Transfer interest: measuring interest in training content and interest in training transfer

Int J Training Development

Zitt

Ebner

2020

Self Cite

107

What are the reactions of training participants toward digital webinar‐based training programs? Webinars are digital tools to deliver training and education through synchronous audiovisual communication among remotely located training instructors and participants. A webinar is a special case of web conferencing that serves the educational function of learning and teaching. Because the previous literature underemphasized the webinar process and qualitative learner experiences, the present study aimed to explore the reactions of 419 trainees toward 48 webinars in the four content areas supply chain management, industrial management, early childhood education and mathematics, the present study used a sequential mixed methods research design. The quantitative part of the study employed a multi‐item online questionnaire to measure satisfaction and reactions toward the webinar trainer; survey responses were analyzed to estimate mean differences across webinars. The qualitative part of the study employed narrative interviews with 23 trainees; interview transcripts were analyzed with qualitative content analysis to identify how the instructional design, webinar content and implementation can be improved for future web conferences. The findings indicate that early childhood education trainees had the highest satisfaction levels. Trainees preferred greater levels of learner‐teacher interaction, less time spent on discussing task solutions collaboratively and digital webinar recordings as a follow‐up possibility at home or in the workplace. Trainees also liked the fact that webinars afforded the possibility to deepen the content, to prepare for upcoming exams and to have virtual consultation hours with the facilitator. Furthermore, trainees preferred webinars no longer than 90 min and webinars on weekdays after work rather than at weekends. Optimal internet/broadband connections were perceived as a requirement across web conferencing and virtual classroom programs for effective digital education. Implications of the findings for educational technology, human resource development and professional learning are discussed.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating webinar‐based training: a mixed methods study of trainee reactions toward digital web conferencing

Int J Training Development

Zitt

Ebner

2020

Self Cite

107

“…This has been observed in different contexts and settings, such as writing (Albin, Benton, & Khramtsova, 1996), studying psychology (Harackiewicz, Durik, Barron, Linnenbrink & Tauer, 2008), learning statistics (Hay, Callingham & Carmichael, 2015), and reading science texts (Ainley, Hidi & Berndorff, 2002). In addition, interest has been found to have a positive connection with other motivational factors such as mastery goals (Harackiewicz et al, 2008), utility value (Gegenfurtner, Knogler & Schwab, 2020), and self-efficacy (Ainley, 2012).…”

Section: Interest and Learningmentioning

confidence: 95%

Individual interest and learning in secondary school STEM education

Laine

Veermans

et al. 2020

FLR

Self Cite

Interest research offers different hypotheses about the association between interest and learning outcomes. The standard hypothesis proposes that interest predicts learning outcomes: people acquire new knowledge about a topic they find interesting. The affective by-product hypothesis assumes that learning predicts interest: by learning something, people develop an interest in this topic. Finally, the reciprocal hypothesis states that interest and learning covary. This longitudinal study aimed to test the predictive validity of these three hypotheses in the context of secondary school STEM education. The participants were 104 Finnish 7th grade students aged 12-14. Data were collected at three times during the school year through questionnaires and grade evaluations in mathematics and biology. A partial least squares (PLS) path modeling approach was used to determine the relationships between interest and course grades across the three measurement points: at the beginning of the autumn semester, at the beginning of the spring semester, and after the spring semester at the end of the school year. The results differed between the autumn and spring semesters: During the autumn semester, students’ interest predicted their grades, whereas during the spring semester, grades predicted their interest. These findings indicate that the relationships between students’ individual interest towards science and mathematics with learning vary. As a practical implication, more focus should be put on when and what type of performance feedback is given to students with differing interest profiles.

“…It would be interesting to examine how stable or fluid individual transfer goals are as time after training unfolds. Finally, a third implication for future research concerns theory building to include transfer goals, goal orientations, and goal contents in the kaleidoscope of motivational variables to expand current conceptualizations of training motivation in research on human resource development (Beier and Kanfer, 2009; Colquitt et al., 2000; Elliot et al., 2011; Ford et al., 2018; Quesada-Pallarès and Gegenfurtner, 2015; Ryan and Deci, 2018) and to examine the nomological network between goal variables and other motivational predictors of training transfer, including training satisfaction, transfer interest, and the utility values of training and transfer (Ebner and Gegenfurtner, 2019; Gegenfurtner, 2019; Gegenfurtner et al., 2019a; Knogler et al., 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstructing goals for transfer of training in faculty development programs for higher education teachers: A qualitative documentary method approach

2019

Heliyon

Self Cite

Faculty development programs are often used in universities and higher education institutes to develop the knowledge and skills of their teaching personnel. At the same time, these faculty development programs often remain ineffective because lecturers are not fully using what they learned in their courses, classes, and seminars. The purpose of this case study was to explore the goals higher education teachers had after professional development programs for applying newly trained knowledge and skills. Grounded in 3 × 2 achievement goal model and Ryan and Deci's (2018) goal contents theory, the study addressed the research question: Which types of transfer goals do university teachers have after teacher education? Participants were three lecturers that were selected following the procedures of the maximum variation sampling schema. Adopting a mixed methods approach, data were collected with questionnaires (aimed at profiling the goal orientations of the teachers) and reflective interviews (aimed at reconstructing the goals and goal contents teachers had for transferring the trained skills). Triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative data using the documentary method resulted in a typology of intrinsic, mixed, and extrinsic transfer goals. Directions for future research associated with instrument development and theory building as well as implications for the educational practice in human resource development programs of higher education institutes are discussed.