Day 1 and 2

Saturday, May 31 - Day 1

Long flight. 5 1/2 hours, but uneventful. I gain 3 hours when I arrive.

I land in San Diego and take the shuttle bus to the hotel, The Doubletree. I'm checking in at noon, which is three full hours before check-in time, but no problem. They give me my key and send me to room 1818. I get up there, put my key in the door and hear a hairdryer going and see a high heel shoe careless thrown on the floor. My first thougth is, "Dear Penthouse Form, I never thought it would happen to me but..." My second thought was, "Oh, there is someone in there." I go back down and get another room. This time I knock on the door first. All is good.

Sunday, June 1 - Day 2

Sessions start at noon. The first one I go to is called Competencies that Count: Using HPI to Create Performance-Based Competency Models. Yes, the subject matter was as heavy as the title. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concepts presented by Mason Holloway. He has a five step program that is very cryptic. Step 1: Develop competency framework; Step 2: Establish and define use scenarios; Step 3: Build a performance model; Step 4: (notes too messed up - he didn't give a copy of slides - grumble, grumble, grumble); Step 5: Identify and map competencies to models. I have a bunch of notes that I'll need to review. He also said the presentation was available on his web site (www.ppg-us.com). He also pitched his three day session.

Session two was much better, although the presenter needed to get a better handle on the crowd. It was called Developing Valid Level 1 Evaluation Forms. Ken Phillips, president of Phillips Associates, presented six techniques to create valid level 1 evaluation forms. For those of you who may not know, level 1 evaluation forms are reaction forms, basically getting the trainee's reaction to the course. The six tips are: 1) When appropriate, match up a qualitative question with a quantitative measure; 2) When collecting quantitative data using a Likert scale, create a response scale with numbers regularly spaced and words only at each end (in other words, don't label each number between 1 and 5, just label 1 and 5); 3) Use only one response scale with an odd number of points (e.g. 5, 7, 9, 11, etc); 4) Use small numbers at the low or left end of the scale and larger numbers at teh right high end of the scale; 5) Write items either as a continuum or as a statement; and 6) Include at least one item asking participants how relevant the learning event/material was to them and their job. If you need me to clarify any of these, let me know. I want to take this back to work and redo our smile sheets using this technique.

The last session of the day was called Neurobics, a bit of fluf that loosely tied brain aerobics to learning. Nothing of substance here except, as this guy from Canada pointed out on the shuttle bus back to the hotel, some of this would make for good icebreakers.

Off to dinner with a friend tonight. More sessions tomorrow, a full day! I made reservations for a haunted tour of San Diego tomorrow night.