Team Learning Projects

Team Interview and Research Project: Student teams of three or four will select an issue in human resource development. Each team member will interview a HR specialist for a minimum of one hour about the immediate and long-range future of HR within organizations. The purpose of the interview will be to gain, first hand, real world understanding of the field. The team will then research one of the issues (review related and relevant literature), and develop a draft organizational policy statement that both describes and makes recommendations for addressing the issue. In delivering your findings and recommendations to your classmates, it will be up to your team to decide on (and provide a rationale for) a presentation, training or team learning approach.

Human Resource Topics

There have been numerous subtle and not so subtle changes in organizations. Topics will be limitless, but you will need to focus one. Of course, each topic may be worthy of significant research effort. The following list is intended only as a start; obviously, there are many more worthy of study and new topics are continuously emerging.

     Learning organization: people at all levels, individually and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about

     Knowledge management

     Team management, including self-directed work teams

     Technology: impact on work design, work location, communication and group dynamics

     Work design: the practice of telecommuting, remote work groups, etc.

     Family friendly organization practices: the development and design of policies to reinforce the modern family structure, including policies allowing on-site child care, employee time off for family activities, etc.

     Benefits for domestic partners

     Distance learning: the design and delivery of on-line training/education classes, employee meetings, and client/customer interaction

     Reengineering: the redesign of the organization and its processes to best serve its customers most efficiently and effectively

     Excellence in customer service: empowering employees throughout the organization to make individual decisions on how to best serve the customer

     Global economy: the impact that the global environment of business has on the organizational structure

     Outsourcing of support services, including accounting, human resources, engineering, marketing, etc.

     The use of temporary, part-time and contract employees as the primary or supplemental work force

     Demographic changes in the work force: women in the workplace, AIDS in the workplace, aging of the work force, and the scarcity of skilled employees

     Diversity in the workplace: intra- and inter-cultural differences in values and behavior

 

PROPOSAL OF PRACTICUM GOALS

 

(Due within four weeks).  Requirements: minimum of one page, typed in outline format using complete sentences.  Address a business project you will work on for the next three months.  How will you accomplish the steps in the project?

 

Identify in the heading where your practicum will take place--name of business, physical address, name of supervisor or sponsor, title of supervisor or sponsor and his/her phone number, your name and phone number.

 

Project Log:

 

1.  Summarize the process or steps you followed to accomplish the project.

 

2.  Attach a weekly log of the activities and action steps used to accomplish the project.

 

3.  Evaluate and review any information you developed or gathered from interviews or observation.

 

4.  Draw conclusions about the overall project and make recommendations as to how the information can be used by the company.  In most projects this is the most important part of the final report.  Relate your recommendations to accepted management strategies or theories.

 

5.  Include or attach examples or work done over the semester.  Examples: a survey, table showing results of the evaluation of those participating, sales forecasts, new forms, new software, team building exercise, etc.