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Area of Expertise I/O psychologist; work motivation, teams and team decision-making What are the findings or theories from your area of expertise that we could apply to higher education? These are several areas that I/O psychologists have been traditionally involved in where the theories and findings could be applied to higher education. -
Active Learning. There is a lot of work in training that works with active learning. Web-based training and life-long learning models have demonstrated the importance of treating the learner as an active participant in learning. -
Decision-making. The use of choice models and issues related to the decisions that people make. -
Teamwork. The idea that learning in teams is important, especially, since much of our behavior outside of the university is done in teams. We use teams in the educational setting; however, one of the implications of this is that we do not reward behavior in teams, we reward individual behavior—grades and diplomas are given to individuals not to teams. People are learning in teams and are learning about teamwork itself; this is a domain that I/0 psychology has worked with for a long time and has a lot to contribute. -
Behavior between organizations. Education is moving from the sole property of the university to more of a joint venture between businesses, communities, universities and individuals. We don’t know much about how these areas will work together and what will happen as we cross these boundaries. What will be important in getting these various enterprises to work well together? -
Competencies. Evaluating the competencies of individuals. I/O psychologists tend to work backwards by asking what is needed for the specific job and what is important to the nature of the job and then create the bundles of knowledge and competencies that would be expected. Education could benefit from a similar approach in attempting to understand how to bundle and cluster knowledge. -
Task Motivation. Why do people stay on task? What kind of things keep students going? What things can be used to help with task motivation? What are the (most important) unsolved problems? What should be included in an agenda for research? Learning and the choice process. People are much more involved as active learners than we have previously thought or than we have looked at. The nature of learning puts much more burden on the person in terms of acquiring information. As an example, many people know how to use Microsoft Word, but the degree to which people learn the software often depends on their own level of motivation. Much more of the learning that we do is a process of our own willingness to go forward and the choices that we make in the learning process. We don’t know a lot about what keeps people motivated and keeps them pushing forward when they are left on their own to learn information. Motivation. Businesses and universities are invading more and more on people’s personal lives. For example, businesses used to send employees to a retreat to get new information, now companies will often give employees a web site to go to and get the new information. At some point we have to ask how much we should be asking from people. Team Work. How do we create the proper reward systems for work that is done in teams? As previously mentioned we don’t give degrees to teams, we give them to individuals. How can we structure a reward system for team and group work? The first question is what level are we talking about in an agenda of research. We can do more research on web-based training, life-long learning, and training displays this research is at more of the micro level. At a different level we need to look at the psychological processes of being an active learner. What prototypes can you point us toward where principles from the science of learning are already being applied? Active Learning. In terms of active learning there is a lot of work going on in the area of web based training; we are learning what it takes for people to get the information and to be motivated to continue. Web based training is an example of active learning, but it is still very early in the development stages. Michigan Virtual University. This is a consortium between the automotive industry, the junior colleges and the four-year colleges. Asking what is the way in which all of these organizations can work together to create a model. This is an area where organizational research will be important. Collaborative work sites, also apply some of the principle of learning to the workplace. What are the major problems with or barriers to redesigning higher education? Higher Education is itself its own barrier. Universities are very conservative institutions, and there is a lot of resistance to change. The separation of the university into different academic departments means that we tend to compartmentalize our solutions to these problems. We stress interdisciplinary work, yet we continue to advance the level of knowledge in our disciplines so that people need to be more and more specialized. The more specialized that we are the harder it becomes to talk to anyone outside of our area. Funding and these types of issues are also probably a concern, but not one that I am very familiar with. Rapid change in technology results in things becoming outdated so quickly. By the time systems are purchased and people are trained in it; the technology is out of date. Do you have any ideas for overcoming them? Putting together interdisciplinary teams. Trying to get people to cross borders of disciplines. The constraints of the university are something that we just have to try to work around. What do we need to do so that one outcome of the retreat is to effect change (in ways that we want)? We need a provocative report that could stir things up. I have always liked the National Research Counsel model. For example a book published by the Institute of Medicine titled “To Err is Human,” reported the number of medical errors in hospitals and other medical areas that lead to the loss of human lives. This study stirred things up. Although education does not have the same level of shock value—people dying as a result of mistakes—it would be great to have some report that could get people stirred up in a similar way. A group of experts that can get together and provide a provocative treatment of the problem is a great start to effecting change.
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