It's not too late to send me your thoughts on Standards for your Ideal Training Organisation. I've been on the data gathering phase for the last six months and this culminates next week at a meeting at the ANFOR office in Paris for the ISO (International Standards Organisation) research committee (tagged as ISO/TC232 until we get a launched number like the ISO10012). I'm representating North America. I'm going in under the banner of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) since Standards Canada unfortunately decided not to participate nor have a voting stance after I've contacted them early this year.
I wanted everyone reading this and who may be working in corporate training or participate in corporate training (as a learner, contractor, coach,...) and in whichever country you may be to please provide me with information that I can bring to the committee as we're building the wording for the upcoming ISO standards. Last thing I want is to only have a couple of organisations have a say on this or have an ITIL-like approach to this training organisation framework with only a couple of countries initially interested only to realize how valuable the information is a couple of years later. Wouldn't it be better to actually take part in the crafting of the standards as they are being built? That's just my opinion of course.
So here's the deal. If you're interested in sending me your thoughts on this matter, there are three parts:
1. Overall purpose of having a Training Organisation Standard - is this important to you, why? What would you expect if you see a training organisation with an ISO stamp on their office door (or virtual office door)?
2. Standards for various roles - What would an ideal Training Manager's competencies look like? How about a Training Instructor? Instructional Designer? Training Coordinator? Training Administrator? Training Scheduler? Other training staff?
3. Standars for various lines of businesses of a training organisation - What would be the best practices for an eLearning initiative? Blended learning? Face-to-face delivery? Instructor's Content Material structure? Learner's content material structure? [not formatting because that's creative license but just content requirements - like having an intro, a case scenario, etc] What are your ideas for standards for working with outsourced vendors and contract employees?
There's more to these questions but you get the idea of how the work is divided into three main groups - process, purpose, function.
If you view some of these as limitations, what should be the alternatives? If you view them as base requirements of any training organisation, what other information is needed?
This is by no means a complete list. The idea for the meeting next week is to collate what everyone has gathered amongst the countries they represent and then have a dialogue. So its the best time to add your two cents. Not all ideas can make it since it may work in North America but not in Africa (or any other country) or vice-versa. It's a long (sometimes arduous) process but the rigor is important to provide a collective set of standards that works across the participating countries. The ISO representatives have PhDs, experts in their field, authors, or like me, scholar-practitioners with interdisciplinary backgrounds. One of my colleagues, Steve, said that patience is very important in these activities and I agree but it is important as we move forward in ensuring that training translates into learning so I'm glad to be part of it.
Do post your thoughts on this here or send me an email at robin (at) robinyap (dot) com. I don't think I can live blog this as it is behind closed doors but if you read through my blog posts you know how my thinking process goes in this regard.Wish me luck.
photo by stuckincustoms
