Dr. Holley L Handley

This article is the first in a three-part series that explores the performance improvement project for the Gulf Coast chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), which was conducted to investigate the reasons behind the chapter's inability to fulfill its mission of creating an ISPI chapter for performance improvement students and practitioners. The series is organized by phases in the Performance Improvement/Human Performance Technology (Van Tiem et al., 2012) model. This first article covers the problem identification, performance analysis, and intervention recommendation phases. The second article will focus on the intervention design, development, and implementation, and the final article will examine the evaluation results.
We conducted a rigorous performance analysis to identify the desired and current performance states, gaps, and root causes. This mixed methods study used extant data analysis and interviews to determine the current and desired states, performance gaps, and root causes. An online survey was used to help identify appropriate interventions. The analysis results revealed performance gaps associated with strategic planning, staffing, communications, programming, and membership. The root cause analysis results revealed a lack of vision, lack of motivation, insufficient buy-in, and ineffective planning. We proposed two intervention sets: organizational design interventions and organizational development interventions. This article provides valuable insights for performance improvement practitioners aiming to address the challenges of enhancing performance within distinct organizational environments, such as a professional organization chapter.

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to describe how participating in the ISPI University Case Study competition influenced student learning. Authentic learning experiences provide learners with an instructional opportunity to apply previously obtained knowledge and skills to a simulated yet authentic work environment. The population for the study was limited to students who participated in ISPI University Case Study Competitions in the years 2010, 2014, and 2019. All students were online graduate students enrolled in a performance improvement degree program from a single participating university.

The ISPI Academic Committee was formed earlier in the year, in June 2024, following the ISPI conference. Broadly, the ISPI Academic Committee is looking into three areas: (1) Research and Publications; (2) Case Study Competition; and (3) Academic and Corporate Organizational Membership.

One of the ongoing conversations within the Performance Improvement (PI) academic committee is the quest to find an ideal home for departments that impart formalized education and training in the field.

Within this issue of Performance Improvement Journal are four perspectives offered by Dr. Sue Czeropski, Lead of ISPI’s Academic Committee; Dr. Deri Draper-Amason, Lead for the Case Study Competition Subcommittee; Dr. Holley Handley, Case Study Competition Subcommittee member; and, Dr. Ria Roy, Lead of the Research and Publications Subcommittee.

Online collaboration tools have become a practical addition to the resources available to navigate the virtual space. Visual collaboration platforms, such as Miro, Mural, and Lucid chart, solve time and space restrictions applicable to traditional in-person group collaboration by providing a mechanism for real-time interaction without geographic limitations. This article provides five best practices for effectively utilizing interactive online whiteboards in real-world, practical applications from the perspective of an instructor-instructional designer, instructor-facilitator, researcher, mentor, and EdD program coordinator. The common themes woven throughout these best practices are collaboration and connectivity, facilitated by the functionality of online whiteboard tools/applications.

What challenges must today’s students overcome to access high-impact opportunities? Here is an institutional-wide collection of student perspectives regarding opportunities taken or missed. Overall goals of the study are to determine barriers to student participation in HIPs and guide initiatives to promote inclusion. The study also includes National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) student engagement items for a detailed comparison
between college and/or departments to institutional-level results from NSSE.

This essay describes the design, and subsequent redesign, of the research methods courses included in an Instructional and Performance Technology (IPT) EdD program at a regional comprehensive university in the southeast United States. The program under examination was developed based on the principles of the Carnegie Project for the Education Doctorate (CPED) and research and best practices aligned with the practice of performance improvement. The curriculum includes three research methods courses. The first introduces the students to the principles of action research as applied to the analysis of performance problems in organizational settings. The second addresses instrumentation and data collection processes used in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research, and the third examines analyzing and reporting quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research. Collectively these courses provide students with the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to serve as scholarly practitioners, examining any type of problem of practice in any organizational setting.

This article is a formative reflection that walks the reader through the experience of taking an existing body of research and then using one aspect of that analytical framework to conduct a new and original study. This reflection presents an account of that research process. Hattie (2009) has conducted extensive research examining influences on student achievement. This article describes how a researcher took the domains he defined to categorize the influences on student achievement and used them to frame the newly developed investigation. This article reflects on the unique application of Hattie's domains as a lens to examine a K-12 organization. An overview of the study and a summary of the findings are presented to give the reader context. The focus of this article is a detailed reflection on how the research was conceived and formed.
The following six questions guide this reflection:
1. Was the experience useful?
2. What was learned?
3. How did this experience facilitate personal growth/development?
4. How was this experience impactful?
5. What would, on reflection, be done differently?
6. Were the research choices well-reasoned?
A thoughtful reflection on the process serves to inform decisions critical to formulate potential additional studies. Reflecting on the past process provides thoughtful insights for future research.