future Reflection Ginger Nichols November 2, 2008 IT6750: Current Trends and Issues in Instructional Technology

2018

Introduction

On October 26, 2008 I reached my tenth anniversary of working at a mutual fund company. Over the course of ten years, I worked in many areas of the business with the majority of my time spent in the customer service call center. I found the most enjoyment in my role as a field trainer who taught classes to new hires and continuing education to veteran representatives. After seven years in the call center, I decided that I needed a change. Exploring other areas of the company seemed like an interesting option. At this time, I really liked working as a field trainer but was not sure this was the job for me. In April of 2006, I made a big jump to the trade operations department. My current role involves reconciling and booking security transactions completed outside the United States. Looking back to when I started in trade operations, I cannot believe the amount of information I learned about the foreign markets. It is extremely interesting because each market has different rules and regulations that investors must abide by. Not only did I learn about foreign markets, I also learned a lot about myself. Any chance there is to build a job aid, work on a procedure manual, research training opportunities for the team or provide insight on new hire training I am always the first person to tackle these tasks. Sitting in front of a computer crunching numbers all day is not my calling. I had to leave it to realize that I loved it but corporate training and Instructional Design is where my strength and passion lies. Realizing that a little more than two years of working as a field trainer was not going to be enough to land a job in corporate training and Instructional Design, I enrolled in the University of Colorado at Denver Information and Learning Technology (ILT) - General Instructional Design program. I anticipate completing the program in the summer of 2010. In combination with a master’s degree and the experience I pick up along the way, I plan to seek employment in corporate training. With the background in financial services, I may find myself migrating toward training in that industry. The ILT program makes me excited about my future. Also, the future of corporate training and what it might look like in five years time. New technologies in the development stage now will become commonplace in the future. For a few moments, lets take a look into that future by fast forwarding to the year 2018 to speculate about my role within corporate training.

2018 - A look into the future

Is it that time of the year again? The ILT Alumni Weekend is only two weeks away. I always look forward to visiting Denver and catching up with everyone. Unfortunately, I’m not going to make the festivities this year so I thought I’d take a moment to update all of you through the message board. I still work on the Employee Development Group at Bodhi Investment Group (BIG) out of the New York, NY office. BIG manages money for large institutional clients like pension plans and other investment firms. There are 20,000 employees located at ten offices in seven countries. The team of eight full-time Instructional Designers/trainers that I work with is responsible for designing and delivering all training that is required by regulatory bodies and has an impact on the entire company. This includes corporate ethics, compliance and changes in securities law. This year we saw the implementation of very tight controls placed on the financial industry by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The ECOSOC members finally came to agreement on a set of standardized regulations for securities trading that member nations follow to prevent another global financial crisis like we saw in 2008-2009. This will streamline training in the future since we will only need to teach employees about one set of securities regulations not changes to each individual country’s security laws. However, for this year the new regulations created a nightmare for the Employee Development Group. How were eight trainers going to train 20,000 employees by the end of 2018? One of my colleagues worked in training at Merrill Lynch when the company introduced mobile learning (mLearning) and suggested that it could work for our situation. For those of you who are not familiar with mLearning, Wikipedia defines it as; Learning that happens across locations, or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies. In other words, mobile learning decreases limitation of learning location with the mobility of general portable devices (www.en.wikipedia.org). I do not know why we didn’t think of mLearning sooner. The company provides BlackBerry smartphones to 80% of all employees. Merrill Lynch reported that BlackBerry users access their devices an average of 30 times a day! It is almost an addiction for some people. BlackBerry usage is just as prevalent at BIG, so we had an untapped training tool right in our hands that our audience was very familiar with its usage for other applications. Our primary concern was designing the training so that it would fit into the BlackBerry user’s normal use patterns. We designed short training modules lasting 10 to 15 minutes at a time followed by quizzes on the subject covered. (Swanson, 2008) The short module time was essential because as the attention economists believe a learner’s attention is hard to capture in this information overloaded world. It’s much easier to carve out 15 minutes waiting in an airport or while riding the train to work than it is to designate an hour or two to training during a very busy day when so many other other items demand one’s attention (Goldhaber, 1997) Another goal we had with this training was to make it flexible. The modules were downloadable and many users stored the modules on their BlackBerry for future reference. With very little change to the modules, we posted them to our eLearning website for nonBlackBerry users. After reading through this much of my post, you probably picked up on the fact that we still use the ADDIE method of Instructional Design. The last step in this process is evaluation (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2008). Our evaluation occurs when the learner completes quiz and the results are pushed back to our main training server. This allows us to monitor participant’s quiz results to determine who could benefit from additional training. The system also automatically sends reminders to participants who have not finished when the training module’s due date is approaching. We also set up the system to send out a user response survey when all modules were completed by the learner. Without going into many details, the mobile training was well accepted by BIG employees. Considering the response from users and the quiz results, mLearning is a success for BIG. As a team, the Employee Development Group was recently acknowledged at the BIG all employee meeting for leveraging existing technology to create powerful and meaningful training for the entire company. I wanted to share this experience with all of you. Our success with this technology may give you the inspiration to implement something similar at your company in the future. I will see you at next year’s gathering. Regards - Ginger

Reflecting Thoughts

There is a saying that “hindsight is 20/20.” Unfortunately, not many people get to review their actions to correct past mistakes. Completing this exercise made me think about my future in corporate training and how I can shape today to lead me to a successful career while avoiding potential pitfalls. Something I can do today, is to establish goals for myself. At this point, I am not actually a practicing corporate trainer or Instructional Designer so I feel that my goals may be a little short sighted. I anticipate my goals changing over time as I become more established in the profession. My first goal would be to finish the ILT program to earn my master’s degree. In the current job market because of my limited experience in the field, I need to have a master’s degree for employers to even consider me as a candidate for an Instructional Design position. My current job has nothing to do with Instructional Design, but the company I work for provides tuition assistance for those seeking higher education. Company policy requires that one meet a certain level of job performance to be eligible for tuition reimbursement. Another goal I have is to remain engaged in my present position so I will be eligible to continue to receive this benefit. As I learn more about Instructional Design, my values begin to take more shape. I have learned a few things that I will apply to training in the future: ★Training is all about the learner not the trainer. ★Training must be designed to reach all types of learners whenever possible. ★Technology has the potential to racially change corporate training but there are instances when it is not the best option. Going forward, I know I need to change my values and thinking around promoting myself. The company I work for reduced the workforce by 9%. The human resources department was cut by 20% but only one of those individuals let go was from our corporate training area that falls under the human resources umbrella. In my opinion, this can all be traced back to the department head letting the right people know exactly how her department is important to the company. No matter what your position is, it is essential to let the “decision makers” know exactly who you are and what you do. At this time, I am still on my path to becoming an Instructional Designer. Each new experience gives me more tools to work with as I get closer to my goal of obtaining a position in this field. It is important to consider the future to make sure one is headed in the appropriate direction along the way.

References Learning Theories Knowledgebase (2008, November). ADDIE Model at LearningTheories.com. Retrieved November 2nd, 2008 from http://www.learningtheories.com/addie-model.html. Goldhaber, M. (1997, December). Attention shoppers! Wired, 5.12. Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/ es_attention.html. M-Learning. (n.d.). In Wikipedia online. Retrieved October 31, 2008, from Wikipedia website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_learning. Swanson, K. (2008, April). Merrill Lynch: Bullish on mobile learning. Chief Learning Officer. Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http:// www.clomedia.com/case-study/2008/April/2135/index.php.