Performance Technology,Performance Support,and the Future of Training: A Commentary

How close is the relationship between performance technology, performance support, and training? Very close, actually. Both performance technology and electronic performance support (EPS) have their roots in education and training, but in many ways they have transcended their be ginnings and have evolved beyond where training leaves off. This commentary offers a performance technologist's view of EPS and suggests not only that a performance technology perspective is a requirement for the development of EPS, but that involvement in building and implementing an EPS can help people shift their paradigm from training to performance. Implications for the education and training field now and in the future are also proposed.     

有效供给与需求不足：农民教育培训问题分析

农民教育培训在取得阶段性成果的同时也暴露出不少问题,主要表现在:培训与农民需求脱节,项目监管不到位,培训体系建设不完善,资金投入相对不足;"留守"农民整体素质结构性下降,对免费培训"不领情","摊派"生源现象严重。为把这项惠民工程抓好做实,各级政府及相关部门要增加资金投入、制定法律法规及加大统筹协调力度;切实做好分类培养、规范教学及透明监督工作;创新培养模式,发挥典型示范户的带动作用;提高农民组织化程度,提升农民参训的组织性和积极性;合理规划培训工作,提高教育培训的效益。     

今天的努力是为了明天的教育——当今的开放教育、远程高等教育

我们都知道世界上最有价值的资源就是人力资源——尤其是人的智力。和其它形式的资源一样,人的智力要想获得显著的经济回报和社会回报,需要精心培育和长期投资。智慧、学识和知识如同当今世界知识经济中的流通货币。     

Appraiser Training: Teacher Performance Evaluation Training for School Administrators

In this article, two in-service English teachers and two preservice English teachers, who participated in a shared mentoring relationship during the studentteaching semester, share their experiences, conflicts, and how they were resolved. The authors provide first-person narratives of all four teachers and suggestions for improving mentoring experiences for both mentor teachers and student teachers. Important issues addressed include territoriality of classroom spaces, students, decision making, and time. The authors provide suggestions for improving communication, use of shared spaces, and planning.     

Support Personnel: Attitudes Toward Functions and Training Responsibility

This study was conducted to determine (a) if the heads of counselor education programs agree on what functions are appropriate for support personnel assisting secondary school counselors, and (b) who should take the responsibility for their training. Questionnaire replies were received from 128 (64.0 percent) of the 200 heads of counselor education programs queried. The respondents were asked to examine a list of 17 functions and (a) indicate if they were appropriate, and (b) specify if counselors, counselor educators, or city/state directors should be responsible for training support personnel to perform each appropriate function. There was significant agreement (X², d = .01) among them on both questions. Ten of 17 functions were considered appropriate; the counselor was perceived as having the major responsibility for training. A small segment of the sample (11.7 percent) was engaged in training support personnel.     

环境支持:教师培训转化的关键

中小学教师的培训效果如何体现正引起学界越来越多的关注。围绕营造“学理论、用理论”的文化支持、“高付出、高回报”的制度支持、“管理者指导、同事参考”的人员支持三个层面进行了策略思考, 对于如何促进教师培训实效的转化有一定的参考意义。     

大学生学习支持服务：研究型大学创新型人才培养的重要支撑

大学生学习支持服务是指高校充分借助专业教师、管理人员、专职辅导人员及高年级学生帮助大学生学会学习、热爱学习,提高学习素质和学习能力,养成良好学习习惯和自主学习能力的活动。为了培养创新型人才和实施精英教育,在我们大力提高教学资源的质量、竭力提升每位教师的教学专业能力的同时,对学生这一学习的主体开展丰富有效的学习支持服务也极为重要。本文结合对国内外大学生学习指导状况的调研及前期的学习指导实践,简要分析了大学生学习支持服务的内容,并制作了支持服务的实施模型。     

Timing of Homework Completion vs. Performance in General Chemistry

The goal of this study was to investigate the timing of online homework completion and its effects on student performance. Data was collected from two large, first-semester general chemistry sections at a southwestern university. Specifically, this study aims to explore the link between when students complete their homework relative to the date the material was covered in lecture and student performance in that class. Topics covered in the study included VSEPR, Lewis structures, and molecular geometry. Performance was measured by different variables, namely in-class clicker scores (short-term) and exam grade (long-term). Students were divided into three groups: students who completed the relevant homework within 2 days after the lecture (before the next lecture), those who completed the homework 2 to 4 days after the lecture, and students who completed the homework more than 4 days after the material was covered in lecture. The study also took into consideration student reasoning abilities, as measured by the Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT), with a focus on at-risk students (low TOLT students). Results showed promising findings for low TOLT students. Instructors can employ results from this study to help their students better utilize the online homework resources.

