SIOP 2010 Coverage
General: Schedule Planning | Lament Over Wireless Coverage
Live-Blogs: Day1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Daily Summaries: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Day 2 was more eventful than Day 1, but only because of my research interests – this was a training day!
At 8AM came an interactive poster session on the use of games and online technologies facilitated by my ODU colleague, Karin Orvis. There were a pretty wide range of posters, with topics including e-mentoring (an area that has always interested me, but I just never got into it), the style and customization of tutor agents, and the influence of specific game features on learning. The primary conclusion I made from the group? We are at just the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding how people learn on computers, Internet or otherwise.
Afterward, I caught the tail end of Advances in Training Evaluation Techniques. Nothing too surprising here, which was a little odd, since it was called “Advances.” One presenter tried to convince us that they investigated a new level of Kirkpatrick model, but it was a little odd. The Kirkpatrick model of training evaluation splits outcomes into four categories, which it labels Level 1 – 4: reactions to training, learning, behavioral change, and organizational outcomes. They claimed to investigate a new Level 5 – return on investment. But ROI is an organizational outcome too. So that doesn’t make any sense. The other presentation I saw was very, very practitioner-focused – but still nothing too surprising. I guess that means we’re not concerned with advances in training evaluation so much as getting practitioners to follow things we’ve known for years. Which I suppose is the same thing.
After the coffee break came a symposium on “serious games,” which are games used for purposes other than entertainment, which by the way is a definition only an I/O that doesn’t play games could come up with. All of these presentations were quite interesting, although being a researcher in this area, I am of course nitpicky. The first was a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of simulation games, which seemed to oversimplify the psychology and content of the studies a bit. But of course, it was a presentation and not a journal article – I will just assume the full work is more complicated. The second study was an examination of goal setting in relation to training performance, and was by far the most psych-centered presentation. The third was a complex study breaking down models of game components and using those components to build training games (i.e. variously combining components became the conditions of a primary study), and was very clever. The fourth took a similar approach, but in a field study. Altogether, I think this session was the most interesting I have attended at SIOP this year.
After this, I sat in very briefly on Transfer of Training: New Findings and New Directions starring SIOP President Kurt Kraiger as the discussant, which was packed. Unfortunately I had a committee meeting to attend, so I missed 75% of it – but it started out pretty strong.
After the meeting, I caught the tail of Reading Between Lines: Analyzing and Visualizing Organizational Text/Qualitative Data, where Google and Sun presented various current methods of analyzing qualitative data. Now, I’m not normally a fan of qualitative data (it’s difficult if not impossible to produce generalizable results from such analysis), but there are a number of situations where it’s useful – when you’re just starting to get into a research question, or when you’re able to get access to a full population, for example. Google in particular presenting a fantastically interesting method by which to analyze such data, involving tag clouds and a technique they apparently invented called centering resonance analysis. It’s just fantastic. But I may only say that because it’s pretty.
After meeting with another colleague (Gordon Schmidt), we both attended Andrea Goldberg’s introduction to social networking for I/O psychology: Do You Tweet? Social Media and the Implications for I/O Psychology. It was as comprehensive as it possibly could have been in only an hour, and our conversation afterwards at the practitioner’s/tweetup/Linkedin event at Gibney’s Pub was also fantastic. Only one phrase can really summarize it: viva la revolution!
The evening was rounded out with our annual ODU alumni dinner, the APT party, the Kenexa party, and the MSU alumni/friends party. And now I’m exhausted. At least I’ll get 6.5 hours of sleep tonight – that’s an hour gain over the last two days!
SIOP 2010 Coverage
General: Schedule Planning | Lament Over Wireless Coverage
Live-Blogs: Day1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Daily Summaries: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
The following is a transcript of my Twitter activity on Day 2 of the SIOP 2010 conference, updated live on that day.
