Digital Literacy in Special Education

Digital literacy is essential for individuals entering college and the workplace. Students with disabilities experience a greater challenge in acquiring the skills necessary to succeed. This chapter explores the disability digital divide, success factors for acquiring digital skills, and the implications of a digital literacy curriculum developed for special education classrooms in Idaho. It demonstrates how leveraging human performance improvement (HPI) models, incorporating universal design for learning (UDL) principles, and supporting classroom teachers resulted in a curriculum to help young people with disabilities to acquire the digital skills they need to be prepared for college and the workplace.

A Framework to Strengthen Learning Culture and Safeguards

Strengthening the learning culture and the safeguards in organizations can enhance safety and performance in preventing incidents. The effective implementation of human performance improvement and operational learning can support the organization in achieving these goals. However, there is no streamlined implementation framework that considers the alignment of strategic and tactical actions in the management system cycle to implement human performance improvement and operational learning. This paper presents an implementation framework that fills the above gaps. It consists of four steps: (1) establish/validate a strategic objective, (2) conduct an assessment, (3) develop a plan, and (4) execute the plan. The proposed framework also includes a site tour phase during operational learning as an alternative to storytelling, which has an inherent bias. This framework was tested in the land transportation system of one of Indonesia’s biggest oil producers.

The Incorporation of Human Performance Improvement Into Systems Design

Although considerable research has been conducted on the human-machine interface, this is a moving target as industry sprints to keep up with technological advances. Conflicts remain between the optimism of technology developers and the real-life operational difficulties that accompany the introduction of these systems. The developers typically claim that the new technology will result in performance improvements. Due to the operational complexities introduced, however, the technology may actually decrease user performance. Unfortunately, the complexities confronting operators are difficult for design teams to predict. Incorporating advances in technology is necessary, but should be properly balanced within the confines of the system. It is easy to forget that humans are a vital part of this system. The human, including the human's inclination for error, should be considered a fundamental aspect of the system, reflected in design and accounted for in the design process. Engaged human involvement is necessary for safe and successful system operation, but like all systems, it has its failure modes. Humans' innate propensity for error in system operation should be addressed from multiple fronts. This article proposes a method to minimize the impact of human error throughout life of a facility via incorporation of a human performance improvement model that institutes human error severity criteria, establishment of a system to capture human error data, and via data trending, a process to predict negative behaviors before potential errors or adverse events can occur.

The Use of Objectives and Feedback in a Competency-Based Curriculum

The chapter will synthesize concepts of human performance improvement/human performance technology (HPI/HPT) in the development of curricula that are competency-based. HPT-related curriculum elements are traced backwards from impact to input using the W. K. Kellogg foundation logic model to ensure alignment with the goals of the educational program. The use of learning and performance objectives along with timely and corrective feedback will be instrumental in the design and delivery of the competency-based curriculum. The competency-based curriculum is discussed in reference to principles of andragogy and aligned to accepted learning theories. Evaluation of the curriculum or educational program is instrumental to aligning for student success and is discussed in detail.