Let's Change the Way Adults Learn
In an upcoming training, I’m going to use animation to simulate interactions between parties. I’m interested to see how it will go with the learners I’m going to be working with in this session. So many times in sessions, we steer away from unconventional ways of teaching, but I wanted to change things up a bit and create something fun. Will it work? I think it will. Plus, I’ll be adding humor to it with AI voices that I found, rather than trying different accents to be different people. ha!
Being in HR, I have to walk a thin line between working for the employees and working for the company. I often find myself wondering why an employee acts a certain way, and I find myself wondering why an organization has certain policies that don’t help the greater good of the employee population. Working for a nonprofit, you would think that an organization should focus on their employees the way they do for the community they serve, but often not, they don’t.
A situation came up and I was told that some managers had an employee cancel a cruise because they used up all their time taking care of a sick child. My jaw dropped when I was not consulted about this decision. Even though someone from HR may have been contacted, the Employee Relations Manager was not. Being a mission driven organization, we should never punish, and yes, i’m calling this a punishment, an employee for taking care of a family member. This goes against who we say we are as an organization, both inside and outside. As I gather more information, I’ll update this blog, but one thing is clear:
We’re not being who we say we are.
Below is the first draft of the first module of my final project. Since i’m building this in Adobe Captivate, it’s in a PDF with descriptions what’s happening on every page.
INTE 6720 Resource Scan
Coming into this upcoming year at my organization, my coworker and I are leading a series of trainings in organizational communication. Though I’ve studied this topic quite a bit in undergrad, there are nuances that I want to cover within my current organization where I think we lack. The topic I would like to cover and take a deep dive in is active listening. We miss so much information being told and/or shared because we are terrible active listeners. We waste numerous time on explaining information more than once because employees aren’t actually listening. This project is going to allow me to do research on active listening and share information out to our organization to hopefully change the way we actively listen.
For this project, I only used the Auraria Library Database for searching for articles and journals. The keywords I used were:
Listening skills, effective listening, active listening
Fedesco, H. N. (2014). The impact of (in)effective listening on interpersonal interactions. International Journal of Listening, 29(2), 103-106.
This was a short article but it was pretty useful for me to use. This article was around an activity on listening and the impact of using listening skills and not using listening skills. The activity involved three groups which were storytellers, active listeners and inactive listeners. The author highlighted how not only was the interactions with those who did not use active listening skills was awkward, and that the side of the room in which they weren’t using listening skills was quieter and even though the students knew what was happening, they still didn’t want to interact with those who demonstrated these skills.
Spataro, S. E., & Bloch, J. (2017). “Can you repeat that?” Teaching Active listening in management education. Journal of Management Education, 42(2), 168-198.
This article was a good resource to use for designing all types of listening trainings. The authors focused on how difficult it is for people to listen these days, and they gave ideas for designing listening methods and tools. Overall, this is a good article because of the process they use. The started by focusing on the different learning styles and how they directly impact how one may listen.
Topornycky, J., & Golparian, S. (2016). Balancing openness and interpretation in active listening. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, 9, 175-184.
In this journal article, the authors focus on how listening helps bridge gaps. They use the term openness as way to bridge gaps between disciplines and professions. This is valuable information for me because we have issues with that in our organization. Also, the authors tackle misinterpretation in listening, which can cause someone to stop listening and start trying to decipher.
Naidionova, A. V., & Ponomarenko, O. G. (2018). Use of podcasting technology to develop students’ listening skills. Ìnformacìjnì Tehnologì ì Zasobi Navčannâ, 63(1), 177-185.
This was a fun article to read because this subject is something I’m really interested in. The authors did a study of 102 students using podcasting to improve listening and teach ESL. Using a technology that is solely based on listening is a good way to really teach listening!
Manusov, V., Stofleth, D., Harvey, J. A., & Crowley, J. P. (2018). Conditions and consequences of listening well for interpersonal relationships: Modeling active-empathic listening, social-emotional skills, trait mindfulness, and relational quality. International Journal of Listening, 1-17.
I thought this article was interesting because at my organization, we focus on mindfulness as well, so linking the two would be amazing. In this article, I saw the parallels between the mindfulness and active listening, so it would be easy for me to link the two during any trainings I’m hosting. Also, what I liked about this article is that it’s relationship based. Though focusing on romantic relationships, the article read as if I was at work, because of the close nature of our staff.
The takeaway that I have from this is that research can be fun and it can be frustrating. The topic that I chose came up with numerous articles that I could not use in my work or that has little to do with what I’m focusing on but, the library’s website is great to use nonetheless. It was very easy to navigate and it ended up doing the trick to finding articles that would eventually work. I will say, the citation builder was great to have as well through their site.
For my final project, I made a timeline of my journey to where I am today in my career. I used animation, audio, video and created some of the graphics within the story as well. (You’ll notice my wonderful map making skills..)
Enjoy!
For my final mix, I decided to the NPR homepage to incorporate characters from “The Great Gatsby”. I know it was suggested to use The New York Times, but it was updating while I was using X-Ray Goggles so I couldn’t keep the stories. (FYI)
To add more oomph to the Make, I also created an hourly update from NPR that incorporates the stories below.
For my make 6, I made a fictional TV commercial for the Hyperloop in Denver. I made this using Audio, Video AND I created an Artifact from the future using the Denver Train Station and adding hyperloop signs to it. Enjoy!
For my weekly “Make” project, I created a radio commercial not unlike the many lawyer radio commercials that you’ll hear on a local radio station, but selling the service of Brad and the other students in my class to help with people wondering about copyright protections. The music in the background was used from public domain at musopen.org. It was Requiem in D minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed at Markus Staab. The song can be found at: https://musopen.org/music/43683-requiem-in-d-minor-k-626/
For my make 3 project, I created the following:
Thing 3: Remix the course description:
Original:
We do not require textbooks, exams, or formal essays. We do require active participation and creativity each and every week. We also require an auto-didactic approach to learning (Links to an external site.) about media creation and tools (go figure it out). Each week, we will read and annotate journal articles; watch relevant videos; explore and discuss digital stories; try new media tools; and produce/share our own digital stories. We will read, watch, annotate, discuss, make, discover, and share – 8 times (weeks).
Don’t worry about artistry. Grades are based on effort, participation, and engagement, and NOT artistic ability.
I am primarily interested in your personal growth. I want you to stretch. I want you to experiment with ideas and tools.
Remix:
First of all, traditional formats are out the door. Textbooks? Nah. Exams? Ha! Essays? Yeah right! Participation though… be ready! This course is going to have a “self-learning” or auto-didactic approach about making media for the people. What will we do every week?
Bam– Annotate Journal Articles using Hypothe.is
Pow– Watch relevant videos
Kablam– explore and discuss digital stories
Wham– Try new media tools
Boom– Produce/Share own digital stories
Don’t worry about your artistic skills! Your graded on effort, participation and being engaged in the class
I want to see you grow in this course. Stretch your mind using new tools and experimenting with new ideas!