7:00:55 AM: NeoAcademic: SIOP 2010: Day 2 Live Blog (http://cli.gs/2RWr5) #SIOP #SIOP10
7:26:34 AM: Heading for another day of #SIOP… first up: interactive posters on gaming
8:01:01 AM: NeoAcademic: SIOP 2010: End of Day 1 (http://cli.gs/4GHYp) #SIOP #SIOP10
8:53:27 AM: VERY interesting session… Lots of unexpected findings about e-mentoring, game-based training and elearning #SIOP #SIOP10
9:14:35 AM: Brief stop at the posters to chat with @iopsychology, now new training evaluation techniques #SIOP #SIOP10
9:17:47 AM: Yet another study showing a weak link between learning and transfer intentions in training (sigh) #SIOP10
9:21:42 AM: Yw – First of several 🙂 RT @DrAlisonEyring @rnlanders thx for the #SIOP update.
9:35:56 AM: Training is a cyclical process, not an event – always changing, always improving. Measure, train, measure, train… #SIOP
9:39:25 AM: Training evaluation should take place at many levels. One talk invented a Level 5 for the Kirkpatrick model, but it was really L4… #SIOP
9:43:06 AM: “extreme strategizing” apparently = collecting and acting on survey results within a few days. Not sure why new buzzwords are needed. #SIOP
10:13:24 AM: Attending “Designing Quality Training Games: Moving From Research to Practice” – you should too! #SIOP #SIOP10
10:21:00 AM: I am counting on perfection!! RT @onidavin Alright, #SIOP — I may have been very ill last night
10:33:45 AM: Defined “serious games” as games with a purpose beyond entertainment – seems a little limiting, but good enough, I suppose #SIOP
10:47:55 AM: Motivation to learn and motivation to play instructional games are different concepts #SIOP
11:05:06 AM: Identification of the attributes of games that contribute to learning. Still confounded though (e.g. doctor vs. nanobot). #SIOP
11:20:24 AM: @onidavin Also, your terrible sickness wasn’t obvious at all 😀
11:26:41 AM: Using tech doesn’t make a training program (game or other) “good” – it still takes careful match of training goals to design #SIOP
11:33:26 AM: The one I’m in now – serious training games RT @BreannePH SIOP attendees- what is the best session you’ve seen so far?
11:38:32 AM: I have a feeling that training games won’t be universally popular until a training designer can build one on a webpage. #SIOP
11:46:12 AM: 6 years and millions of dollars to make one of the games described! #SIOP
12:02:58 PM: Watching the first half of Transfer of Training: New Findings and New Directions before heading to a meeting
12:20:17 PM: Transfer is better when training is voluntary – no surprise there, but why? Better motivation or better trainees? #SIOP
12:25:54 PM: I hate lab/field moderators – what do these really represent? #SIOP
12:36:05 PM: “interpersonal help-seeking behaviors” -I really like this construct #SIOP
1:30:55 PM: In Graduate Program Directors Meeting – tweets/liveblog will resume shortly
2:23:34 PM: Listening to #Google talk about using tag clouds and centering resonance analysis as qualitative research in I/O #SIOP
2:33:54 PM: I am beginning to see the value of qualitative research… in certain situations. Comment analysis is the focus of this paper #SIOP
2:41:04 PM: Remember you can follow this commentary either in the liveblog (http://cli.gs/2RWr5) or on Twitter
2:43:27 PM: Data visualization is important in qualitative AND quantitative data. If you can’t show your data in a figure, you’re doing it wrong. #SIOP
3:11:13 PM: Lunch break!
4:31:37 PM: I am – Gordon is wifiless (I’m on 3G) RT @SQNguyen Will you guys be tweeting from event or is wi-fi still an issue? #SIOP @iopsychology
4:32:36 PM: Do You Tweet is starting up, after some United Breaks Guitars for intro music #SIOP
4:35:43 PM: Andrea conducted the first online employee survey in 1982! #SIOP
4:37:03 PM: A handful of us just got called out for midsession tweeting, ha! #SIOP
4:39:34 PM: Andrea: 2009 data on social media is already out of date – so true, so sad #SIOP
4:49:19 PM: Andrea educating the IO masses on RT, DM, tweetups and hashtags #SIOP
4:52:59 PM: EEOC concerns – what happens if an applicant discloses protected information via social media? #SIOP
4:58:11 PM: Biggest promise for social media in I/O is community-building #SIOP
5:03:07 PM: Companies already using social media internally for employees – Best Buy, Bell Canada #SIOP
5:05:18 PM: The key to social media in orgspace is identifying a need – not throwing social media at a problem and assuming it’ll work #SIOP
5:08:32 PM: Will try, but this is largely a newbIe audience RT @SQNguyen Can you ask the presenter & fellow attendees about using Twitter & Blogging?
