Sunday, July 29, 2012

The Last Post on HRD, a Reflection

The questions/topics:
1) When I felt most engaged in the learning experience and why.
2) When I felt most distanced from the learning experience and why.
3) What I learned about myself that can be applied to my life and why.
4) How I judge my best work (criteria) and why.
5) If I were to select the one single thing that represents my best work in the course at this moment, it would be .
6) Additional personal learning needs that I have identified as a result of the learning experience and how I will go about meeting them (personal learning strategies.)

At the beginning of the semester, I was new to the field of HRD--Human Resource Development. In this class, not only did I learn about HRD, but I also learned about teaching an intensive class to adults.

1)When I felt most engaged in the learning experience and why - I cannot single out one day that I didn't feel engaged in this class. Perhaps that IS what happens when three situations meet: A)the student (me) has decided to learn the subject, B)the teacher is well prepared, loves the subject—if she doesn't, she deserves an Academy Award—and makes the subject easy to digest, and C)the classmates are supportive and contribute a lot of real-life examples to what is discussed.
The class activities were perhaps the most engaging moments of this class, not just the discussion, but also the presentation of discussion results to the rest of the class. Another moment in which I believe I felt more engaged was when we had the 3-guest panel, because it looked like they were having fun and felt comfortable talking about their job.

2)When I felt most distanced from the learning experience and why – As mentioned above, I cannot mention a moment in which I didn't feel engaged. Perhaps the only time in which I felt I learned the least was while reading “The New Protean Career,” (the first chapter of Hall, D. T. (1996). The career is dead - long live the career: A relational approach to careers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ), not because the reading was bad, but because it made me uncomfortable to think that the predictions of this article are today's reality. Jobs do not last as long as they did before. This prompted in me a chain of thoughts that made me lose focus by the end of the article.

3)What I learned about myself that can be applied to my life and why – I can say that with this class, I have learned a new vocabulary, an overview of the history of Human Resource Development, and a better idea of how organizations train their employees. I believe that as a result, I will read job descriptions with a different mindset and will be able to ask better questions when I interview for a job. Also, I am seriously contemplating the idea of getting a master's degree, or at least a certificate either in Adult Education or HRD in the future.
I also learned that it is important to reflect after each class, because I wrote a few blog posts during the semester and they have helped me a great deal while writing this reflection. The reflection right after class and the reflection after the semester ends are two different brain activities, but both reflections are necessary to evaluate what we have learned in the course. At this point I feel that what I'm actually doing is a triple reflection, or a meta-reflection, which is something I have not done in many other classes.
Another point I learned about myself is that I do not completely follow ideas of theory X or Y, and that it is alright.
4)How I judge my best work (criteria) and why – The best work in a class is when the work done is original and provides new ideas to other students about a field. Since I was new to HRD, most of what I did in this class was original to me, but if something is original to me and the class, then it is worthy.

5)If I were to select the one single thing that represents my best work in the course at this moment, it would be – Perhaps my best work is the field interview. I believe that I was very lucky to be able to talk to Bob Huebner, because 1)I had to apply what I had read for class and after the interview everything that did not make sense before became clear; 2)because Mr. Huebner was very accessible and enthusiastic about his job, and 3)his answers gave me a good perspective of what a chief learning officer does. After this interview, I feel confident to be able to talk to HRD and HR professionals to learn from them. But more important, I feel that I can do this type of job in the future.
6)Additional personal learning needs that I have identified as a result of the learning experience and how I will go about meeting them (personal learning strategies.) – The first point I need to mention here is that I need to learn more about social and group learning theory. Most of my classmates knew already about this topic and I felt a little jealous. The second one point is that if I take another Adult Education class, I will keep a blog and add a post after each class, and maybe add a post after every three classes or so, to have a better perspective on what I learn.
I have taken three classes in the Adult Education Department, and this was by far the class where students participated the most and I felt more comfortable making mistakes or talking about my own experience.
Thanks, Dr. Robin Hurst, for a great class.

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