Comprehensive Reflection

Introduction

Where did my journey to the EDTEC program here at SDSU begin? I have spent a lot of time reflecting on this issue, and believe that the story began when I was a brand new Ensign in the United States Coast Guard, stationed onboard my very first cutter, USCGC BOUTWELL (WHEC-719). I remember those days as if they were yesterday, all the new things that I had to learn, the trainings that I went through, and the qualifications that I needed to achieve. The first year and a half in the Coast Guard as a commissioned Officer is a unique experience. You have to learn so many things, in such a short time, and failure is not an option. I remember thinking, how am I going to learn all of this stuff?

Well, needless to say, I did, and survived being an Ensign. As I learned more and more, I noticed that my thinking had changed on many things. When I was new to the Coast Guard, I took on all learning and trainings at their face value, no questions asked. In time, however, I began to question in my mind why we had to do things this way. Why do I have to attend this training, why are they sitting us down and making us listen to an instructor giving a PowerPoint presentation on a topic when a simple handout with the information would provide the necessary information?

I had come to be disillusioned with the many trainings that we had to attend that I saw as useless in their present form, and I began to form ideas for how they could better be conducted, and even in some cases found myself believing that training on the issue was not even necessary.

Fast forward a bit to the fall of 2006. I’m on a different cutter, with a different Captain, Mike Tekesky, who I consider to be one of the great mentors in my life. I remember one day CAPT Tekesky asking me if I had ever thought about applying to graduate school. I had not thought much about it, as I really enjoyed being on ships, and travelling around the world doing the Coast Guards’ missions. I’ll never forget when he told me “Bob, you’re not always going to be able to be on cutters, or in an operational job. In the Coast Guard, you have to develop a second specialty, that job you do when you’re not operational.” CAPT Tekesky then started to talk with me about what my thoughts were on different graduate school choices. Under his guidance, I researched the many programs that the Coast Guard offers, and found myself drawn to performance technology (the term the Coast Guard uses for an EDTEC degree). I decided that after my next tour as Commanding Officer on a Coast Guard patrol boat in Guam (I was already slated for this position), my goal would be to attend graduate school, or at least apply to it. The Coast Guard’s selection process is very competitive, but that did not dissuade me from doing my best to get into the program.

So here I am… obviously I got selected, and am now getting ready to finish up my Master’s degree. I have learned many things during my short Master’s program here at SDSU, and have enjoyed the opportunity that I have been given to both further my education and my professional career. My EDTEC degree has given me many tools that I will use throughout the rest of my career and beyond.

Ideas That I Love

For me, the path to obtaining my Master’s degree has been a quick one. In the Coast Guard, we are given less than a year and a half to obtain our degree, before we are put back into the field. Due to the time constraints, I have found that although I have learned many things, not all of them have made their way permanently into my mental schema. There are, however, three things that I have found that I really took to. These ideas have become my “loves”, my most important takeaways from this program. Of all that I have learned in this pursuit of a Master’s degree, I have found that my greatest loves have been:

How to take “fuzzy” goals and turn them into measurable objectives.
Performance Analysis.
Building solution systems.

Goals: From fuzzy to measurable:

Goals are a nice thing to have. They can be great ideas, and even point to the way things should be. However, I have learned during my EDTEC journey that goals are not enough and that if a goal is “important to achieve, then it is essential that you do more than talk about them in fuzzy terms” (Mager, 1997).

I remember learning in my EDTEC 540 class how to take goals and make them into objectives that were measurable. Objectives are important because they describe a tangible outcome (Mager, 1997). One of my favorite ways to check whether something was measurable was Bob Mager's “hey dad watch me…” test. That concept immediately stuck into my mind, and I have found myself using that test ever since. I began to understand that clear, measurable objectives are vital to achieve desire results. By the end of my 540 class, I understood that objectives are what provide the structure to achieve the intended outcomes in learning.

