One unintended consequence… Which I didn't say in a negative way but in a positive way… Of my getting my PhD has been the number of research studies that I am now reading. I'm part I think this is because I now see the world in terms of research. I think that my mind has been trained PhD process to see the world in terms of research. Thankfully, I have a boss and an organization. I don't mind that I do this research. The truth is I now have research teams that are all working together to try to produce research within our industrial learning community.
This is as good a place as any to list them out for posterity.
Non-Native English Speakers Study
HASC has been providing a new style of Spanish language training courses to support Non-Native English Speaker (NNES) trainees. This new style of training presents information to NNES trainees in new ways that have not been thoroughly vetted by the industry, the learning community, or by learning developers.
This quantitative study, which has been approved by the KSU IRB is designed to assess the learner's perspectives of this training style and delivery to determine: (a) if learners feel it effective, (b) if information such as knowledge check attempts, and final exam scores are affected, and (c) how learning developers and curriculum designers can adjust to meet the learners needs. It will evaluate two different techniques, first, the keyword style of delivery of the course, and second, the learner's views of the English safety language assessment.
This study will collect information from the learners using a seven-question survey provided to the learner in Spanish, both written text and audio narration, at the end of the course. The study will take place in Q2 of 2024.
HASC and a local manufacturing & service company, that provides industry-leading safety sealing and attachment solutions, are partnering to investigate the effects of HASC’s LEAD series of leadership, communications, and safety leadership courses to determine the effect these courses have on the executive and management at the company. This study has been approved by the KSU IRB.
This company has recognized that the executive and management level leaders at the organization would benefit from training that focuses on how to integrate safety leadership principles and effective leadership fundamentals into their work lives. They have used LEAD courses in the past to help foster this focus among their workforce and are now intent on sending their entire management and executive leadership staff through the below LEAD courses to further develop and refine their leader’s safety and leadership capabilities.
Although most people take only one course at a time, in order to develop their leadership and safety skills immediately and quickly, the company has elected to have all of their leadership, managers, supervisors, and executives take all three courses in a four-day time period. The fact that the entire leadership of the organization will be taking all four courses at once is unique in our industry and offers us the opportunity to engage in a qualitative study to measure in what way the information shared in the courses changes the understanding of the participants.
Refinery Safety Culture Leadership Study
HASC was asked by a leading refiner and energy producer to develop a leadership course to help them further develop their field leadership in terms of field safety leadership and human performance principles. The course will be delivered in two four-hour sessions separated by a month and be supported by six one-hour lunch and learns delivered by safety representatives at the site for months following the initial course delivery.
This unique course design that has chunked the information into manageable segments that includes reinforcement modules is worthy of studying, but the nature of the delivery to entire leadership teams at refinery facilities, also allows for intriguing insights into the nature of the transfer of learning and the course's effect on safety leadership.
The course is being delivered at the Ponca City refinery in August of 2024. The intent of this mixed method study would include interviewing study participants before, during, and immediately after the course to determine their feelings regarding its efficacy. The study will also include a survey provided to all participants via Red Cap to quantitatively understand their views of the course. This would be provided before, during and after the course. Additionally, due to the secluded location of the refinery, it might be possible to obtain safety statistics for the refinery and determine if the course played some part in increasing safety through these stats.
TSCA Training Study
My friend with the American Chemistry Council asked me to support his team with a study of training effectiveness and their Toxic Safety Chemicals Act (TSCA) training. This should be a bread and butter study that helps confirm that what HASC does and how it does it is worthwhile. I’m hoping to get this one approved by Texas A&M as well.
Qualitative VR Study
Thankfully, I took a moment during my dissertation research study to go interview a few of our participants. I sat down and just asked them some open-ended questions about the VR and the video and got them to discuss it. It created a really nice qualitative study on Technology Acceptance (via the Technology Acceptance Model) and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), the idea that one size fits all training isn’t worthwhile. I’m writing this up now and I’m reviewing the videos to find more themes etc. Some really interesting things are coming out of it. I hope to have it ready to publish by August.
Quantitative Design and Style Study
This is a new one. I want Fran to verify that what we are doing with our courses is worthwhile from a design and animation style. Right now we are just going with whatever Jhosselin and Fran seem to think is good and what they feel people want to see. We have no proof that what we are producing is resonating with the learner. Do they like cartoony animations? Would they rather see video? Do they want realistic 3D animations? Or flat? Who knows? We should be asking them and finding out what they like.
Already I can feel some pushback from Julie. She asked, “are we just a research institute now?” Good question. Shouldn’t we be? Shouldn’t any of the information above help us in our development. It actually scares me that we are promising some fairly large groups a degree of positive safety change and we have no idea if the tools we have and are putting to use are worthwhile for the learners.
No comments:
Post a Comment