5:11:28 PM: About a third of companies apparently have social media policies? Higher than I thought. #SIOP
5:15:17 PM: Too late: Employees react negatively when policies are set forbidding social media. How bad is it though, I wonder? #SIOP
6:53:30 PM: Excellent talk and conversation from @Andreasg411 – thanks! We’ll definitely keep in touch.
12:23:51 AM: Ran out of battery earlier… too much tweeting. Excellent APT, Kenexa and MSU parties. Must pass out now – early #SIOP start tomorrow.
SIOP 2010 Coverage
General: Schedule Planning | Lament Over Wireless Coverage
Live-Blogs: Day1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Daily Summaries: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Despite being interested in a wide range of sessions today, I did end up in just one track. Sorry – can’t be in more than one place at a time, no matter how hard I try.
The day started with the opening plenary around 8AM. It started with short speeches given by three of the founding members of SIOP, which was extraordinarily interesting. SIOP, as it turned out, was a gamble – the founders had no idea if the split from APA and establishment of the SIOP conference would work out. Judging by the 3800 attendees this year, it was a good call.
We also got a fairly hilarious introduction to the presidential address from Ed Salas, and then the first ever SIOP music video for Kurt Kragier’s presidential address itself (to the tune of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, if you must know). We also got to see quite a few new SIOP Fellow inductees, and various award recipients as well.
After that (and a lovely pecan roll at the coffee break), I sat in on Web 2.0 and Technology Innovation, a roundtable discussing the future of technology in I/O. It was… not bad. But I’m not sure how much we really accomplished. Generally, someone would describe the use of a new technology in their company related to I/O, someone else would describe their own company’s effort, and everyone would nod their heads to the various strengths and weaknesses to each approach taken. Interesting, certainly – and it was useful to see what practitioners are really using – but I don’t feel we made much headway toward any answers. Of course, you might just blame that on the lack of research in this area (something I intend to help fix in the near future).
After this, I headed to an interactive poster session titled Cheating Improves My Test Performance. It was a little disappointing – not because the posters weren’t interesting (they certainly were) but “cheating” was interpreted a bit liberally. There were posters on differential prediction versus differential validity, measurement equivalence comparing proctored and unproctored testing, socially desirable responding, and retest effects on personality and cognitive online selection tests. The retest piece (by Delgado et al.) was especially interesting to me personally since the effect they found may support the findings of another paper I wrote last year.
Next came Online Recruiting and Selection: New Challenges and Strategies, with basically the same outcome as the morning session on technology.
My poster was on display next, so the next session I got to was late afternoon: Assessment Center 2.0. I approached this session with curiosity, because I wasn’t sure what its purpose was. Would they be talking about a revolution in the way ACs are conducted (consistent with the 2.0 moniker), or would they be talking about conversion of ACs to online environments. Turns out it was the latter. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – just not what I was expecting. Most of the recommendation they gave for how ACs were changing sounded to me simply like good AC exercise design: as jobs change, exercises should evolve to reflect those changes. For example, one panelist said “gone are the days of a candidate sitting at a desk with a stack of papers [inbox].” My response would be “of course,” because no one in a real functioning business needs to sort through memos anymore. Of course we should change it to reflect what employees really do.
Afterward, we took a short cab ride to Woodfire Grill, which I highly recommend. If you can eat at the restaurant of a Top Chef finalist, why wouldn’t you?
The evening was rounded out with parties from the University of Minnesota (my grad school alma mater) and Penn State, both of which were quite fun. I hear, though, that Aon Consulting held theirs in the Georgia Aquarium. How can you really compete with that?
As I mentioned before, there is no wifi in the conference hotel. With only an iPhone (especially since Apple does not allow tethering), blog updates have been a little tricky. I am attempting to rig up a new system that will enable me to live-blog tomorrow, but we’ll see if that works out! In the meantime, follow me on twitter for real-time updates.