Jane Bozarth

Posted by Joan Phaup

With the Questionmark Users Conference now less than a month away, it’s a good time to check out the conference agenda and — if you haven’t already done so — to sign up for three great days of learning and networking in New Orleans March 20 – 23.

Two high points on the program will be presentations by Dr. Jane Bozarth:

• a keynote address on the importance of  starting with good objectives and clear outcomes for assessments and using them to strategically to support organizational goals
• a breakout session called Instructional Design for the Real World –  about tools and tricks that support rapid instructional design, help  with needs analysis and make for effective communication with subject matter experts, managers and others

As a training practitioner for more than 20 years, and as Elearning Coordinator for the North Carolina Office of State Personnel, Jane will bring a lot of firsthand experience to these presentations. During a conversation I had with her shortly after she agreed to present at the conference, Jane pointed out some common pitfalls  that she will address during her keynote to help listeners address the right things at the right time for the right outcome:

• getting so caught up in writing objectives and developing  instruction as to lost sight of the desired end result
• measuring the wrong things or things that have insignificant impact
• paying too little attention to formative assessment
• waiting until after a product is designed to go back and write the assessment for it, instead of addressing assessment first

You can listen to the podcast of our conversation right here and or read the transcript.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Posted by Joan Phaup

Key themes of the Questionmark Users Conference March 20 – 23 include the growing importance of informal and social learning — as reflected by the 70+20+10 model — and the role of assessment in performance improvement and talent management. It’s clear that new strategies for assessment and evaluations are needed within today’s complex workplaces.

Dr. Bruce C. Aaron

We’re delighted that measurement and evaluation specialist Dr. Bruce C. Aaron will be joining us at the conference to talk about the A-model framework he has developed for aligning assessment and evaluation with organizational goals, objectives and human performance issues.

A conversation Bruce and I had about A-model explores the changes that have taken place in recent years and today’s strong focus on performance improvement.

“We don’t speak so much about training or even training and development anymore,” Bruce explained. “We speak a lot more about performance improvement, or human performance, or learning and performance in the workplace. And those sorts of changes have had a great impact in how we do our business, how we design our solutions and how we go about assessing and evaluating them…We’re talking about formal learning, informal learning, social learning, classroom, blended delivery, everything from online learning to how people collect information from their networks and the knowledge management functions that we’re putting in place.”

In a complex world that requires complex performance solutions, Bruce observed that “the thing that doesn’t change is our focus on outcomes.”

The A-model evolved out of dealing with the need to stay focused on goals to logically organize the components of learning, evaluation and performance improvement. It’s a framework or map for holding the many elements of human performance in place — right from the original business problem or business issue up through program design and evaluation.

You can learn more about this from Bruce’s white paper, Alignment, Impact and Measurement with the A-model, from this recording of our conversation – and, of course, by attending the Users Conference! Register soon!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Posted by Joan Phaup

I had a great time the other day chatting with Dr. Jane Bozarth, our keynote speaker for the Questionmark 2012 Users Conference in New Orleans March 20 – 23.

Dr. Jane Bozarth

Jane, whose degrees include a doctorate in Training and Development, will be speaking from her extensive experience as a training practitioner for more than 20 years. She is Elearning Coordinator for the state of North Carolina as well as a book author, Learning Solutions Magazine columnist and blogger.

During her keynote, Look Before You Leap: What You Measure is What You Get, Jane will share methods for building assessment directly into learning design.

We are delighted that she will also present a best practice session on Instructional Design for the Real World,  for those looking for tools and tricks that will support rapid instructional design and get to the heart of needs analysis and improve communication with subject matter experts, managers and others. You can get details about this and other breakout sessions by visiting the conference agenda.

Early-bird conference registration is open until December 9th, so this is a good time to sign up!

Listen in on my conversation with Jane in this podcast, or click here for a transcript.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Posted by Joan Phaup

The growing emphasis on  performance improvement – of which training is just a part – calls for new strategies for assessment and evaluation.

Bruce C. Aaron

Measurement and evaluation specialist Dr. Bruce C. Aaron has devoted a lot of thought to this. His white paper, Alignment, Impact and Measurement with the A-model, describes a framework for aligning assessment and evaluation with an organization’s goals, objectives and human performance issues.

Bruce will present a free public web seminar about the A-model next Thursday, October 20, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. In anticipation of this, I talked with him recently about the A-model and how it addresses the changes that have taken place in recent years and the resulting complexities of today’s workplace.

Here are a few excerpts from our conversation. If you’d like to learn more, listen to the 10-minute podcast below — and register for the web seminar. (You can view a transcript of the podcast here.)

“The things that I’ve observed have to do with our moving away from a training focus into a performance focus. So we don’t speak so much about training or even training and development anymore. We speak a lot more about performance improvement, or human performance, or learning and performance in the workplace. And those sorts of changes have had a great impact in how we do our business, how we design our solutions and how we go about assessing and evaluating them.

…the A-model evolved out of dealing with the need to evaluate all of this and still focus on what are we trying to accomplish: how do we go about parsing up the components of our evaluation and keeping those things logically organized in their relationship to each other?

…If we have a complex, blended solution, if we haven’t done a good job of really tying that to our objectives and to the original business issue that we’re trying to address…it becomes apparent through a focus on evaluation and assessment.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

How do learning organizations demonstrate the business value of their initiatives?

I was delighted to speak recently with Art Dobrucki, director of learning strategy and performance at Farmers Insurance Group, about how he and his colleagues approach this question.

Art Dobrucki

We talked about how important it is to start out by identifying the business problem to be solved, then basing learning and evaluation on desired business results and the behaviors people need to exhibit in order to achieve them.

Going on to identify the knowledge, skills and attitudes that people need in order to exhibit those behaviors provides a framework for building and developing a strategic learning program with measurable results.

We also discussed the importance of coupling learning initiatives with a measurement strategy, the role of assessments in measurement and the effective use of training scorecards. It all adds up demonstrating that learning is an essential driver of organizational success.

I hope you enjoy this podcast of our conversation:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Posted by Joan Phaup

It’s about a year since we introduced Questionmark OnDemand and it’s great to see more and more of our customers choosing software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Thanks to our  D3 delivery platform, which includes our SAS 70 Type II-certified data center, scalable software and ironclad data protection policies, we are delivering huge numbers of assessments quickly and reliably via the cloud.

In the past few months we’ve seen quite a surge in demand for OnDemand! Our SaaS customers have delivered millions of assessments and received well beyond 100 million participant answers for reporting and analysis. We’ve seen as many as 100 thousand assessments delivered in a single day and expect these numbers to grow as more customers choose OnDemand and free themselves from concerns about hardware, internal IT support and software upgrades.

Since so many of our OnDemand customers – as well as others — are delivering assessments across multiple time zones, we’ve recently added 24 x 5 and 24 x 7 support plans. Regardless of their whereabouts, OnDemand users can monitor uptime (which we’re pleased to say averages 99.99 percent) at http://status.questionmark.com.

I talked recently with Annessa Wangsgaard, who heads our Customer Care team, and Ed Bell, our technical services manager, to find out why organizations are choosing to delegate assessment delivery to us. Feel free to listen in!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download