Cloud Based Service

HP recently announced that they were discontinuing their TouchPad tablet (Jaenke, 2011).  Additionally, HP is considering, after acquiring Compaq a decade ago, to sell off its Personal Systems Group, its PC division.

The announcement of discontinuing HPs TouchPad tablet may not come as a big surprise to most since they were a late entry into an already competitive market.  However, why would a large computer manufacturing company, as HP is seen from most, discontinue or sell off its PC division?  The bottom line is that HP is looking to buy Autonomy Corporation plc.  Autonomy Corporation is currently the second largest software company in Europe (Introduction to Autonomy).  Autonomy provides 'access to information' so people can form and understand their data and automatically process it.  This is provided by Autonomy's "pan-enterprise software infrastructure that automates advanced operations" (Introduction to Autonomy).

General statements from HP indicated that they wanted to concentrate on software and enterprise.  This move shows HP as one of the companies leading the push toward cloud software platforms.  Additional signs that corporations are growing their cloud based services can be found in Asia.  Google is looking to invest $200 Million in Asia Data Centers.  Google is planning on building their own data centers which house computers, telecommunications and storage systems (Kim, 2011).

New cloud based services are being introduced as features in new devices.  Look at the new iCloud being offered by Apple Inc.  This new service will provide backup for a user’s “music, TV shows, apps, books, devise settings, app data, messages, ringtones and images in Photo Stream” (Mossberg, 2011, D3).  In addition to these free service backups user’s email can be stored as well, although the email will count against the allotted 5GB of free storage per user.  Any user with an Apple device (iphone, ipad, ipod, macbook) will be able to view the data saved on their iCloud account from any device as they choose.

Anderson, (2010) provided futuristic outlooks, from technology experts, relating to cloud computing.  Their opinions ranged from the desktop computer will be replaced with cloud software peripherals, to a hybrid cloud/desktop in the future, to no further expansion of cloud based services than what exists today.  The majority of opinions agreed that cloud based platforms will play a major role in the future.  From Anderson's (2010) Pew Institute Research Report on the future of cloud computing,  71% of the participants agreed with the following:

"By 2020, most people won't do their work with software running on a general-purpose PC.  Instead, they will work in Internet-based applications such as Google Docs, and in applications run from smartphones.  Aspiring application developers will develop for smartphone vendors and companies that provide Internet-based applications, because most innovative work will be done in that domain, instead of designing applications that run on a PC operating system" (p. 2).

The move from HP, looking to sell their PC division and acquire Autonomy, is indicative of a larger move from PC manufacturing to designing and maintaining cloud software platforms.  

References:

Anderson, J. Q. (2010).  The future of cloud computing.  The future of the Internet series, retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/The-future-of-cloud-computing.aspx

Autonomy.  Retrieved from http://autonomy.com/

Introduction to Autonomy (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.autonomy.com/content/Autonomy/introduction/index.en.html

Jaenke, P. (August, 18, 2011). HP buys autonomy, also drops TouchPad and ponders spinning off PC business.  Icrontic.  

Kim, Y-H (September, 29, 2011).  Google puts $200 Million into Asia data centers.  Wall Street Journal, B10.

Mossberg, W. S. (October 12, 2011). The iPhone finds its voice. Wall Street Journal, D1 & D3.

SlideShare uses and Resources for HPT

SlideShare is “the world’s largest community for sharing presentation.  With 55 million monthly visitors and 120 million pageviews, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world” (http://www.slideshare.net/about).  SlideShare is a great way to save all your presentation slides in one location where you can access them with a common URL anytime you need access to them.  Additionally, each presentation can be either linked to or incorporated into a blog, a post, a web page, a report, etc…  Hart (2011) indicated that presentations could be:

• ·      Viewed at the site – where you can see status on usage
• ·      Individually embedded into a web or blog page
• ·      Embedded as a SlideShare Playlist (p. 154).

Bozarth (2010) highlights that SlideShare is useful for trainers who want to distribute either a powerpoint slide presentation or a pdf file via Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking application.

In my blog post on August 26, 2011, Metacognitive Model for HPT.  I included a link to the pdf slide presentation that I used to report my journal article.  There were two versions of this pdf slide presentation.  The long version, which can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/metacognition-pres and the short version, which can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/metacogn-pres-2

Additionally, in my blog post on May 25, 2011, Complexity Leadership Theory, I also included a link to the powerpoint slide presenation for this post, http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/complex-ldrtheory-8097228  Other presentations can be found at my SlideShare URL.

