30 Sept 2009: Human Performance Technology

I am intrigued by the breadth of instructional technology and the work that lies ahead for me as a human performance technologist. I love the human aspect to all of this - it is what makes it complicated and rewarding. Rarely are we solving the problem if we just focus on training; it is only if we embrace the whole person and the whole system that we make an impact.

This is really an interdisciplinary field. We all add different dimensions to the puzzle and our multiple skills and viewpoints enrich the problem-solving in which we are engaged.

LDS church is trying to figure out how to avoid duplicity of ordinances - Pres Hinckley believes it will be the Human Performance Technologists that make the adjustments to usher in change.

Fast food industry has performance helps.

Behaviorists = we can's see what someone is learning apart from how they behave. We can only measure success in this arena by observable performance.

Downside of HPT - you can't make a causal connection of learning and performance. The bottom line is performance.

Molenda
Ancient Education
-Learning in the home and community
-Apprenticeships but literacy wasn't the focus.

Industrial Revolution
- Industrial revolution called for more educated populace - need to serve large groups of students. (e.g. 20 long rows, first student was required to mentor the students behind them). Undergrads go to a large lecture and then to a lab session and have the student mentors help them.
- The sand board (invention of a technologist - this is an instructional technology)
- Resources were expensive (no chalk, slate, pencils)

Contract by Dr. Graham with army (counter-insurgency training)
- videos captured by people on the groud, edited, annotated,
- Cognitive apprenticeship - video modeling

How much of our education is about social networks? We meet people and they hook us up or we hook them up or we get the passport to participate in the future.

HPT as the Plan of Happiness
Human Performance Technology (Rosenburg) - a metaphor of salvation, of all humanity
1- Performance will never improve by itself (we are reliant on a Savior, someone greater)
2- Once deteriorated, performance becomes increasingly resistant to improvement (repent)
3- Performance will only improve if continually sustained (weekly baptism = sacrament)

Ways to improve
1- The work
2- The workplace
3- The worker

HPT includes: Systems, Behavioral psychology & design, analaytical systems

Gentry:
Term technology is different than what people perceive as technology (which is more "hard")
Hard technology: software, hardware, devices computers, books
Soft technology: ideas (e.g. irrigation, problem-based learning, cognitive apprenticeships, design theories, methods)

Reiser:
Defining technology: audio/visual devices
Systems approach process

Behaviorists influenced the field a lot in the beginning
Now, cognitive psychologists have influenced it greatly & break it down into constituent parts

Homework:
While watching conference, look for references to technology, teaching and learning
Read main readings for next time.