Rama Hart

This study aims to examine participants' experiences with adopting a virtual reality (VR)-based curriculum and their perceptions of the curriculum's effectiveness. Recent studies demonstrated the efficacy of VR-based curricula for educational training. However, research on utilizing VR to promote understanding of educational inclusion remains understudied. We conducted a mixed-methods case study to collect both quantitative and qualitative data, using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) survey, in-depth interviews, and a focus group. We identified several themes that pose challenges and create opportunities for the participants. The challenges include access, physical adjustment, avatar design, pacing, and human connection. We examined the promises from three additional categories: technology affordances, impacts, and human-centered design strategies. Overall, VR-based inclusive curriculum could contribute to positive learning and boost engagement. The research findings can contribute to an understanding of participant acceptance and perceptions of VR as a platform for learning about sensitive and inclusive topics.

The Problem.
Leaders and members of virtual teams do not always have the opportunity to seek training and development to overcome the challenges of being culturally and geographically distant, nor the serendipitous exchanges afforded by proximity to work associates who might provide mentoring for personal or professional guidance. How then might organizations and human resource development (HRD) professionals foster relationships that are supportive in nature, considered critical for many outcomes associated with individual and leadership development and virtual team success?
The Solution.
Drawing on the theoretical perspective that communication is constitutive of social, psychological and organizational realities, a conceptual model was developed through an interpretive study. The model highlights how informal developmental relationships emerge, what type of communication constitutes these relationships, and the impact they have on leaders and members of virtual work teams.
The Stakeholders.
The results of this study have implications for leaders and members who work virtually and for HRD professionals seeking strategies to create and improve informal developmental relationships through the medium of virtual work team communication. Opportunities exist for researchers to explore the effectiveness and outcomes of building developmental relationships in virtual contexts.

This paper reviews Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and its potential contribution to creating classrooms desired by all participants. It addresses the question of personal contribution to the creation of that which is identified by those responsible for its creation. A brief review of AI's history and the fundamental ideas behind its practice is followed by a detailed step-by-step approach of how it is applied to a graduate class in Leadership and Management Development. The exercise is situated in the context of student directed learning and the positive possibilities of this exercise in students' lives. Statistical analysis of a survey created from the identified outcomes is presented. The survey was administered on two occasions over the semester to measure the extent to which the class had accomplished the ideals, and a self-report of students' contribution to that achievement. Results show a significant relationship between those items that are deemed high priority for the course and students' assessment of achievement and their contribution to that achievement. Conclusions and implications are included with some questions posed for further research and practice.

The problem and the solution. Leader development, expanding an individual's leadership capacity, may include learning to transform perspectives as one objective. This paper explores how such transformation might be achieved through appreciative inquiry (AI). The authors define AI and transformative learning and articulate a perspective being advanced which highlights the relationship between them. Using two illustrative examples from organizational and educational settings, the authors describe the AI process and propose how the process might be conducted to achieve transformative leader development. Through these examples, they explore the types of affirmative questions that guided participants' conversations and led to commitment to action and shift in perspectives that are important elements of transformative learning. The authors propose that AI may increase a leader's capacity to generate his or her role anew through inner work and an inside-out orientation (Hunt, 1987). They consider ways in which AI can be coupled with other sources of learning, expanding its use beyond a tool for developing organizational leadership capacity through large-systems organizational change to one that is focused on developing individual leader capacity.