John Niemi

Niemi seminar to study 'learning organization'

by Mark McGowan

John Niemi sees the learning experience as three mountain streams converging to form a lake.

To Niemi, a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Counseling, Adult and Health Education, one stream is individual learning. Another is team learning. The third is organizational learning.

Outside of academia - in the workplace, mostly - the three-pronged model of learning is one used to investigate and solve problems for which there seems no answer. Many heads, drawing on their own experience, work better than one - and can assist the organization on how to work as individuals and teams.

"As we look at change in our world today, there are many situations that have never before been experienced in this global world," Niemi said. "There are no past practices to guide us. The theories that sprang from university-based research over the last 80 years often are not applied to the field of practice."

Niemi will try to bridge that gap when he delivers the spring Distinguished Teaching Professor seminar on the learning organization, scheduled for noon Tuesday, April 15, in Holmes Student Center room 305.

"People should be able to see that their own experience as an individual learner fits into a broader perspective. People who see their classroom only as their particular area of responsibility … could make a greater contribution if they saw the importance of people working in teams," he said.

"It allows students to question, and question assumptions. It really gets people to think," he added. "So much of our education is a subject matter specialist and a learner. It's a one-way process."

Graduate students under Niemi, who has devoted much of his career to human resource development learning in the workplace, acquire such skills when they serve as advisers to businesses and organizations facing "wicked problems" - with no known answers. "Clients" have included the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Police Academy and the U.S. Post Office.

Students learn to ask questions and how to reflect on the resulting dialogue. Their journals show what was asked and what wasn't said.

"It's a constant challenge," Niemi said. "They may come up with a new paradigm, a new model."

Niemi's seminar is sponsored by the Office of the Provost. No registration is required.

4-14-03