related case studies

Training planning & evaluation Curriculum planning & evaluation

This project involves the development of a training program in the Fifth Discipline. The Fifth Discipline is a general model for learning organizations that emphasizes the synergistic relationship among five key areas or disciplines. This project was undertaken as the first step in developing an interactive multimedia tool to introduce people to the thinking of the Fifth Discipline. Eleven stakeholders familiar with the Fifth Discipline were asked to "generate statements that describe the most important knowledge sets, behavior changes and new skills a person will gain after completing the scenario(s) in the learning system." They brainstormed 99 statements which they then individually sorted and rated for importance. The resulting map had 11 clusters. The three on the top left were related to working with and communicating with others. The three on the top right were related to mental models and reflective thinking. The three on the lower right were related to systems thinking. And the remaining two on the lower left dealt with integrating and transferring Fifth Discipline ideas. The most important two clusters were the Fifth Discipline Overview and Integration and Mental Modeling, followed closely by Systems Dynamics Modeling.

The map was especially useful in helping the content experts work with training developers. One of the most difficult tasks they faced was the development of realistic scenarios illustrating Fifth Discipline principles that could be programmed into the multimedia tool. The map enabled the development team to focus initial scenario exploration on the most important clusters. For the content experts, the statements on the map acted as suggestive prompts in eliciting scenarios that can be incorporated in the interactive multimedia product. When the development team asked the content experts if they could give them any scenarios to use for the multimedia tool, the groups had a difficult time communicating. But when the content experts were given the statements in the most important cluster (for instance, the Mental Modeling cluster), they had no difficulty generating numerous interesting examples and scenarios for each.

Table 1. Mental Modeling cluster for the Fifth Discipline Project.

	Recognize their own mental models(6)
	Recognize other peoples' mental models(21)
	Develop greater respect for other mental models(24)
	Learn how mental models affect tasks that you are doing now(29)
	Understand how to suspend your mental models, and help others to do the same(36)
	Be able to map peoples' language into their mental model(47)
	Acknowledge that confronting our mental models can be uncomfortable(67)
	Learn to recognize mental models that exist in a social context(83)
	Understand how cultures may differ in their mental models(87)