Welcome
Hello and welcome to the Corporate Academic, a place where I will be discussing my thoughts and experiences as a learning professional in the private sector. I am currently pursuing my Master’s degree in Learning Technology at Royal Roads University where this blog is a practical activity to develop my academic voice as well as an opportunity to reflect on course material. I’m initially planning four to six blog posts on this site but may continue to post as my ideas develop. Please feel free to share your thoughts below and we’ll see where the discussions lead.
Cultures of Inquiry
Think about a question, a big and broad question that you have always wondered about. Ignoring time, budget, resources and other constraints, how would you go about finding answers to your question? Would you take measurements, interview experts or conduct a survey? All of these questions help us determine our preferred Culture of Inquiry, that is to say the way in which we inquire about a given question or problem. For those of us in the corporate sector, the culture of inquiry is commonly quantitative in nature due to the dominant culture of risk management, which relies heavily on empirical data to make decisions. However, the world of adult learning cannot always be quantified with data as is the case with measuring the effectiveness of learning.
Arguably, today’s learning management systems provide a plethora of metrics which prove that a learner attended a classroom session or logged on to a web-based course but offer limited evidence of knowledge retention beyond assessments and course feedback forms. As the term “culture of inquiry” suggests, to shift paradigms from quantitative to qualitative is a cultural shift which is incredibly challenging if not impossible when all levels within an organization have accepted qualitative data as the norm. Is this the case at your organization? It is with mine.
I strongly believe that a disciplined learning\training\talent management team can positively influence the culture of inquiry within an organization. The very nature of our role is to align employees to the organization’s goals through behaviour shaping and skill development. Each day we are presented with problems and questions that are intrinsic to our work yet we consciously or unconsciously accept the methods in which said problems and questions are approached. There are a wide variety of cultures of inquiry ranging from Phenomenology and Hermeneutics to Critical social science and Ethnography. Each culture provides has advantages and limitations based on the subject of inquiry and it stands to reason that understanding when and which culture to apply benefits the inquirer towards reaching the purest truth and knowledge.
the corporate academic 