Critical Friends Input

It really helped to talk in person with my critical friend at FETC. We both went through in detail our Arp’s and asked questions and helped to narrow down the focus and also to surface potential problems and pitfalls. This was an invaluable help to me.

Some of the things we discussed in detail about my ARP was the fact that in a few ways it seemed like it could potentially put me out of work. Although initially I must say I hadn’t really thought about it like that, so it was good to get some different view points, ultimately I think it makes me more valuable.

Again trying to focus on my role, I spent some time corresponding with a few members of the group to talk about how I am viewed. I realize my own view of myself in relation to these members of the group, is quite in tune with their view of me. As I wrote in my previous blog, I do think that increasing my industry knowledge and my internal expertise of the application of the products I train on can provide me with more insight of how I can provide more applicable training. In addition, I have spent time thinking about which tools to use with this group of people.

Also at FETC, I talked with several others about potential types of technology to use. I was initially leaning towards some type of wiki with this particular group since it would allow for the entire group to update and edit the information. After exploring this idea with several critical friends, I decided this tool might be a little overwhelming. I reflected on our cadre’s initial use of the tool and remembered the hesitation and hurdles we encountered. I don’t think this group would have the motivation to overcome those hurdles since the participation would be strictly voluntary and if they didn’t find it to be useful, there would be no compelling reason to continue. I think one of the main reasons most of us continued to experiment with the wiki was the fact that we are in this program to expand our knowledge of such products AND we were using it for a class so it was compelling for BOTH of those reasons. I don’t think I would have that kind of pull with this group and I really don’t want to scare them off, especially this early on.

I also talked with others about moodle, phpbb, and TI. The hurdles I face in this case are the corporate network I work with is quite conservative and as a contractor I don’t have much pull to try to get something installed or to utilize resources for learning a new program or purchasing something. This made me lean towards something fairly inexpensive and I’ve also decided to purchase my own site and hosting so cost is definitely a factor as well as ease of use. I will explore these further and continue to do research and some testing of my own. But things are moving right along.

How do I fit in??

During all of our initial research about Action Research the one major theme has been being a part of the project, not an outsider. I believe this is also why I had some difficulties initially since in many environments I work in, my role as consultant is traditionally viewed as outsider much of the time. After further analysis, however I realized that my initial view of myself as outsider wasn’t totally accurate. Although I’m not an “employee” in any of the situations I work in, that is a very narrow view of insider versus outsider. Some of the places I have been consulting and contracting I have been a part of the community for nearly 8 years. Perhaps, I might be more of an “insider” than I think. The group for action research in relation to my question, is really somewhat of a community of people learning, some of the time I believe this might be a CoP and other perhaps a CoL and others not a defined community.

Building on the assumption of using the group of employees which I will train and have trained last summer, my role is “software expert.” I was introduced to them as the person to train them on the majority of software applications. This group has a pretty tight bond since they spend somewhere around 5 weeks together when they are first hired, and then another 5 weeks together 6 weeks later. Although I’m not one of the group being trained, I’m not the leader of ALL the training. They know me as a consultant to the company but contact me with questions on any of the applications I trained them on via email. I’ve been working with these groups of people for several years so I have a general idea of how the relationships start, progress and are maintained.

With all these groups, I work very hard at being approachable and maintaining relationships after these trainings are complete. My rapport is good with all of them and they view me as an expert with these applications. My industry knowledge isn’t as strong although I do understand the nuts and bolts. Perhaps this is something that would give me more credibility. I feel like my knowledge is basic enough to provide relevant samples and industry integrated curriculum. Perhaps I can do even more, however. I think in my first round of training is fairly integrated but maybe there are room for enhancements. I would like to reevaluate this now that I have some framework from my curr and tech class also.

Further exploring my role in the knowledge building, I think I will have to become diligent in encouraging people to post their questions when they do email me and also in knowing what is out there and encouraging people to look there. Another thing I think I can do is to post answers there and route them to the site. I think this will get them in the habit. I think it will still be very ME centered for a while until people get the hang. Even if this is the case, it is providing them a place to source all this information and refer to it and log it for future reference.

I think I need to keep exploring and analyzing ME.

Defining Cycle 1, Who?

I’ve been debating about which group of people to use. One of the hardest things I have had to do is to identify a question that would apply to all the groups of people I work with. That doesn’t quite capture the essence of the difficulties I’ve had. I guess it’s more like defining a question that would give me expertise that would be useful in all the environments I work in as well as provide a stepping stone for where I want to go. That is no small feat but I feel like I’ve done it. Although it’s taken me some extra time to get my ARP narrowed down, I feel like it’s been worth the extra time and thought it took me to get to where I am now. The next difficult part for me is to identify which group of people to use for my first cycle.

I’ve been leaning towards the group of people at my corporate client whom I trained last summer and will train them again in February. For a few reasons, they seem like a good group to use. I originally wanted to use them but was concerned that it wouldn’t work out to see them during their time here. It has turned out that it will work for me to spend time with them while they are here so I think they are my preferred group to use.

The reasons I feel they are preferred are 1.) the timing of their face to face meetings will fall into the first cycle; 2.) although somewhat stereotypical, most of this group is young and I feel that as a group they will have more of an open mind to this type of collaboration; and 3.) the position these employees hold, although demanding, is a lower level position so I think they are more likely to be able to have time to try this type of knowledge building.

I’m going to provide some background on this group. They are made up of approximately 40 employees, that represent around 10 offices nationally and 1 internationally. They are all newly hired as of last summer, the majority of them are fresh out of college with a few exceptions of people that have changed careers. All of the people in the program hold roughly the same positions throughout the company. The company is very committed to their industry training. Their first round of training included vigorous industry training as well as company specific training. This round, approximately 6 months later, is follow up and builds on what they were trained on last summer as well as the experience they have gained since then in their jobs.

Analyzing my AR question

I'm very excited about the outlook my lit review gave me. I feel like I finally got my arms around how this will all go. Although I'm not totally sure which tools I will use and I haven't yet decided on which groups of people to use for which cycles. I know that will come as I continue to dicuss this and think about it.

I also find it helps me to keep thinking about and talking about my approach. It helps me grame it in different ways. I've noticed talking about it to friends and family and explaining it helps me also to better understand it myself. With that in mind, The nut of my question is to utilize various technology to help various communitites to build their knowledge about a given software products or application, thus decentralizing knowledge. Some critical friends have asked if this was smart for me to do since my housing the knowledge is basically my profession and furthermore, my livlihood. This really made me think about it. I find that the value I'm bringing to the organizations I work with will help them to build knowledge and actually open up oportunities for me to assist in facilitating other similar systems for other areas of the company.

One question I asked myself constantly during the development of my ARP last term and also during my lit review, was "What do I want to be an expert at". Again, this was a great insight from a critical friend. The answer to that, although it took me a while to get there, was facilitating communities and using various forms of technology to share and build the knowledge of that community.

Application of this would apply to various environments I work in.
1. Develop communities within organizations I train in by which classes they attend. I.e a powerpoint community, an excel community etc. I will provide an appropriate technology to facilitate this.
2. A community of trainers training on a common product who rarely if ever get together. I provide a technology for sharing training tips and information about the product we are training on.

That's all for now but it's definately taking shape.