Reflecting on my Coast Guard career, I think back to some of the bosses that I worked for who had the best of intentions, but feeling that there was no way to achieve what they wanted. Now that I reflect, I see that in these circumstances, I had come across a supervisor who had “fuzzy” goals that they wanted to achieve, but there was no way of measuring the success of their initiatives. For example, one of my bosses when I was on my first ship had the goal of getting the junior enlisted members to appreciate the importance of submitting self-documentation to assist him in completing their performance evaluations. If ever there was a “hey dad, watch me have an appreciation…” test example, this was it. However, my boss was right… junior enlisted members should understand the importance of providing documentation to their supervisors.

In my EDTEC 544 class, this was the foundation for the artifact that I wanted to produce: a course for junior enlisted members on how to provide supporting documentation. I took the “fuzzy” goal of them having an appreciation for the importance of submitting the information into a course designed to teach them how to accomplish the task. I hope to continue developing this project in the future to assist enlisted personnel in achieving the skills necessary for successful career advancement.

Performance Analysis

Is training really the answer? Often, the answer is to throw more training at the perceived problem, and people are asked “to develop some type of training program when, in fact, training won’t help” (Clark, 1999). I’ve seen this in my own career; mandatory trainings when a problem arises that really are not the best answer to the issue, but the easiest solution to implement quickly (or at least, perceived to be the quick answer). Often, I have found that the issue was not really thought about, and that no true analysis was conducted.

Performance Analysis (PA) really appeals to me. I love the idea of finding out the “difference between what is and what should be” (Mager, 1997). A big part of PA is gap analysis and cause analysis. Gap analysis allows us to look at things the way they are versus the way that we want them to be, while cause analysis helps us to identify barriers (or drivers) that are causing the problem. It seems so common sense, but often PA is not conducted when taking on an issue in the real world. PA is a great tool because “it’s a systematic strategy for figuring out what to do in a speedy fashion” (Rossett, 1999). I believe that this is a key point, that PA does not have to be a long, drawn out process that would only cause “analysis paralysis”. PA should be the first step in the process of figuring out what to for any given situation.

In my ED 795A class, I was assigned to intern with the American Express Learning Network (AELN), the training department for American Express. The AELN was currently in the midst of transforming their whole instructional design process, and had identified as part of their transformation the need to identify the most appropriate training delivery methods and performance interventions given different business situations. As part of my project, I performed a PA on the AELN, and identified some barriers that I saw were hindering their progress. For example, training development within the AELN was not standardized among their various locations, although the material was. Also, I found that workers in their call centers often did not have sound cards on their computers, which hindered the type of CBT that could be delivered to them. After conducting many interviews with members of the AELN, as well as an extensive literature, I proposed some recommendations to the AELN on how to better achieve their objectives. I still wound up producing their original request of an intervention selection tool (matrix) to help with matching trainings with appropriate delivery methods, but felt it was my responsibility to my client to provide them with my PA findings.

Reflecting on my Coast Guard career, I realize that there have been times when a PA had not been conducted to identify the real barriers to performance; rather, “death by PowerPoint” training was created, when it was not the best answer. Now that I have the tools in my belt on how to conduct a PA, I need to make sure that I never allow training to be the answer in the instances where training is not the real solution.

Solution Systems

That brings us to my third love… I love solution systems. Allison Rossett describes solution systems as “integrated, cross-functional approaches to solving problems and realizing opportunities” (1999). Where a PA identifies the barriers (drivers) involved in the problem, a solution system prescribes the treatment for the symptoms.

In EDTEC 540, I revisited a problem that I had actually experienced in my Coast Guard career. While I was stationed out in Guam as Commanding Officer (CO) of USCGC ASSATEAGUE (WPB-1337), I had bent the cutter’s anchor during a windy day in Saipan. Less than two months later, the CO on the other patrol boat did the same thing. What had gone wrong?

