Here is a thought-provoking
post from Patrick Dunn of Networked Learning Design about our mysterious job! I recognise myself and my colleagues in some sections, find myself rejecting parts, congratulating myself occasionally and emphatically saying "I wish!" now and again. How about you?
Karyn, I share your sentiment although I am not yet as experienced as you are! Am still sheltered by the umbrella of 'formal training' so what I have to date is what people typically say 'only on paper'! I think Patrick has done a good job there and his piece is worth pinning up on our walls or attached to the FAQs in our client development packs! I wanted to take this opportunity as well to let you know that I have been following your blog since the end of last year, but couldn't find your email address. I enjoy reading your thoughts and find the links you provide useful for my own development. One more thing, I like your new photo!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Adele! Good to hear from you. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time you have commented on this blog. I hope it will prove to be the first of many. It's always interesting to hear from someone with a different perspective on the role we play.
ReplyDeletePatrick has a lot of good things to say, and his blog is worth reading. There's a major downside in the fact that there is no RSS feed that I can see, though - so you have to remember to check it out manually every now and then, which slightly defeats the object, I would have thought ;-)
Oh, and thanks for the comment on the photo - the previous one was getting a bit out of date!
Hi Karyn,
ReplyDeleteThe RSS feed for Patrick's blog is at :
http://patrickdunn.squarespace.com/occasional-rants/atom.xml
Thanks, Mark - I have now added Patrick's blog to my Bloglines.
ReplyDeleteDunn's right to question a lockstep approach toward instructional design, though I think he oversimplifies in his dichotomy... only so much creativity to a four-box paradigm, after all.
ReplyDeleteI think many of us who work in corporate / organizational training (however defined) can deliver value through a broader, performance-improvement view (as opposed to, say, seeing Dick and Carey as St. Peter and St. Paul, or browbeating clients into hundreds of orthodox Mager-style objectives).
Not everyone gets to parachute in to the executive level, where a few key conversations / conversions can lead to breakthroughs (or CEO fad-adoption).
As for "a small piece of research...based on the popular MBTI," I don't think corporate astrology adds much value and can even detract as people substitute type for thought. (One colleague describes himself as a GFNJ -- "Guy From New Jersey.")
Corporate astrology. What a wonderful analogy! I love it, but probably only because I am not an adherent of either management/personality/learning styles or astrology.
ReplyDelete