Post #4: Learning Performance

Not all problems in learning and/or performance require an instructional solution. Many times a non-instructional approach is a more appropriate solution. This week's reading and reflection focuses on human performance, performance support systems, knowledge management systems, and the concept of informal learning. Chapter 14 discusses the concept and evolution of human performance improvement. Several sections of chapter 14 present a variety of non-instructional solutions to performance problems. Identify a performance problem in your area of work and identify non-instructional solutions that may help solve the problem. 

 As a college prep advisor one problem that our program has is our student attendance to college entrance exams. As members of our programs students receive a waiver to take the test for free, yet typically only about 60% of the students registered actually take the test on the assigned date. 

Solution: We have our students to register for the test that is given at their chosen high school as opposed to needing to visit anther school to take the test. By doing this we are able to use the school’s calling technology to do an all to students who are registered to take the test. The students also seem to be more comfortable taking a test at their “home” school. 

Chapter 15 presents performance support systems. Define performance support systems and explain how a performance support system might (or might not) help solve the problem you identified above. The integration of different tools to help the user perform a task is what I would consider to be key feature of performance support systems. 

In my certain situation, I do not believe that a performance support system would assist in solving our program’s problem since our issue is more due to the choices of our students and not due to a program error, etc. 

 Chapter 16 explains knowledge management: the way we manage information, share that information, and use it to solve organization problems. Organizations, such as schools, accumulate a great deal information/data, which must be organized in a way that we can make sense of it in order to use for making decisions. What knowledge would help solve the problem you identified above and how would that knowledge need to be collected and managed to help facilitate problem solving? 

 Some information that would assist in solving our problem would be obtaining how students are transported to school. We could obtain a list of whether our registered students are bused to school or driven by themselves or parents. This would aid us in possibly narrowing down the issues that student might have in testing on a Saturday. The information can be collected the school’s system and provided to us in a spreadsheet or Word document. We could even possibly request that there be a bus route on the day of the test to pick up students.