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By Erica, September 26, 2009 9:58 am

I worked from home yesterday and in my mid-afternoon slump I decided to pull out September’s Human Resource Development Review and flip through it. I was hoping that by focusing on something else the problem I was trying to solve would solve itself (you know, using slack time to let that other part of your brain figure things out). I’m not positive I have a solution yet to the course problem, but I am pretty jazzed about what I read.

The article I read, “Accountability in Training Transfer: Adapting Schlenker’s Model of Responsibility to a Persistent but Solvable Problem” by Lisa A. Burke and Alan M. Saks, focused on the idea of developing a program of accountability for all stakeholders (trainees, trainers, supervisors) in order to make sure that learning transfers. I’m sure this is something that anyone involved in training has considered and considers on a regular basis. We talk about it frequently at work and rarely have a good answer as to what we should do.

One of the ideas in the article is that each stakeholder makes a commitment to ensure that transfer occurs. This is something that I haven’t thought about. I write courses and think frequently about transfer but I don’t know how much our trainers think about transfer. That’s a good conversation to have. Since trainers and curriculum writers work for the same organization, it’s something we should be able to do.

Trainees and supervisors work for our client. Our relationship with our client is changing (again). I never thought I’d say the recession is a good thing but there have been some changes in personnel at our client’s organization and as a result we’re moving into a more collaborative relationship with them. This is how we started out and various shifts in power corrupted our relationship. Now, it seems we’re all back in the “we’re all in this together” mode. Hooray.

Back to the trainees and supervisors. I think with the change in our relationship we can start talking about creating learning contracts (either formally or informally). If we can involve people in all roles, we may be able to increase our transfer successes. If we reach across the table and explain our commitment to transfer and they reach across the table with a similar pledge, wouldn’t that be a handshake that could change the way training is delivered and retained?

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By Erica, September 25, 2009 11:50 am

Who knows what George Gerswhin would have thought of Janis Joplin recording Summertime. This is one of my favorite songs of all time and I’m always interested in how an artist decides to go with the lyrics and music. Janis certainly wrenches every ounce out of this song, doesn’t she?

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By Erica, September 10, 2009 10:28 am

I’ve been a succinct writer for years. My short, sharp, shocked (stupid musical joke) method of writing is either going to come around to bite me today or will be applauded. I turned in a draft copy of a one day instructor-led course to my manager today. It is the shortest course I’ve ever written but it covers the material, I think. We’ll see what she has to say.

It’s been interesting writing this course as it’s the first instructor-led course I’ve written from scratch in more than two years. I’ve been focused on elearning or maintenance of existing courses lately. I wonder if my lean one day course is a result of being used to writing for elearning where everything is trimmed down to the most important points or if I’ve been so used to writing for school, which also requires boiling down big ideas.

One thing for sure about the one day course is it calls for a lot of group work. That’s definitely something I learned in graduate school.