Final Post – Products
As I was drafting my final post, contemplating David’s question about product based ventures in the PBA space I noticed that Brenda made a similar post in her Final Post: Emerging PBA for the future. I also see the value in a framework for ePortfolios that support PBAs related to Professional Development in the workplace. However, I am not in the academic space I’m in the Corporate training space. After reading Brenda’s post I realized there are a few similarities although I’m sure the performance measures would look quite different, physical realities such as the disorganized related files and documents sound familiar.
I could see a workplace product that could be quite involved by relating information about business processes to employee roles and work products all driven by a database and published in an ePortfolio using something along the lines of a Microsoft Sharepoint Server.
The typical personal performance development process is quite labourous from what I have seen. It is often not related to products that the employee has produced. There never seems to be any relationship from courses taken or requested to what will be produced as a result.The typical performance plan that I’ve seen is created annually with quarterly updates. If a workplace training e-Portfolio was available that centred around Projects and the work an employee put into a given product within a project then the review could point to some concrete encapsulation of results related to training or informal learning that had contributed to the development of the product.
My background is Information Technology design so the employee development plans that I’m referring to are ones that could relate to an occupation that produces physical documents and systems as deliverables. This may not work for all occupational performance but I think it would work for those that are IT related. This framework or platform could be designed to include peer reviews and feedback and even social networking to demonstrate who in the industry the employee is following to keep abreast in his field.
Posted in: Week 10: Product-Based Assessments
Doug Smith 9:28 am on November 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Julie, I think there is a lot of potential for e-portfolios outside of education. I was an engineer for 15 years and I can’t count how many times I was supposed to have a yearly or bi-yearly evaluation, and it was never completed. There is no doubt that large corporations and HR units could use a system like Mahara for tracking parts of the employee’s performance, goals, 5 year plans, etc. There is a ton of potential here. This is an e-portfolio specific aspect of PBA, but these eport reflections and thoughts are products as well.
cheers
Doug
Julie S 2:04 pm on November 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for the feedback Doug. Yes, the unfinished evaluation is all too commonplace.
andrea 12:13 pm on November 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Julie, I agree there are many applications for your idea in the workplace. I think tools that allow people to concretely connect their work with the goals, vision or mission of an organization, and potentially to connect with others who are doing the same thing, would make the typical performance management tasks much more useful.
Andrea
Julie S 2:04 pm on November 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Andrea – I like like the idea of having the peers connect inside the organization as well – good idea.