Hey,HPT practitioner! Talk to me

It is important to clearly articulate what the essence of human performance technology (HPT) is about. Too often we are caught in our own jargon and confuse our clients and jeopardize appropriate outcomes. A group of graduate students in an introductory HPT class responded to an assignment to explain to other professionals what human performance practitioners do. Their thoughts, written in their own voices, are reflected here.     

Schooling as an Instrumental vs. a Terminal Value for Finnish 18‐Year‐Old Adolescents

Rauste‐von Wright, M. 1984. Schooling as an Instrumental vs. a Terminal Value for Finnish 18‐Year‐Old Adolescents. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 28, 187‐198. In the context of a longitudinal developmental study, 182 girls and boys were asked, at the ages of 15 and 18, about the importance of schooling to themselves personally. At both age levels 164 subjects considered schooling either to have an instrumental value (group I) or to be valuable in itself, i.e. to have a terminal value (group T). When the subjects were 15 years old, groups I and T did not differ on other variables. When they were 18 years old, group I (n = 71) and group T (n = 93) differed on several variables including life values, views of work, vocational intentions, desired standard of living, external vs. internal locus of control, leisure interests, smoking, sexual experiences, and attitudes towards the future. The differences formed a fairly consistent pattern, suggestive of two different types of orientation in life.     

Evaluation for Improvement ‐a Case Study

Abstract: Lauvås, P., Skogedal, O. & von der Fehr, F. R. 1980. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 24,61‐78. The present paper is a micro‐level study of one lecture within dental education directed at 3 problems, all related to the problems of having one's own teaching evaluated and improved. The results suggest that some cautiousness should be placed on interpreting student ratings of teaching to indicate teaching effects on student learning. Student ratings are valuable feedback on the presentation made by the teacher but do not always correspond to learning results.     

Mobility: The New Blue

The study of American public address is in the midst of a remarkable renaissance. One aspect of that renaissance is a resurgence of interest in the American oratorical tradition; another is a growing occupation with the close analysis of rhetorical texts. These developments are particularly important given the need to develop a body of critical literature explicating the rhetorical artistry of classic texts from the heritage of American oratory. Like other aspects of study in public address, creating such a body of literature should be regarded as important in its own right, rather than for its potential to fill in the historical record or to enhance the development of rhetorical theory.

AMERICAN ORATORS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Edited by Bernard K. Duffy and Halford R. Ryan. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987; pp. 468. $65.00.     

Young Children’s Representations of Spatial and Functional Relations Between Objects

Three experiments investigated changes from 15 to 30 months of age in children’s (N = 114) mastery of relations between an object and an aperture, supporting surface, or form. When choosing between objects to insert into an aperture, older children selected objects of an appropriate size and shape, but younger children showed little selectivity. Further experiments probed the sources of younger children’s difficulty by comparing children’s performance placing a target object in a hole, on a 2‐dimensional form, or atop another solid object. Together, the findings suggest that some factors limiting adults’ object representations, including the difficulty of comparing the shapes of positive and negative spaces and of representing shapes in 3 dimensions, contribute to young children’s errors in manipulating objects.     

Skill-dependent proximal-to-distal sequence in team-handball throwing

The importance of proximal-to-distal sequencing in human performance throwing has been reported previously. However, a comprehensive comparison of the proximal-to-distal sequence in team-handball throwing in athletes with different training experience and competition is lacking. Therefore, the aim of the study was to compare the ball velocity and proximal-to-distal sequence in the team-handball standing throw with run-up of players of different skill (less experienced, experienced, and elite). Twenty-four male team-handball players (n = 8 for each group) performed five standing throws with run-up with maximal ball velocity and accuracy. Kinematics and ball trajectories were recorded with a Vicon motion capture system and joint movements were calculated. A specific proximal-to-distal sequence, where elbow flexion occurred before shoulder internal rotation, was found in all three groups. These results are in line with previous studies in team-handball. Furthermore, the results of the present study suggest that in the team-handball standing throw with run-up, increased playing experience is associated with an increase in ball velocity as well as a delayed start to trunk flexion.     

LIST FORMATS IMPROVE MEDICATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR OLDER ADULTS

We conducted a survey to compare a group of older adults’ and a group of younger adults’ beliefs regarding their own and each other's memory abilities. We also asked both age groups to identify items they believed older adults remember well. The survey was returned by 185 older (ages 60‐92) and 184 younger (ages 17‐39) participants. Of the 30 items we generated older adults reported that they would remember 23 better than younger adults would and 7 worse than younger adults would, and younger adults reported that they would remember 12 of the items better and 18 of them worse than older adults. Both age groups also generated many items that they believed older adults remember better than younger adults do. Finally, respondents generated items that they believed adults in their own age group had to remember routinely that adults in the other age group did not. The two groups agreed that older adults would spend more time and have more difficulty learning lines for presentation to an audience than would younger adults. Most of the older adults reported that their memories had changed; most of the younger adults reported that their memories had not changed. The belief that although older adults’ memory is worse than young adults’ they still remember some things better than the young is viewed as a realistic assessment, and implications for future research are discussed.     

A computational method for analysis of underwater dolphin kick hydrodynamics in human swimming

We present a new method that combines the use of laser body scans, underwater video footage, software-based animation, and a fully unsteady computational fluid dynamics technique to simulate and examine the hydrodynamics of the dolphin kick. The focus of the current work is to model this particular stroke in all its complexity with minimal ad-hoc assumptions or simplifications. Simulations of one female and one male swimmer (both at about 1.7 m beneath the water surface) at velocities of 0.95 and 1.31 m/s and Strouhal numbers of 1.21 and 1.06 respectively are presented. Vorticity and fluid velocity profiles in the wake are examined in detail for both swimmers. A three-dimensional vortex ring is clearly identified in the wake for one of the cases and a two-dimensional slice through the ring corroborates previous experiments of Miwa et al. (2006). We also find that most of the thrust is produced by the feet and in both cases the down-kick produces much larger thrust than the up-kick.