One effective use of adding SlideShare presentations to a web page, or a blog page, can be found at Harold Jarche’s web page, Life in Perpetual Beta.  Jarche has a separate tab for all of his SlideShare presentations incorporated into his web page.  These presentations can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/jarche  Another use of incorporating SlideShare presentations in a blog can be found at Clive Shepherds’ blog page, Clive on Learning.  Clive add a link to his SlideShare presentations which can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/clives.

Another effective use of incorporating SlideShare into your web page or blog is to include the actual presentation into the post.  One example of this can be found at Jane Hart’s blog, From “Command & Control” to “Encourage & Engage”: the presentation.

When it comes to developing slides there is no better source than Garr Reynolds’ blog on issues related to professional presentation design.  Garr provides examples and tips on how to develop productive and attractive slides for a memorable presentation.  Additional tips and examples can be found on Garr’s blog, Garr’s posterous. 

References:

Bozarth, J. (2010). Social media for trainers: Techniques for enhancing and extending learning.  San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Hart, J. (2011). Social learning handbook. Center for Learning & Performance Technologies, C4LPT.

Blogs and Wikis relating to HPT

Many Web2.0 platforms available today provide opportunities for businesses to obtain and retain technical information.  The transition from Web1.0 to Web2.0 includes the implementation of interactive applications.  Hart (2011) distinguished Web1.0 as read-only web and Web2.0 as read-write-web.  Some of these applications include Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, blogs, wikis, and YouTube, to name only a few.  I have concentrated on two of these Web2.0 platforms, blogs and wikis, as they relate to the Human Performance Technology (HPT) field.

HPT related blogs

Numerous blogs are content driven, meaning their written for the sole purpose of publishing content related to a specific discipline.  A blog, as described by Bozarth (2010), is “an online space for posting chronologically ordered comments or ideas that can include text, photo, video, audio, and links to other sites, blogs, or documents” (p. 83).  McAfee (2009) highlighted blogs as being easy to update, easy to view or reference as a separate web page, and are permanent records.   

I searched for five blogs relating to the HPT discipline.  One such blog was Donald Clark’s Big Dog, Little Dog blog, designed to post content related to instructional design and performance (http://bdld.blogspot.com/).  A second blog is Jane Bozarth’s blog titled bozarthzone, which covers a variety of topics relating to e-learning and social media (http://bozarthzone.blogspot.com/).  A third informative blog is Donald H. Taylor’s blog dedicated to performance, learning, human capital, and talent management (http://donaldhtaylor.wordpress.com/).  A fourth blog is Harold Jarche’s blog with the mantra of ‘Life in Perpetual Beta’.  This blog is dedicated to informal learning principles in the workplace (http://www.jarche.com/).  The final blog researched was Mitch Joel’s blog titled Six Pixels of Separation – The Blog which is dedicated to marketing but covers a vast amount of information relating to social networking (http://www.twistimage.com/blog/).

One interesting and effective twist to blogs is a blog carnival.  Blog carnivals are where bloggers interested in a common content area pool together and post monthly, or quarterly, posts on a specific topic (check out my blogpost on blog carnivals at http://johnrturnerhptresource.blogspot.com/2011/07/blog-carnivals.html).  The host for a blog carnival varies from month to month.  This is a great way to find other bloggers interested in the same content and it adds a new way to get your content out to different viewers (http://blogcarnival.com/bc/).

HPT related wikis

Wikis provide a different type of interaction than blogs.  A wiki is a web page where everyone with access can change the content (Bozarth, 2010).  McAfee (2009) made the point that wikis have the ability to capture and spread knowledge as well as being an effective tool supporting strongly tied coworkers.  In the area for training and development, Bozarth (2010) identified 4 ways to employ a wiki:

1.     include learner-built development of a permanent, takeaway record of the particular course session;

2.     a record of the course over various iteration or offerings across time;

3.     a compilation of FAQs or good practices for those coming into the role that the training targets;

4.     or a single project aimed at improving overall company or work-unit operations (p. 109).

One of the most popular wikis is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/).  The content on Wikipedia can be changed by anyone by selecting the ‘edit’ button next to the written content on the page you wish to change.  The ‘discussion’ tab gives you a history of what changes were made to the content, when they were made, and by whom.  A second wiki is Psychology Wiki, which provides almost anything related to psychology: learning, cognition, personality, statistics, education, and industrial (http://psychology.wikia.com/).  A third wiki is called Human Science and provides knowledge from a human perspective.  Topics covered on this wiki include development, personality, management, and spirituality, to name a few (http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki).  A fourth wiki is an index of wikis called WikiIndex (http://wikiindex.org/).  Here you can find other wikis, wiki communities, wiki ideas, and wiki people.  Another new twist to the original format of a wiki can be found at WikiAnswers.  WikiAnswers allows you to type in a question and it will give you a list of answers that have been provided by others (http://wiki.answers.com/).

