—and one more focused on the how-to’s of authoring simulations—to help us understand the nuts and bolts of how to actually build simulations that work.The conference is also going to provide a great opportunity for learning and networking, because it's going to be a small, intimate affair. If you want a chance to hob-nob with learning and simulation experts, here is your chance.

The conference is sponsored by NexLearn, creators of SimWriter (a simulation authoring tool). All conference attendees will get a copy of SimWriter Simplicity--so even folks new to simulation authoring can build their own simulations.

EARLY-BIRD SPECIAL Ends Shortly in about a week.

To check it out or to register, click here.