I conducted a performance analysis, interviewing a few present and former patrol boat COs, as well as gathering information on the anchor from the manufacturer. Out of the five COs I had interviewed, four had bent their anchors. The one common thread was the type of anchor bent, which was the cutter's stainless steel anchor (the one that doesn’t rust, causing “running rust” on the ship’s hull. We all had the same barriers:

Skills/Knowledge:

COs did not realize that by replacing the stainless steel anchor with a steel one, the strength of the anchor would greatly improve for the evolution.
Weather conditions such as winds over 30 knots and currents one knot or greater most likely will cause the anchor to drag and possibly be damaged beyond repair.

Environmental/Incentive:

COs knew that their supervisors viewed a cutter with no running rust on its hull as a sign of a “squared away” CO (clean, well kept cutter means outstanding CO).

Motivation/Value:

COs saw changing the stainless steel anchor for a steel one as causing extra work for their crews to keep the hull clean and therefore not good practice.

From identifying these barriers, I figured out a solution system to the problem that many patrol boat COs were experiencing. Below are the barriers with proposed solutions:

Barrier	Suggested Solution
skills/knowledge	anchoring job aid
environmental	Supervisors not placing as much emphasis on running rust on the cutter’s hull as a measure of the COs performance.
motavation/value	COs would be taught to recognize the value of saving an anchor despite extra cleanup that would be required to the hull.
Incentive	Positively reward COs for keeping their equipment from being damaged beyond repair.

Unfortunately, a lot of the issues that are at the root cause of this performance problem (patrol boat COs bending their anchor) are issues deeply ingrained in the Coast Guard afloat community, where “perception is reality”. Solution systems only work if the organization is receptive to change. However, I love the idea of creating solution systems for problems that explain how to tackle the barriers to performance.

Bringing It All Together

In my organization, like all others, there are performance problems. Some require training, while others may require different solution systems. Another aspect to the Coast Guard is the goals that it hopes to achieve, things such as preventing the illegal importation of drugs, protecting the homeland against terrorist threats, rescuing those in need, and so on.

Using the tools I have learned in this program will help me to achieve success for myself and my organization. I can take the goals of the organization and turn them into clear, concise, measurable objectives for mission accomplishment. By utilizing what I have learned about PA, I can address the root causes of problems encountered in the fleet, and find out the best possible solution systems to implement. I find myself looking at things in an entirely different way, no longer just going along with the flow.

After being through the courses in this program, I feel that I am in a better position to create positive changes within the Coast Guard. I love the ADDIE model, as it gives me a framework to build a project around, each step building on the next. In an organization such as the Coast Guard, with its many checklists, job aids, and manuals describing how to perform, I love the systematic processes that I have learned in my EDTEC degree. It is no wonder why the Coast Guard keeps sending personnel to obtain this degree, as it is so vital to the enhancement and success of the organization.

Change

The loves that I have acquired in this program will continue to grow on me, and I do not foresee “falling out of love” with them. I know that in time, things will change. The top of the line technology of today will be the old way of doing things tomorrow. New theories and ideas will produce different views on how to handle situations and problems that occur. It is my responsibility to keep up with the changes that occur, and I am eager to accomplish this. My education does not end with obtaining this Master’s degree… it is only the beginning of a lifelong mission.

I look at how far technology has come during my lifetime, even in the last ten years since receiving my Bachelor’s degree. Realizing that change will occur is half the battle… the other half is preparing for and executing the necessary changes.

As I continue on life’s journey, I know that I must never stop learning, and never take the easy road. I look forward to getting back to work in the Coast Guard and using the tools I have gained to make the organization better, as well as myself.

References:

Clark, R. C. (1999). Developing technical training. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Mager, R. & Pipe, P. (1997). Analyzing performance problems, 3rd ed. Atlanta, GA: CEP Press.

Mager, R. (1997). Goal analysis,3rd ed. Atlanta, GA: CEP Press.

Mager, R. (1997). Preparing instructional objectives, 3rd ed. Atlanta, GA: CEP Press.

Rossett, A. (1999). First things fast: A handbook for performance analysis. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.