Precautions

Security is always a concern with regards to corporate knowledge.  Prior to deciding which platform you want to utilize you will need to determine whether you want an open access platform or a restricted platform.  One thing to remember when deciding who you want to access these Web2.0 applications is that the more restricted you make a platform the less it takes on the features of a Web2.0 application.  The advantage of a Web2.0 application is the ability to have outsiders view the content so they can comment and add to the conversation.  If you restrict access this too much, you are defeating the purpose of using an open access platform.

Within a corporate setting specific policies and guidelines should be made available so that everyone understands what is an acceptable contribution and what is not an acceptable contribution.  It should be made clear that participants should respect the opinions of others and that all references to ‘other’ content should always be referenced or a link should be provided to the original content.  These policies and guidelines can be a working document, which can be added to as the Web2.0 platform becomes populated.  In most cases, these policies and guidelines will become self-regulated among the users of the Web2.0 platform.

  

References

Bozarth, J. (2010). Social media for trainers: Techniques for enhancing and extending learning.  San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Hart, J. (2011). Social learning handbook: A practical guide to using social media to work and learn smarter. Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.

McAfee, A. (2009).  Enterprise 2.0: New collaborative tools for your organization’s toughest challenges.  Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Media Multitasking and Memory Processes

Media Multitasking refers to the number of media a person consumes simultaneously (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009).  Research shows that people who are rated as high media multitaskerss (HMM) have "greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment… are less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory… and they are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task sets" (Ophir et al., 2009, p. 3 of 5).  With HMM being more common today, especially among younger generations, how can HMM effect the memory process?  Listed below i have listed a couple of potential effects to consider.

Memory

Memory is load based, indicating that once the load reaches the cognitive capacities of the subject the processing suffers.  One example is when one has reached his/her cognitive abilities, he/she is unable to organize the material to store in their long-term memories.

Memory is selective, meaning that there are a number of stages that information needs to go through before it reaches your long-term memory.  There are various memory models but the simplest is that information is scanned via your sensory processes, then only some of this information enters into the short-term memory, then only a select few pieces of information get transferred to the working memory.  This information in our working memory, in turn, has a small chance of entering our long-term memory only if it has made the right associations and connections to existing memory.

One final short note about memory is that our brains and memories are constantly evolving.

HMM and Memory Processes

With that said, I believe that multitasking does have the potential to change our memory processes.  People have been multitasking for years, the more active we become the more we multitask.  Only recently, however, have we been using technology to multitask - hence the term media multitasking (MM).  

The first point to make is the effect that HMM can have on long-term memory processes.  Our long-term memory is where we store our knowledge.  This knowledge is retrieved by searching through various categories, concepts, associations, and experiences that are in our long-term memory.  This information is retrieved best if they are recalled by the same method, congruency.  If technology becomes a source of your retrieval process, then you would not be able to retrieve information from your long-term memory without the use of this technology.  This problem was identified in Lin Lins' (2009) commentary when she highlighted that the hippocampus was not involved in learning when using multitasking.  This could be problematic when learning is the primary goal.  However, if technology is used to assist one to store information to their long-term memory, to learn, then retrieval without the technology is more likely and learning is more likely to have been achieved - the hippocampus is involved.  Dependency would then be the key.  As long as we are not too dependent on any one technology we can benefit from it and our memories can continue to evolve.

This second point refers to how the Internet and HMM can reflect our memory processes.  Learning is not linear, our brains are more representative of networks, nodes, synaptic connections, etc…  Internet programs have developed tags to represent the content of the material we are interested in.  These tags, in most programs today, are created by the user (by us).  Thus, the internet is evolving into representation of our own memory and thought processes.  This point was highlighted in Lin Lins' (2009) commentary when she introduced Weinbergers' point: "that individuals exposed to a concept in multiple decentralized sources may gain deeper and more complex understanding of this concept" (Lin, 2009,Commentary).  I feel that as the internet becomes more like our own memory processes HMM can be beneficial to our learning.  

To benefit learning by using technology, including HMM techniques, one should consider two things.  Keep the dependency of the technology to a minimum, use technology as a guide and a tool.  The second consideration is to design your Internet connection to model your own memory processes to benefit your learning.

References:

Lin Lin (2009). Breadth-biased versus focused cognitive control in media multitasking behaviors (Commentary).  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 106(37), 15521-15522.  doi: 10.1073/pnas.0908642106

Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitasks.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 106(37), 15583-15587.  doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903620106

Metacognitive Model for HPT

My latest journal publication is out. Check out New Metacognitive Model for Human Performance Technology in the August issue of Performance Improvement Journal (PIJ), see above model.

