Hi, my name is Stephanie Moore and I'm going
to introduce you to Roger Kaufman, who is certainly
one of the history makers of the field and who
is also one of my advisors and whom I consider
to be my mentor. I currently am at the
University of Virginia and uh spent some time with Roger
recently down in Tallahassee interviewing him about different aspects of
his career with Roger. Of course, he's very
well known for needs assessment in the field. But
in this interview I wanted to bring out some things
that I've had an opportunity to learn with him that
may not necessarily always come out in a book or
something like that. So I really wanted to create
an opportunity where people could get to know the roger
that I've gotten to know and have a chance to
learn some of the things from him that I feel
have been invaluable for me and my personal development as
well. So you have a background in psychology as
well as statistics. Where's my father said in my
first year at Hopkins, he said uh son in
the world is like a course in calculus and I
said, oh boy, here's something else I'm not
gonna understand. He was a mathematical physicist. And
uh he said, what's that dad being a good
son? And he said, well the first course
that everybody takes is differentiation. The second course that
if people take they don't apply is integration, differential
calculus and interval calculus. And that's stuck with me
all these years is that there's both kinds of calculus
and our lives as well. One is the integrated
holistic and the other is the individual building blocks kind
of stuff. And so all this kind of major
was me exploring four something I didn't know about,
I was looking for. How does this all go
together? Does it all go together? Is their
sense in all of this? It's finally came to
me the sense at least to me, is in
terms of societal value for all people, not just
one group of Vienna and getting them to define instead
of imposing. Okay, I wonder how much your
background in psychology really played a part and how you
develop makeup. The psychology piece really gave me some
of the basic ways to think about things to think
about things in terms of hypotheses and research questions,
what questions do you want answers to? How do
you get those? And how do you know those
questions are important questions and that's how we got the
needs assessment based at the three other mega macron marker
. There are a number of articles, including one
by you that I always felt set the stage for
how the field moves beyond anyone. Technology, you
focused on assessment. I wrote an article way back
when, uh, for the uh, then a
Ct journal, as I recall, it was called
From how to what to why. Which tried to
make the case of, we know how to how
we're very good at this and getting better and have
some research home. Then we were starting off listening
to people like bob maker and others about measurable objectives
. That was what the thing that we weren't dealing
with so much is why do we do this in
the first place? And so I was trying to
set the stage for at least the way I was
thinking about things and of course being egotistical one another
people that think the same way. Uh, there
are some people who who bought into it and some
other people said, no, I want to do
that. That's not practical. That's not the real
world. What we do is we I do what
people tell us to do. And even if that
means rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic and forgetting
about any kind of positioning and looking for icebergs.
They went ahead and do it. And indeed we
have a lot of people who still feel uncomfortable with
linking how to what and why and making it integrated
uh system instead of fragmented folks in the field could
begin to draw linkages between what you've developed over time
and how that plays out in their very real jobs
and lives frequently. What people are quoting me honest
needs assessment. And of course what I did is
expanded in the 1979 book I wrote with in English
means assessment. We started expanding uh where you do
a needs assessment is gaps and results. Uh that's
absolutely critical because the focus on results and if you
use need as a verb, a verb sense,
you don't get that gap in results, you get
a gap in process. And we expanded that from
uh what I called products, the building block results
, which is the most instructional designers will deal with
immediate people, deal with production people deal with uh
to output what the organization cantor does deliver outside of
itself. And then to what now is called mega
outcomes, the societal impact and evaluated and try to
get that alignment. And so I came to mega
uh in that process and I came to to make
a another strange way. I don't know whether you're
interested or not. Uh anybody out there has kids
probably knows what my son when he was about six
or seven did were uh driving in the car.
And Jack kept asking why Daddy and I kept on
saying why. And I got between the 3rd and
4th explanation of why. And I ran out of
reasons. And it came up because I said so
and I knew as soon as I said that that's
not rational. And so that's what started pushing me
into more in the direction I said earlier from how
to what to why. And that's why I had
to include adding measurable value for all internal and external
partners. And so that's how mega actually, my
son pushed me into that by his incessant questioning of
why dad. So. Mhm. I think all
of that's really tied up together. And you address
that pretty directly. You're very specific about us distinguishing
between ends and means and the conventional ism is not
to talk about the chain of consequences. And so
they tend to want to get to the means.
We're going to get the police there were going to
get the fire there. We're going to have counseling
available in the schools. We're going to have credential
nursing staff. And the answer is yes. And
what's the consequences of that in terms of ends which
is health safety, survival and well being. And
so that's why I make a big deal over the
difference. But relationship between ends and means and that's
why I define needed as an out as a gap
in results so that you don't blur those. Why
would you want to pick a solution until you knew
that you had gaps and results That should be closed
if you don't have that data, how do you
pick a me? How do you know what instruction
to design or how do you know how to do
workplace layout or how do you do mediation? I
mean you can do it but wouldn't it be nice
if you close the useful gap in results? So
that distinction but relationship between hands results and consequences means
resources and how to do it is vital and unfortunately
very very often blurred. I think as you talk
about societal impact, most people are prone to think
of that in terms of environmental effects and while that's
a part of your model, that's not the totality
of it. So we started asking people from almost
around the world, what kind of world do you
want for your Children and grandchildren? And we want
it in terms of results. Okay. And usually
they say, well, you know, I want
more money spent on education and I and I said
no let's put that aside for now because maybe it'll
end up with that. Maybe it won't. What
do you want for your Children and grandchildren? And
usually if you ask them about, yeah, their
their progeny, their future. They can give you
very clear answers. If you ask them about themselves
, they say, oh, this practical real world
. I know I'll never get more money for my
programmers. But if you ask them about that,
so we literally run around the world almost around the
world and ask people, what kind of world do
you want for your Children and grandchildren. And when
you, when you sort it out the ends and
means from that, it was a very, very
clear consensus. Um, and I ended up calling
it mother's rule because you ask a mother what they
want for their child. They don't want them murdered
, raped, permanent disabilities, uh, infectious diseases
from which they die or become permanently disabled. They
want them healthy and happy and surviving. And uh
, so that's, we came up with some indicators
for society when I called the ideal vision the kind
of world we together want to create for tomorrow's child
. And it talks about things including contributors to that
environment, but environment, What difference does the environment
make if it isn't on the basis of health safety
while being in continuation of life underlying your work is
a very strong emphasis on system thinking. So I'd
like you to explain what the differences between systems thinking
and systems thinking. I found in working with engineers
, each one was optimizing on there substance of their
peace. Uh, and you go to specialists and
physicians and they are experts on the elementary canal,
the kidney deliver the muscles. And if they don't
understand that all those have to go together for total
health and wellbeing and survival. Then you get funny
things happening. My my late father in law who
had endowed chair of medicine, University of Virginia Medical
School, which is a school you might be familiar
with. Uh, he had an down chair of
medicine and he was an anesthesiologist of some notes.
