Human Performance Technology
ETEC 651
This course served as an expansion to our introductory course on instructional design. For the class, we worked on planning an extensive performance improvement campaign based on an organization of our choosing.
At first, I was nervous about the scope of this course by how big and all-encompassing this all seemed in comparison to instructional design. The relationship between these two courses was clear, but the way of thinking required a shift when undertaking the challenges of HPT. Despite the stress, this was an exciting challenge; to think about human problems in an organization and how to solve them at a systems level.
The first major step was to do a needs assessment of an organization. The organization I chose was a fictional business case based on my previous work experiences, called New Learning Solutions. New Learning Solutions is an entrepreneurial business that has its employees primarily work remotely.
Performance Needs Assessment
The primary challenge for writing this document was expanding my scope of understanding and taking a systemic view of the problem in the business case. This differed from my experiences in Instructional Design. While I admitily struggle in the beginning, with my previous knowledge of the subject matter and taking a conscience effort of expanded nature of the project, I was able to face the new challenges.
The next step in this class was to create a high-level design based on the needs assessment. This is where I was able to really get to flex my muscles thinking on a systemic level. What human problems of the company could be addressed by changing the environment and available resources?
High Level Design
Here, I came up with several possible interventions that could be used to address the problems found during the needs assessment. There is a focus on interventions that are not training-orientated. While some problems could be addressed with training, most of the issues faced were caused not by lack of knowledge, but a lack of resources.
Responding to the Pandemic
COVID-19 affected all of us, hard and fast. This disruption caused everyone to change their priorities and this class was no exception. School stopped for several days but during that time I was given the opportunity to use my skills to help Concordia University transition to become an online institution. Working with a team of fellow student volunteers, we created created just-in-time instructional material on the skills needed by faculty to move their classes online.
Detailed Intervention Plan
After volunteering with Concordia's Centre for Teaching and Learning, I put my energy in continuing to assist in this transition. I created two detailed interventions on how to increase the use of Slack in online classes. These interventions would form the part of a whole campaign to encourage the use of free third-party resources to make online teaching and learning more effective.