Lance’s Jury #2 Portfolio

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I established this site to demonstrate my development in the area of Instructional Design and Performance Improvement.  This site will include biographical and educational information, current and complete projects included in the Instructional Design program that I am enrolled in at SIUE, and links related to Human Performance Improvement and examples of effective training and content/knowledge management programs.

Here, I will briefly summarize the information on this site. I will discuss how I came to this point from a biographical, educational, and occupational standpoint. I will also describe briefly how I intend to use the educational and occupational choices that I have made.  I originally grew up in Southeast Texas, living in what is called the Golden Triangle area.  It is called that because the three major cities in that area, Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange form a triangle on the Gulf coast of Texas.  I participated in many instrumental music groups, enjoyed playing baseball, and was involved in Church activities.

Upon graduation form high school, I attended college at Concordia Teacher’s College in Seward, NE, where I obtained a B. A. in Music and Theology, with an emphasis in Secondary Education.

During this time, my family moved from Texas, eventually ending up in St. Louis, MO.  While in college and upon graduation, I have lived in this area and been involved in a variety of church music activities and other local groups.

While in college, I gained summer employment with Six Flags in St. Louis and continued my relationship with them upon graduation. I primarily worked in the Retail and Food Service departments. In addition to my regular jobs there, I also trained many new employees in initial job training and job performance improvement.  This continued for about seven years.  I then joined Cracker Barrel in much the same capacity.  I have also worked with Cracker Barrel as a POS Technical Trainer, teaching both management and hourly employees how to use a POS touch screen system.  This is where I became most interested in not only job performance training, but also improving instructional materials and other methods of performance improvement.

I initially began my graduate studies at SIUE in 1991 in the Music Performance program.  After several years in the retail and restaurant industry and serving as a Technical Trainer for Cracker Barrel, I restarted my graduate studies at SIUE in 2007.  I began pursuing a M.Ed. in Instructional Design and Performance Improvement Technology. This was done to learn the variety of technologies used to train employees in corporate and institutional settings on job skills and core competencies so that I could advance to a position in a training department to develop such training materials. Upon graduation in May, I intend to use my education to obtain such a position within the private sector.