     

Competence vs. Performance and recent approaches to cognitive assessment

The importance of accurate cognitive assessment and its relationship to effective instructional programming are discussed. Traditional methods of test administration are less than optimally sensitive to the cognitive abilities and processes under investigation. A disparity between competence and performance can occur across a variety of populations due to task and situational demands, as well as to motivational and personality factors. Recent approaches aimed at lessening the gap between competence and performance are discussed, along with their strengths and weaknesses.     

Electronic Performance Support Technology: Defining the Domain

Electronic performance support is an expanding area within the field of performance technology. This article reviews and classifies the literature, both conceptual and case-based, in order to assess settings for use, initiating factors for development, and general features of the various systems. Identification of each article reviewed is presented in a matrix of categories that can be used to point those interested in specific aspects of this complex topic to the most pertinent information for their own needs. A general summary of findings follows.     

Policy issues: Student Performance and Congressional Support

In the first issue of this journal, I wrote about policy issues with which all stakeholders associated with at-risk children and youth should be involved (Carroll, 1996). Continuing in the policy arena, I now speak to student results. The Title I program serves more than 5 million children with a $7 billion appropriation, and school districts need only report to the state the achievement of Title I participants who are tested as part of the annual state assessment program at three grade groupings--Grades 3 to 5, 6 to 8, and 10 to 12. Districts and states are no longer required to conduct pretest and posttest assessments that show the normal curve equivalent growth of children. Instead, adequate yearly progress toward meeting the states' definitions of advanced, proficient, and partially proficient student performance measures is the new yardstick of accountability and program success. These definitions apply no later than the year 2000-2001, when the states must have their student assessments aligned with their content and student performance standards. Even though the new Title I regulations ease up on frequency and coverage of assessment, Title I schools and programs should not. Schools must assess the performance of all their students and show results if we are to garner continued financial and program support from members of Congress and out constituencies at the state and local levels.     

Learner vs. System Control in Using Online Support for Simulation-based Discovery Learning

Learning in discovery environments, such as simulations, requires both planning and complex inference processing from learners. Studies evaluating simulations learning have indicated that, without added instructional support, simulation learning knowledge gains are disappointing and/or unclear. With regard to the problems that learners could encounter, we feel, on the one hand, that learners should be supported in their discovery processes whenever possible. On the other hand, we believe that learners' own responsibility in the learning process should be emphasised. The discovery environment in the present study is called CIRCUIT, in which the behaviour of current and voltage sources in electrical circuits is simulated. CIRCUIT includes three main types of instructional support: model progression, assignments, and explanations. Two experimental conditions were created. Although these conditions were similar with respect to the support, they differed with respect to the amount of freedom given to the subjects. That is, the first group of subjects was free to choose their own sequence exploring the simulation environment. In the second group, the sequence was largely controlled by the environment. In determining the instructional value of the interaction, special attention is paid to acquiring intuitive knowledge as compared to definitional knowledge. The evaluation followed a pretest-posttest design. Results showed no gain in definitional knowledge but a gain in intuitive knowledge. No major differences between the experimental groups were detected in the posttest results or in the interaction processes, a cognitive load measure, and the subjective ratings. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Training Paraprofessionals to Support Students with Disabilities: A Literature Review

The purpose of this literature review is to describe intervention research studies in which paraprofessionals received training applicable to student with disabilities. Thirty studies were systematically reviewed to identify (a) characteristics of study participants and settings, (b) characteristics of paraprofessional training and paraprofessional-implemented intervention evaluated within these studies, (c) quality of the studies, and (d) implications for practice and areas for future research. Overall, paraprofessional training and subsequent intervention with students yielded positive outcomes. Training sessions typically were delivered by workshops, lectures, or classes and classroom-based training. However, numerous studies failed to demonstrate characteristics of study quality.     

