Stephen Mercer

AHE 574
June 6, 2016
Learning objective: Build relationships and develop a community of practice through
experiential activities to gain skills to resolve future conflicts.
Learning objective: Develop an environment of collaboration to resolve conflict
through the understanding of a range of behaviors.
I collaborated with Steve Monroe to design this instructional unit. Its
designed to teach Airgas employees conflict resolution skills through experiential
instruction and the DiSC behavior assessment tool. The need for this instructional
unit stems from the conflict between the sales and operations department.
Employees in each department have developed engrained behaviors through their
experience in life that often lead to conflict. This instructional unit provides the tools
for a solution through the facilitation of critical thinking, reflection skills and
ultimately transformative learning. The first artifact, an agenda, guides for me
through the instructional unit and provides a quick reference for key experiential
terms.
The artifacts designed for the course are intended to build a community of
practice and collaborative environment between both departments to help quickly
resolve concepts by understanding personal behaviors. Understanding how
behaviors are developed by experience will lead to more empathy among
employees and establishing a mutually beneficial relationship. As a result, the sales
department can make more money, operations can conduct business more
seamlessly and Airgas itself can become more profitable.
Napucus definition of a community of practice shows what I plan to
accomplish in the instructional unit. Forming communities of practice provide
participants with an environment that combines knowledge and practice and the
opportunity to learn through relationships with their peers, (Napucu, 585). By
putting myself in the role of facilitator in the classroom, I can address the second
learning objective of establishing a sense of collaboration among Airgas employees.
If a facilitative leadersucceeds in creating a community of practice, his or her
role is to foster collaboration, (Napucu, 588).
Caffarella and Barnett (32) provide more elaboration what my role as
facilitator entails in an experiential learning classroom. It consists of organizing and
serving as the process person for activities that use the participants experiences as
part of the learning process. Since only adults will take this training class, choosing
a facilitation role coincides with one of Malcolm Knowless theories of andragogy as
well. It states that adults prefer to draw from their personal experience to learn
rather than being taught. (Wang, 43).
The content of the class will be mainly determined by the learners. As a
result, the students will be more likely buy in because they will draw from their
personal experiences rather than hearing a long lecture with predetermined

experiential examples. Its a concept supported by Caffarella and Barnett (32), who
said adult learners prefer being active participants rather than passive recipients of
knowledge.
Rather than starting immediately with the conflict resolution activities, the
instructional unit begins with introductions and a getting to know each other
activity.
Kapucu (593) said ice-breaking exercise (an artifact for the instructional unit)
lays down the initial steps for building better collaboration by establishing closer
and denser relationships. Collaboration is generally impossible or unviable is
community participants have distant relationships and know little about their peers.
It allows the participants to have a better understanding and greater awareness of
others goals and motives for participation. Beard and Wilson (184) said
icebreakers awaken participant enthusiasm to engage in activities.
The third artifact, a video, provides a visual to show how two different
behaviors can lead to conflict. Steve Monroe and I developed the video based on
our experiences working in a retail setting. The ending stayed intentionally
ambiguous so that the learners could use critical reflection to describe how they
would resolve the conflict if they were in the situation.
Schons reflection-in-action applies here as well. Reflection-in-action
considers the consequences of action whilst one is within the process, (Beard and
Wilson, 246.) The learners must reflect on their own experiences to explain how
they would resolve the conflict. The different answers reveal how established
behaviors lead to different methods of resolving the conflict portrayed in the video.
The fourth artifact is the reflective learning activity think-pair-share
(Brockback and McGill, 191). Its intended to create a diverse activity for the
learners. Its also an opportunity for the entire group to step out of their comfort
zone to start learning how to collaborate with new people and see how a community
of practice works by including the entire group of people.
In fact, Brookfield said deliberately mixing students of different ability levels,
interests, racial backgrounds, learning styles and personalities has several benefits.
Firstly, it matches the reality of life outside the classroom where always choosing
whom we will work or associate with is not an option. Secondly, there are many
learning tasks where a diversity of group members is an enhancement. For
example, deepening our understanding and responding to problems, and bring a
range of priorities and experiences to the activity (Brookfield, 161)
The fifth artifact, the DiSC tool, requires the learners to take a multiple
choice test. They are then divided into groups based on how they answer the
questions. The groups are: D for dominance, I for influence, S for steadiness and C
for conscientious. Since experience influences how the learners answer the
multiple choice questions, Schons reflection-on-action plays a pivotal role in the
division of groups. It involves thinking about previous personal experiences,
analyzing them and then developing personal theories of action. (Beard and
Wilson,246)

