I have long held the belief that all the best leaders reflect, in fact this is something I often share when facilitating leadership classes. I expect this is a modified version of a quote someone much wiser than I has said in the past; regardless, I do believe that to improve one must reflect. That said, I have not been giving reflection the time and respect it deserves during my MALAT program. I can make excuses regarding competing priorities – family, professional responsibilities, ‘self care’ – but one could argue that everyone in the program has the same challenge which is why we chose the fully online learning option. I am grateful that this blog post allows (in fact it requires!) me to slow down and reflect with intention on what I have discovered both about the teaching and myself during this class.

In my day job as corporate educator, I am very much in a Facilitator role where I am not creating content or course work but delivering the content. Working the design process from start to end was a brand-new experience and helped me not only understand the process in full but also formed a newfound respect for the time and effort required to develop digital resources that meet the needs of all users. The work that needs to be completed prior to prototype was the biggest surprise. While it makes sense that there needs to be a solid plan in place prior to the build stage of any digital resource, I suppose I always attributed the most importance to the platform and less to the framework. I was quickly dispelled of the notion that building the resource in my chosen platform would be the most challenging part; I found creating the appropriate content to meet the needs of each user (in my case student, teacher, caregivers) was where I spent most of my time and effort with the platform of WordPress feeling more like ‘professional arts and crafts’.

The required reading from week one that highlighted learner or human-centered design was a quick indicator that the front end emphasis on learner’s needs must be met before content can be identified or created; this may seem common sense but I can say with certainty that too often in my place of work the content is created first, then the intended audience is decided… creating a dichotomy between the person taking the course and the coursework itself. Reading Stefaniak’s (2020) paper that speaks to incorporating “human performance technology (HPT)” (p. 202) helped me to understand that the best way to meet an organization’s priorities of productivity is to incorporate HPT to provide “a lens to examine the system (i.e. organization) to facilitate learning and improve performance through the design and implementation of sustainable solutions” (p. 202). This idea that effective training that is learner centric is what increases productivity – what I think of as investing in learner centric training to see the payoff in engaged, motivated, and effective employees – is how I will build future training business plans for my management team. The ability to show potential correlation (if not causation) in the research between training and productivity will be more effective in creating a change culture within my large company then focusing only on employee engagement (that’s not to say I believe one is more important then the other!). I look forward to challenging my Learning and Development group regarding the ‘why’ we create content the way we do, and perhaps moving towards a more learner centric model for future corporate training.

References

Stefaniak, J. (2020). The utility of design thinking to promote systemic instructional design practices in the workplace. TechTrends, 64(2), 202-210. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-019-00453-8