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William Welp

Facts And Fallacies Of Management Development

William R. Wellstead

A Career Track for Sales Agents

Time: Your Weapon Against Bias

INTEGRATING WELLNESS INTO LEARNING

PLAY WELL THY PART

January 2017 - The Public Manager

Performance: Engage

As the talent development field evolves and attracts a global pool of professionals with diverse skills and experiences, new questions arise: Have the competencies of instructional design (ID) changed? Should they change? How has ID evolved over the past few decades? Are instructional designers’ competencies keeping up with the pace of change?Through a collaborative partnership between the Association for Talent Development (ATD), the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET), and Rothwell & Associates (R&A), the R&A research team implemented a research study to investigate the proposed questions. The findings were recently released in a new ATD white paper, Skills, Challenges, and Trends in Instructional Design, which summarizes the literature review and results of the qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The study uncovered three major findings:The skills required in the ID area of expertise (AOE) developed by ATD remain highly relevant in today’s evolving field.Although technology is constantly changing, the challenges faced by instructional designers are less about technology and more about serving the multitude of varied learners, as well as maintaining momentum and a relationship with the subject matter expert (SME).ID has evolved over the past couple of decades and there is an ongoing need to promote the value and understanding of the ID professional’s role in talent development (TD). As instructional designers move forward in this evolving industry, data from the study points to several tips instructional designers can xxx to strengthen their skills. Develop a 30-second elevator speech. Develop a good value-add 30-second “What is an instructional designer?” speech. This is not only great for networking functions (and maybe family reunions), but as a conversation starter when you meet your design team, especially your SME, for the first time at a kickoff meeting.Design mobile first. Incorporate the design principle of “mobile first” as you begin a new project or redesign existing projects. Users want their learning programs to be more accessible and on demand. The 21st-century workforce is filled with individuals who have grown up with mobile devices, and technological advances range from ease of travel to ease of communicating through various telecommunication networks.Be a coach. When interviewing a potential instructional designer, be sure to include coaching competency questions such as “How do you work, or imagine you would work, in a context in which you need to get course content from your subject matter experts over whom you have no formal authority?” Consider using role-play in an interview or on the job to strengthen needed soft skills. Not only ask powerful questions, but also demonstrate active listening.Keep presence. Use face-to-face (or video conferencing) for the kickoff meeting and periodic status meetings to keep project (and relationship) momentum. Be sure you share and follow an agenda to respect time.Be an active and reflective agent. Most evaluations are summative, and are conducted and analyzed well after courses and training have been delivered. Survey the participants at the beginning (expectations), middle (adjustments), and end of the learning delivery (revisions). Keep a list of design ideas for future possibilities and remember that the SME may become more open to these ideas over time. Asking participants the right questions at the beginning can also reveal learner characteristics, including cultural diversity and user interface design considerations.Remember the artist. Recognize you can wear many hats: instructional designer, project manager, manufacturer, engineer, architect, artist, coach, and cheerleader. Find time to explore and experiment the artist in you through the emerging technologies of mobile learning, augmented reality, wearables, and MOOCs. Embrace failure and engage in continuous self-criticism as you innovate and change.Think like a Millennial. Millennials are expected to take over the workforce as the highest number of workers, so incorporate the learning characteristics of Millennials through game-based learning and social learning. Storytelling is a powerful tool that can strengthen the learning experience if it is correctly incorporated into the design. It is imperative to identify realistic stories that will support effective learning for the target user group. To learn more, download Skills, Challenges, and Trends in Instructional Design.

Tips to Strengthen Instructional Designer Skills

As many in the federal learning community are aware, the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative has developed a set of standards known as the Total Learning Architecture (TLA). The TLA is a strategy for enabling enterprise level learning ecosystems and managing user learning data within federal agencies. The TLA consists of four learning data standards which enable alignment between the individual systems that an agency may implement and support the free flow of data between those systems. These standards provide a framework for agencies to reference when considering their own learning technology ecosystem. At first glance, the standards may appear intimidating for those planning to implement new learning platforms or ensuring existing learning ecosystems are aligned. In this blog post, we’ll summarize each of the TLA standards and highlight important considerations in light of these data strategy pillars when implementing and managing SaaS LMS platforms within your overall learning ecosystem. Experience API (xAPI) 2.0 The Experience API (xAPI) Standard requires that your systems use application programming interfaces (APIs) to track learning activity. Start with an industry-standard SaaS LMS that uses and makes APIs accessible. This is the modern engine for sending and receiving data to and from other programs. Also, make sure you have resources who can map and leverage those APIs to meet your agency’s requirements and infrastructure to support the constant interface of information between your LMS and other systems. Finally, have a clear purpose for how your agency is going to use APIs. Think beyond simply checking the box. Consider the benefits your agency is seeking and how you’ll unlock new capabilities and efficiencies by introducing them. Standard for Learning Metadata The Standard for Learning Metadata dictates that organizations must define their learning data, such as courses, completions, or other descriptors. To do this, you will need to understand the learning objects you have now and how your agency plans to use them in the future. It’s important to establish guardrails for what “counts” as training and should be included in your LMS, and what doesn’t. This helps keep your learning data clean and useful. Gather requirements and use cases from your learning program owners, administrators, and governance team, including additional data points that might need to be created. Ensure these are well-documented for later reference. Sharable Competency Definitions (SCD) With the Sharable Competency Definitions (SCD) Standard, the goal is to define a common language across your organization for how learners will be evaluated and why training data matters. Get input from your legal and human resources offices, since changes to performance benchmarks can significantly impact employees. Ideally, you should tie competencies to your organization’s strategic plan, allowing everyone to point to a clear definition for your entire agency of what “good performance” looks like, and why each training item in the catalog matters. Standard for Enterprise Learning Records Under the Standard for Enterprise Learning Records, agencies must choose a single source of truth, or learning record store (LRS), where all learning records will be stored. For many organizations, their industry-standard LMS is that system, and data from other systems is fed in to fill out the records, but this will depend on the data you’re tracking and how you need to use it. In some cases, the best fit may be a separate database altogether that draws data from the LMS and other platforms. What other systems make up your learning ecosystem? How should data flow from one system to another? Consolidating systems or streamlining processes often greatly clarifies where your LRS should reside in your learning ecosystem. Imagine all your disparate systems working in harmony. Learner information is flowing from one system to another exactly as you need it to, seamlessly. What would it look like for your technology to be aligned with your learning strategy? The TLA standards are simply recommended steps to get there. By leveraging APIs, in an integrated talent management ecosystem that has clear definitions for learning metadata and expectations for measuring performance, with a single authoritative source for all a user’s learning data, what you are imagining is possible. It is possible to achieve it technically, and it is also possible for you to implement it practically. 

Aligning Your Federal Learning Ecosystem to the TLA Standards

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