His approach to teaching (imparting knowledge) focuses on blended learning - integrating text, video or live presentation, and computer technology in an effective way, tailored to each situation. He's a fan of Dr. McCammon's "Fizz" method for presenting small, memorable chunks of information, where appropriate.
In contrast, training (teaching a skill or task) often involves more than putting people in a classroom or behind a computer. Other factors include existing knowledge and skills, past experience and feelings, task design, human factors and ergonomics, incentives, and the overall performance environment. A systematic approach considers all of these factors.
One structured, systematic way to do this is HPT. Human Performance Technology (HPT) is "a systematic approach to improving productivity and competence, uses a set of methods and procedures... for realizing opportunities related to the performance of people. More specific, it is a process of selection, analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of programs to most cost-effectively influence human behavior and accomplishment. It is a systematic combination of three fundamental processes: performance analysis, cause analysis, and intervention selection..." (ISPI "What is HPT?")
Joe's experience includes the design and development of, and training for, a variety of systems: healthcare clinical and billing applications, document management, point-of-sale, inventory management, and customer relations management. He has also taught customer service, project management, business ethics, technical writing, and grammar.
Some Favorite Tools & Models:
- In instructional design: personas, rapid prototyping, frequent usability testing
- Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction
- Human Performance Technology & HPT Model
- Behavioral Engineering Model (BEM) & Marker's Synchronized Analysis Model (SAM)
- Kaufman's Organizational Elements Model
- ARCS (motivation design)
- Kirkpatrick's "Levels of Evaluation"
- Mager's Instructional Objectives (performance, condition, criterion)
- Bloom's Taxonomies (cognitive, affective, psychomotor)
- Quirk's GNOME schema for guiding metacognition