Designing within a system is ubiquitous to instructional design. In order to understand the systemic impact of design decisions within an organization, one must understand the interrelatedness of the objects within the system. Developing an understanding of context as it relates to the utility of instructional design solutions will position…

As students graduate and enter the workforce, they face the job market's demand for critical thinking (CT) skills. The demand is caused by the market's increasing need for providing professional services that require performing complex tasks. In response to this demand, institutions of higher education are expected to prepare their graduate…

Human performance technology (HPT) provides an evidence-based approach to improving the performance of individuals, teams, and organizations. As a complex approach that requires many pages to define and years of experience to master, the future of HPT depends on the discipline of future practitioners as well as their willingness to approach…

Many, if not most, of my colleagues believe that human performance technology (HPT) can never become a science; they do not even believe that it should be. I cannot come to that conclusion. If not a full-fledged science, then we should strive for at least a soft science that is more consistent and accepted in business than is certainly the case…

Using their "license to snoop," performance architects uncover the nuances of how work gets done in an organization. This is the first of a four-part series in which each article will present a different organizational level. Typical performance issues and opportunities for each level will be discussed, and helpful models and tools will be shared.…

This paper aims to compare various Performance Management Systems (PMS) for business school in order to find the strengths of each standard as inputs to design new model of PMS. There are many critical aspects and gaps notified for new model to improve performance and even recognized that self evaluation performance management is not well…

Efforts to improve human and organizational performance are often courageous adventures full of unexpected twists and turns and frequently leading to unexpected destinations. From mentoring and succession planning to e-learning and beyond, the activities that can be leveraged to improve performance are vast. Comparing, contrasting, selecting, and…

The future of human performance technology (HPT) will be bright or dismal depending on how well HPT practitioners focus on careful and practical answers to three pivotal questions: What is good practice in human performance technology? What are the differences between good practice and bad? What are the connections between good research and…

This action research study sought to examine the impact of applying the Human Performance Technology (HPT) principles to an intervention already in place in a suburban Missouri school district, and to review how those involved perceived the change of using the HPT approach. This action research study also examined what happened to the…

The heightened demand for accountability, access, and quality performance from health care professionals has resulted in linkages between continuing education (CE), performance improvement (PI), and outcomes. CE health professionals must also expand their skills and abilities to design, implement, and measure CE activities consistent with these…

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how to conduct a Behavioral Systems Analysis (BSA) to aid in the design of targeted performance improvement interventions. BSA is a continuous process of analyzing the right variables to the right extent to aid in planning and managing performance at the organization, process, and job levels. BSA helps to…

Cultural awareness training that emphasizes communication delivers only a partial solution to the challenges that intercultural work teams face. Improving collaboration requires a strong foundation of performance management before a work team can determine how they will cooperate to perform to excellence. Against the backdrop of the authors'…

The business of training and performance improvement has always been cyclical, with the fortunes of human resource development (HRD) and performance improvement professionals rising and falling with the economic fortunes of the workplace. The current economic downturn and nascent recovery represent an opportunity for HRD and performance…

Grounded in the work of W. Edwards Deming, this article describes the basics of systems thinking, viewing a business as a system, and contrasts improving a system with solving a problem. The article uses the human body as a metaphor to describe the various aspects of viewing a business as a system at the concept level and maps the Deming cycle,…

Total quality management based governance models tend to focus on incremental improvements within the boundaries of a single organization. This may limit the benefits of information technology because they are not complex enough to address business or performance problems that extend beyond the boundaries of a single organization. The research…