ABSTRACT:

Addressing metacognitive functions has been shown to improve performance at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Metacognition is beginning to surface as an added cognate discipline for the field of human performance technology (HPT). Advances from research in the fields of cognition and metacognition offer a place for HPT to expand its theoretical base. This article summarizes current theories of metacognition and presents a new metacognitive model for HPT.

Check out my powerpoint slides for this article on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/metacognition-pres

Reference:

Turner, J. R. (2011). New metacognitive model for human performance technology. Performance Improvement, 50(7), 25-32. doi: 10.1002/pfi.20229

Human Performance Technology Principles (HPT)

Listed below are a set of 10 Principles of Human Performance Technology (HPT) as presented by Jacobs in 1987 (Gilley, Dean, Bierema, 2001, pp. 80-91). These principles provide a guide for those who are interested in providing systematic performance related solutions for their organization. Practitioners, managers, and today's corporate leaders can all benefit by keeping these principles in the back of their minds.

1. Human performance and human behavior are different, and knowledge of their differences is important for achieving goals.
2. Any statement about human performance is about organizational performance as well.
3. Costs of improving performance should be regarded as investments in human capital, yielding returns in the form of increased performance potential.
4. Organizational and individual goals must be considered to define worthy performance.
5. Knowing how to engineer human performance and the conditions that affect it is as important as explaining why the behavior occurred.
6. Diagnosing problems required analysis of the present system and examination of differences between it and an ideal system. Avoiding anticipated problems requires analyzing the planned system and modifying it to approximate the ideal.
7. Exemplary performance provides the most logical reference for establishing job performance standards.
8. Human performance problems have differing root causes that originate either from the person, from something in the environment, or from both.
9. The performance of one subsystem affects the performance of other subsystems in somewhat predictable ways, requiring that root causes be analyzed at more than one level of the organization.
10. Many different solutions may be used to improve human performance. Selection of any one solution is dependent on the cause and nature of the performance problem, and the criteria used to evaluate a solution must include its potential to make a measurable difference in the performance system.

(Gilley, Dean, Bierema, 2001, pp. 80-91)

Reference

Gilley, J. W. (2001). Philosophy of organizational performance. In Gilley, J. W., Dean, P., & Bierema, L. (Eds.), Philosophy and practice of organizational learning, performance, and change: New perspectives in organizational learning, performance, and change, pp. 67-92. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

Is Your Workplace Designed for Learning?

As the 21^st century transitions to the knowledge worker (from the industrial / manufacturing worker of the 20^th century & from the agricultural worker from the 19^th century) companies are faced with the responsibility of training their workers to acquire the required knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA’s) for their jobs. Nijhof and Nieuwenhuis (2008) identified that work is shifting toward knowledge-intensive work, with a focus on knowledge production. It is not uncommon today to view a journal article or a newsletter that talks about the knowledge-economy. The primary difference here is that knowledge-economy refers more to a macro perspective, where knowledge production looks more at a micro perspective.

As the requirements for the knowledge worker continually changes to keep up with the global economy and new technologies, the educational system often falls behind these new technologies, thus furthering the burden for the employer to train employees. This new emphasis on training, by the employer, was highlighted by Nijhof and Nieuwenhuis (2008) by stating: “Efficient and effective learning impose requirements on workplaces that are different from those for efficient and effective working” (pp. 6-7). This new requirement on employers causes a shift in the common practices of the organization.

Most views of the workplace take the stand that there is a place to work (the workplace), there is a place to play (at home), and there is a place to learn (at home or at school – both away from the workplace). However, learning new tasks or skills are often required to perform one’s job. Alternatively, in order to successfully perform one’s job, one must be able to learn about the job duties and processes that are involved with that particular job. Nijhof & Nieuwenhius (2008) identified that learning is an intermediate function of work, “the learning potential of the workplace therefore lies in its conditions to support or stimulate learning” (Nijhof & Nieuwenhuis, 2008, p. 5). Thus, the more learning is supported in the workplace, employees have a tendency to be more motivated and productive.

A fully supported learning environment in the workplace could be replicated using the following definition provided by Nijhof and Nieuwenhuis (2008): “The learning potential of the workplace may… be defined as the power of a work setting to integrate learning at work with the result of behavioural changes and the generation of new knowledge” (p. 7).

Is your organization set up to integrate learning in the workplace? I will follow up in the next couple of blogs with a few models that could be implemented to begin a new learning workplace for organizations.

References

Nijhof, W. J. & Nieuwenhuis, L. F. M. (2008). The learning potential of the workforce. In Nijhof, W. J. & Nieuwenhuis, L. F. M. (Eds.), The learning potential of the workplace. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.