Applying Tablet‐Based Performance Support Application for Technicians’ Training at the Israeli Air Force: A Case Study

Performance support systems are mechanisms enabling users) productivity while reducing training expenses as support is being delivered in real time, often eliminating the need for costly pre‐performance training. Mobile technologies have created new opportunities for improved performance support systems, especially for tasks performed outside the offi ce. This article describes the fi rst mobile learning and performance support initiative taken by the Israeli Air Force. The project included the development and eff ectiveness pilot study of a learning and performance support application delivered via tablet to helicopter engine technicians. The application provided support videos and illustrations of maintenance routines, thereby enabling learning and practicing at the same time. Pilot study results show high performance levels of application users compared to those applying traditional methods. Results also show that self‐effi cacy levels were not aff ected by the successful performance achieved when using the mobile performance support application. Plans to expand mobile support use are also described.     

What the Author Really is Roland Barthes vs.Michel Foucault

Roland Barthes,the outstanding thinker as well as the semiologist of France,has left great contribution to us human beings.His The Death of the Author made a strong,polemical argument against the centrality of the figure of the author in literary study.It states that the intentions of the author are meaningless to the interpretation of a text.Michel Foucault,the famous French philosopher and the historian in the ideology field,in his What is An Author,shows the idea of the author,as a timeless,irreducible category,is,rather,a "function" of discourse which has changed in the course of history.The author means quite different in their ideas.But what the author really is?     

Improving Performance Without Training: A Three Step Approach

Condition 1 showed that employees recorded high percentages of completed tasks; and task performance was shown to slightly improve. At that point in the project, recording accuracy was at it's highest level. Condition 2 illustrated a continuance of high employee records of completed tasks but also showed that actual task performance considerably increased so that there was greater self-recording accuracy. Then, during Condition 3, actual task performance increased more so that it even more closely reflected self-recorded measures. Each of the steps discussed thus far could be sufficient individually to facilitate accurate self-recording and task performance gains, although each appeared to have gained additional strength by being collectively applied. The cost of the present organizational intervention was very low. The costs included material duplication costs and approximately 30 minutes of management time per day. Management time was used to make concession observations (management records), compute performance data, and provide feedback to the employee. Employees worked the same number of hours as in Baseline. Based on this breakdown, the approximate weekly cost of this project was about $30.00. The total cost could be reduced further, perhaps, by monitoring less frequently and reducing the frequency of feedback sessions as employee performance stabilized at higher levels. Thus, the longer this project would run, the less expensive it might become. The steps implemented during this project might easily be applied to other jobs that produce easily observable outputs and could also be applied to other work settings. Future research efforts that would identify cost-effective ways to stimulate and maintain high levels of accurate self-recording might provide today's managers several options that could all yield accurate data for organizational management. Other research efforts centered on specific analyses of participatory standard setting, peer reinforcement, and self-reinforcement for task performance could provide additional insight into the areas of job analysis and employee productivity. Lastly, increased knowledge about the long term effects of self-recording could be gained through future research methods that first established high recording accuracies and task performance levels, then evaluated maintenance procedures for these methods. Implications of successive research studies which clearly show that employee performance can be improved by rewarding performers for accurate self-recording could be profound.     

Expert and Novice Performance: Implications for Clinical Training

Studies of advanced expertise development in a number of areas are reviewed in order to provide general suggestions about the elements of clinical training that might enhance counseling and educational psychology expertise. The emphasis of the discussion is on the connections between classroom instruction and practicum or internship experiences. Recommendations include changes in the sequencing, context, knowledge content, practice conditions, and motivational support provided to students.     

The Future Is Now: First Ideas on How Human Performance Improvement Is Going to Change

Digitization will change our world at a speed and to an extent never experienced before. This will have a huge impact on how we must think about performance improvement and on how we do our job as performance improvement professionals. This article highlights some of the developments and their impact on performance and raises open questions. Finally, it drafts a framework meant to systematically guide our thinking about the changes we will face.