Chapter 27 Reflection

After reading chapter 27 “Competencies for Instructional Design and Technology Professionals”, I have discovered a pathway to conduct my efforts. You see, I am a teacher in a small district. Our school is in the beginning of a district wide school improvement program. I was one of the lucky ones who, somehow, ended up leading the way for out writing improvement plan. In my role as writing chair for our intermediate, junior high, and high school, I am in charge of leading the committee in finding the problems and solving them. No small task. After identifying our weaknesses, it was my responsibility to guide our committee to find ways to fix the problem. After a year of planning, we had to gather baseline data, implement our strategies, do teacher training, gather more data, do more training, monitor teacher’s efforts in the classroom, and on and on. I’m sorry to say, I was given no plan of action I should take in order to accomplish these goals. Reading the competencies has really helped me to understand my role as a chair. At first, I concentrated on the instructor competencies because that is what I am. Yes, there are some that I feel I am very good at, and there are others I need to work on, but the real challenge for me is this district wide writing improvement plan I am supposed to do. That is why the Training Manager really peaked my interest. I know there are more than three competencies that I need to work on, but I will just choose three as the assignment asks. In reality, I will use these competencies as a road map to complete this project.

The first competency I need to work on is the communication in written, oral, and visual forms. Up to this point all of my communications have been face-to-face or over the phone. I have no paper trail to speak of. I will definitely be communicating more in the writing and visual aspects of this competence and follow it up with conversations. I guess I never thought about sending out memos because I didn’t want to seem like I was dictating, but that is my role—to make sure teachers know what to do and are following through with their responsibilities. I know I appreciated it when I am given written information. It gives me something to refer to. I definitely need to work on this competence.

The second competency I am weak in is the evaluate training and performance interventions. As the writing chair, I have given about a dozen professional development workshops on The 6+1 traits of Writing. These training have been for grades K-12 in all subject areas (except math and shop). Even though I give refresher training each year, I have not gone to these teachers to see if they are implementing the changes correctly. This is definitely something I need to do to make sure the plan we put into place is being implemented properly. If it is not, then the plan will not work.

The third competency I nod to improve upon is the use of technology to enhance the training function. Before I took this class, I did not have the tools to do so. Now, I have some stellar ways to help teachers train with or without me. I have started a wiki page (a work still in progress) to use with the staff at my school. This way the teachers and I can collaborate with each other without trying to schedule sit down meetings. This can be a very powerful thing for anyone who has a busy life style (everyone) and can’t always drop everything to attend several meetings. Also, it will be a tool for teachers to help teachers. I will also use Camtasia to teach the teachers how to get extra training online. There are several more ways I can use the information I have learned to help me be a better training manager.

It will take a lot of work and a long time, but I know it will be extremely helpful in the end.I need to learn more and work it out, but that’s expected. This was a very eye-opening chapter. It told me what I was doing wrong, and gave me a map on how to try to fix it.