The average Fortune 1000 company today spends 2.5 percent of its operating budget on education. As companies focus on improving performance through work-based learning, their chief learning officers (CLO) play an increasingly vital role.
|
Susan Feinberg
|
The University of Pennsylvania is involved in the education and credentials of CLOs. Penn's Executive Program in Work-Based Learning Leadership was launched in 2007. It uses the combined resources of the Wharton School and the Graduate School of Education as well as industry-based advisors.
“Given the amount of money corporations spend on learning, it’s troubling that there’s less rigor out there than there ought to be," says Douglas Lynch, vice dean at Penn's Graduate School of Education (GSE). "There are no universally accepted standards. And aside from different gimmicky formulas, there’s very little consensus about how to measure learning.”
“If medicine were done the same way, there would be a lot more people dying,” Lynch adds.
The students are CLOs, educational consultants, CEOs and HR generalists. They are pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree from Penn GSE or a certificate from Wharton. The advisors act as coaches, mentors, and teachers, and they often sponsor working research projects for students.
For example, executives from Home Depot and Comcast recently facilitated work/research teams to help students hone their skills in evidence-based decision making and analysis. “Advisory board members help students tackle big issues,” says Ed Betof, senior fellow at the GSE.
James Orlando is a doctoral candidate, and he is director of medical education development at Lehigh Valley Hospital. He oversees learning programs for medical residents as well as 1,000 high school and college students.
“An executive group at our hospital wants to build a capacity for optimal quality improvement,” Orlando says. “We had the financial plan and a physical assets plan in place. But we had no 'people plan' to ensure that our initiatives would be realized.”
At Penn Orlando is studying how organizations build capacity for improvement. He has collaborated with CLOs and Chief Quality Officers from a range of organizations, including health care. His research at Penn has contributed to the project at Lehigh Valley Hospital. He expects his quality improvement research to result in reduced infections and complications, for example.
“Instead of taking two or three years to help nurses perform critical case work, we want to get them ready in six to nine months. Then the ROI will really hit home," Orlando says.
Susan Feinberg is a freelance writer specializing in higher education. Contact her at sdfe@aol.com.