The DiSC test has very similar results to the Kolbs model of individual
learning style. In fact, if the learners who took the DiSC assessment took Kolbs
test, they may have similar results. But instead of D, I, S and C they would have
learning styles of dynamic, imaginative, common sense and analytic. (Brooks-Harris
and Stock-Ward, 65)
The similarity between the Kolbs learning styles and the DiSC assessment
demonstrates that the wealth of experience each adult learner has can lead to a
very rich community of practice and collaborative environment. Even though
everyone has the same job, either operations or sales, their lifes experience has led
to the development of different behaviors.
For the next activity, the group breaks into pairs. Each pair receives a card
with a scenario on it and a letter D,S,C or I. The letter indicates how the person
would behave based on the scenario. All of the scenarios listed on the cards are
common situations at Airgas that could transpire either between sales and
operations or within each department. These cards are the sixth artifact.
One of the group members reads the scenario and the other group member
describes how to respond without causing conflict by using the behavior listed. The
two then switch roles and repeat the activity. Once all the pairs finish, they switch
partners and cards. By responding with a behavior other than the one developed
through experience, its difficult to for someone to draw from their experience to
answer. This leads to transformational learning. The person must interpret the
experience differently through reflection than they normally do to correctly answer
the scenario. This new way of reflection could lead to greater accuracy of perception
of the unfamiliar and deviant, avoidance of premature cognitive commitments,
better self-concept, greater job productivity and satisfaction, flexibility, innovation,
and leadership ability. (Mezirow, 117) Those are all helpful traits for a group of
people building a community of practice and engaging in collaborative learning.
The activities continue with the class re-watching the video after returning to
their groups. The groups will then critically reflect on how they would respond based
on their assessed behavior from DiSC. This helps collaboration among the groups
because other group member can see how each particular group reacts to the
scenario. Witnessing other behavioral reactions gives them learners a clearer
understanding of the reasoning behind everyone elses behavior. Through this
understanding, more introverted members might decide to become more vocal and
collaborative members in resolving conflicts when they return to work. In the view
of Kapucu, thats a scenario for a solid community of practice. Participatory
decision making in a community requires the inclusion of all membersof that
community through a consensus-oriented, deliberative process of problem solving.
(Kapucu, 591)
The last activity consists of a role play. This provides an opportunity for
volunteers to practice everything they learned in class and for others to observe
their behaviors in the role play. Ideally, those who volunteer would use reflection
and transformative learning to demonstrate what they learned in the class and how
they plan to use their knowledge to build a community of practice and collaborative

environment. The instructional unit ends with a Question and Answer session and a
survey for the students to evaluate my facilitation.

References
1. Beard, C., Wilson, J. (2006) Experiential Learning: A best practice handbook
for educators and trainers. (2nd ed.) London and Philadelphia, Kogan Page.
2. Brookfield, S.,(2006) The Skillful Teacher: On technique, trust, and
responsiveness in the class room (2nd ed.) pp. 151 172. Josey- Bass
3. Brockback, A. and Mcgill I. (2007) Methods and Assessment of Reflective
Learning. Facilitating reflective learning in higher education pp. 164 - 205
Buckingham, GBR. Open University Press.
4. Brooks-Harris, J., and Stock-Ward, S. (1999) Designing and Facilitating
Experiential Learning. pp. 60 73. Thousand Oaks. Sage Publications
5. Caffarella, R., and Barnett, B.,(1994) Characteristics of Adult Learners and
Foundations of Experiential Learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing
Education. (62) 29 42.
6. Kapucu, N., Classrooms as Communities of Practice: Designing and
Facilitating Learning in a Networked Environment. Journal of Public Affairs
Education. Vol. 18(3) 585 610.
7. Mezirow, J., (1991) Making meaning through reflection. Transformative
Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco, CA. Josey-Bass. pp. 99-117.
8. Van Wingerden, C., Goto, S., Burstein, M., Encyclopedia of Strategic
Leadership and Management. Creating Sustainable Communities: Adult and
Leadership Theories and Principles in Practive.
9. Baumgartner, L., Andragogy: An introduction and implications for curriculum
and instruction
In Wang, Victor C.X. (Ed.). Curriculum Development for Adult Learners in the
Global Community, Volume 1 Strategic Approaches. (pp. 34 -57) Florida:
Krieger Publishing Company