And he told us that every once in a while
he would follow up on a patient, which is
unusual for an anesthesiologist to do that. And he's
found them on five or six medication. You can
just see their conditions just going down, down,
down, down, down because they weren't looking at
drug interactions. Each one was creating their system.
And so what he did is he took them off
of all medication and they got better. And so
that's why the systems is when you look at the
pieces and optimize on that. Um, you know
, that's like optimizing on 3rd grade learning and not
worry about second grade contributions and what they have to
do in the forest grade and beyond. So systems
tends to be very popular because it allows you to
limit but understanding there's interaction between the parts why you
didn't but the system concept starts and ends with mega
where everything has to add value of a value chain
which goes from inputs ingredients. Process is how to
do it. Building black results products which you can
deliver output and the impact on external clients in society
which has outcomes, mega macro micro processing that link
it. I think most of the people who are
familiar with your work think of it more in terms
of applying in corporate strategic planning but not so much
in the fields of instructional design or instructional technology.
Why do you think that is? Now? We've
seen the field expanding A. C. T.
I. S. P I A S T.
D. A. S. T. D.
Has formally said you know focus on instruction is dead
. And now they're talking about more holistic frames of
records and sometimes the people just laggard because I don't
want to change, I'm liberal but I don't want
change. Uh And so uh the field is broadening
. I see the field is broadening a terribly accelerating
rate and there are some people who just don't want
to keep up with, they don't have the energy
, they don't have the openness, they don't have
the integrity. And then let's get back to your
work, it's about ethics. Uh and you're in
your book you're saying look you know, it's ethics
by design that has to be a core of this
because not just doing. Uh Peter Drucker said it's
not about doing things right, it's also first about
doing what's right and what's right to me and I
think other people is about adding value to all stakeholders
inside and outside the organization. Many of the founding
figures in our field really wanted to make a difference
. Are we doing that or have we got enough
track? Peter Drucker wrote something one time called able
to New realities, and I picked up on that
theme of new realities of our field. And uh
the uh for instance, reality is not divided into
courses, programs, teachers, classrooms, media.
It isn't divided into policies, programmes, politics.
It it's more holistically, and I think people would
step back from themselves like Hittson did by asking if
our university is the solution, what's the problem?
People stand off and say, you know, what
I'm doing is the solution? What's the problem that
makes you enlarge, if you're honest, enlarge your
context? Uh I think that um you know,
maybe way universities are, are organized now, you
know programs and uh departments and divisions and things like
that, There's a fragmentation that might be happening.
And for you to get hired and then for you
to get promoted, you have to do something in
that area that's successful people who hired you. And
so the I don't know whether that might be limiting
people who want to go horizontal as well as vertical
. Mm So maybe it's the way we organize and
companies and college and universities in school. Be interesting
to pursue, see whether uh social structure is put
on there that affects how people go about thinking.
A student asked you what your hobbies were and your
response was simply mega. So first of all is
mega your hobby. I love travel, I love
travel and I'd love to get into different cultures and
see how they do things. And it's always interesting
to me to see what they, what they harvest
because of their culture. Yeah. We want to
do make a presentation in India a year ago and
I thought I'd seen abject poverty in central and south
America and there was nothing, yeah it could be
that compared with what I saw in India and then
I saw there were two levels of abject poverty in
India and when you started asking the question to get
really strange kinds of answers and the part of it
was a culture subculture event. One group felt that
there's nothing you can do your role in life has
been dealt to you from birth and just go through
life hoping. And another culture that says I can
get out of this and you could just see what
they were doing in a really bad situation. So
I learned a lot from, from traveling and doing
work in other countries and meanwhile only tried to put
some time for sightseeing, doing stupid things like what
you were a rafting and breaking an ankle relationship with
jam is very special. I don't think anybody could
say they legitimately no, you without knowing about you
and Jan were real partners. I'm, I'm yet
very emotional. I'm very blessed. Uh, and
she's also my most avid critic and support her.
I mean, she doesn't let me get away with
anything and I run things past her and said,
well, what about this? You missed that.
That's a good point. And it's, it's nice
to have that kind of partnership. Is there anything
else you would like to address or the world holds
so much promise. There's so much we can be
doing in contributing if we would get out of our
doctrinaire stances and look to see how we individually and
then collectively can add to making this a measurably better
world. Look at the consequences of not doing that
. Are we if we're not adding value to our
share of world, are we subtracting value? And
my concern is I think we have the capability to
to add value to our share of world. I
just hope we can get more people than to join
the conversation and uh enjoying the journey. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.