Design Rationale

Let's Connect for Success

What is my message?

Having a professional, engaged workforce is key to achieving the Company business plan.   

To promote professionalism we need to employ pedagogies supporting reflective practice and cognitive apprenticeships (role modelling).  Worker engagement is driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose.  Supporting our staff in their development of mastery should be the focus of our training program, using methods informed by adult learning principles.   

To position us for success in a globalised, twenty-first century marketplace, the balance of our training program should be adjusted to place greater emphasis on our clinicians achieving mastery in clinical work and displaying the key capabilities of a professional worker.  This includes their skills in constructing knowledge and support networks.    

Distributed learning is a key strategy for making our training effective.

Who is my audience?

Primarily the Neurosensory senior management team, but also the front line managers of our clinical staff, the clinicians-in-charge. 

While we are based in the health services sector, specifically dealing with the ear, hearing and balance, the key characteristics of our team generalise across many small to medium private enterprises. There will be variation in the degree to which each of these factors holds true across organisations.  The cohesion of our management team is something that we all value highly, and I acknowledge that not everyone in a position similar to mine will have that advantage when making a presentation such as this.

How do I persuade them?

Since we value evidence-based practice, my aim is to appeal to reason rather than emotion, to convince rather than to entertain.

The business plan is to serve as the driver and checkpoint for all our projects in the coming year, so I intend to use that as my starting point and core theme throughout the presentation.

Information drawn from our context and from research will be used to develop the case for why the affordances offered by eLearning are necessary to achieve our business plan.  Then constructivist pedagogy will be presented as the best solution to those needs.

The evidence that informs my presentation.

Learning is change in our cognitive structures that leads to the potential to exhibit new, desirable behaviours (Stolovich and Keeps, 2004).  

Much of workplace learning occurs informally.  That is, it is socially and cognitively constructed, by observation of and discussion with peers in the workplace environment, observation of how the workplace pedagogy of documents and forms is implemented and problem solving on the job (Choy, 2009).   This should be recognised and embedded in our learning strategy.  While the exact figures will vary according to the specific workplace, it is estimated that 70 per cent of learning occurs from on-the-job experience, tasks and problem solving, 20 per cent from observing and working with role models, and feedback received in the work place, with only ten per cent being due to formal courses and reading (Cross, 2012).

Learning programs that include problem based learning, cognitive apprenticeships and communities of practice meet the pedagogical goals of a constructivist learning environment and are in accord with adult learning principles (Bryan. Kreuter and Brownson, 2008).  Our company uses all of these to some extent, but my intention is that we should be more systematic in providing scaffolding within the learning experience. Our new key phrase in planning meetings is “mind the gap”, referring to Zygotsky’s zone of proximal development.

I work with adult learners in a medically aligned, professional services company.  Reflective practice and cognitive apprenticeships are the two most widely recognised ways of developing medical professionalism, ideally guided by an expert faculty ( Brennan & Monson, 2014., Birden et al, 2011, Somerville & Keeling, 2004, Irby, 2011).  Adding the use of reflective learning blogs, will strengthen the focus on reflective practice.   These blogs would have privacy settings to ensure no possible breach of privacy requirements around confidential medical records or business information, but a register of blog addresses on the Company server would allow access to all staff.  This also allows for interaction through use of comments.   As we are so heavily influenced by role modelling and our communities of practice, access to the learner’s reflective thinking is a key way of assessing the learning that is taking place.

Using pedagogical tools such as simulations to assess clinical decision making are also a way of ensuring that the role modelling has been effective (Motola et al, 2013).

An effective learning program identifies and acknowledges the most likely barriers to efficacy and takes steps to remove or ameliorate them. Understanding the role of social dynamics and brain function on how meaning and memories are created provides us with a framework to approach this (Rock, 2009).   In our company we refer to this as ‘removing the pain points’. Although as Maria Anderson points out, “Learning is hard.  Nothing will make it painless”.

Adopting distributed practice and microlearning strategies help overcome the ‘forgetting curve’, supporting the formation of long-term memories (Rock, 2009).  In my context I think of this as the ‘four Rs of remembering’ – relevance made obvious, repetition, re-engagement designed into learning activities and retrieval prompted.  The provision of job aids and performance support tools help support retrieval.   At work we refer to ‘drip feed’ learning – not as an aspersion on our learners - but as a reminder of the efficacy of microlearning.

The credits for images and references for specific slides are contained in my previous blog post, 
Video storyboard, design, credits and references.

if this video was embedded in a learning system a copy of the script would be linked, in accordance with accessibility guidelines.  

And so to the video....  
The technical tale (of woe). Converting from PowerPoint to iMovie, required using an intermediary converting software, which rereduced the quality of some of the figures.  Sharing from iMovie to YouTube resulted in further loss.  So I have chosen to upload the video to Vimeo as an alternative.

Since the video contains the mind map of the Company business plan for the coming year I have chosen not to make it viewable by the general public and have applied password protection.  While it cannot be viewed within this blog, clicking on the 'Watch on Vimeo' button will take you directly  to the presentation on Vimeo.
Alternatively it can be viewed by  searching for Vimeo number:  98111639     Password to view: antheaedel2014.





Let's Connect for Success from slides from Anthea Arkcoll on Vimeo.

Anderson, M. (2011, November 5). TEDx Muskegon.  Recipe for free range learning [Video file].  Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWdSz2nHQNY

Birden, H., Glass, N., Wilson, I., Harrison, M., Usherwood, T. & Nass, D.  (2011).  Teaching professionalism in medical education: a best evidence in medical education (BEME) systematic review.  www.bernecollaroation.org/downloads/1387/birden-SR-web.pdf

Brennan, M. D. & Monson, V. (2014).  Professionalism: good for patients and health care organizations.  Mayo Clinical Proceedings, 89(5), 644-652.

Bryan, R, Kreuter, M. & Brownson, R. (2008).  Integrating adult learning principles into training for public health practice.  Health Promotional Practice.  Doi://10.1177/1524839907308117.   Available at http://hpp.sagepub.com

Choy, S. (2009).   Aligning workplace pedagogies with learners: what do they need to know? In: 12^th Annual Conference of Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association, 15-17 April 2009, Crowne Plaza, Coogee Beach, New South Wales.  Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au

Cross, J. (2012, March 5).  Is 70:20:10 valid? [Web log post].  Retrieved 20 April, 2014 from http://www.internettime.com/2012/03/is-702010-valid/

Irby, D.  Educating physicians for the future: Carnegie calls for reform.  (2011).  Medical Teacher,  33, 547-550.

McDaniel, M. (2011, April 12).  Key concepts in spacing learning over time [Video file].  Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=0LvKvZUNqIk    

Motola, I., Devine, L, Chung, H. S., Sullivan, J. E. and Issenberg, S. B. (2013).  Simulation in healthcare education: a best evidence practical guide.  AMEE guide 82.  Medical Teacher, 35, e1511-e1530.

Rock, D. (2009).  Your brain at work.  Harper Collins. New York.

Somerville, D. & Keeling, J. (2004).  A practical approach to promote reflective practice within nursing.  Nursing Times, 100:12, 42-45.

Spero, K., Graham, M. (2012).  Learning’s heirachy of tools: addressing transactional need through experiential simulation.  [Web log post].  Retrieved 6 April, 2014, from http://www.astd.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits.

Stolovitch, H. D. & Keeps, E.J. (2011). Telling ain’t training.  2^nd ed.  American Society for Training and Development.  Alexadria:VA.