Student Voices: What I Learned about Consulting by Orzu Kamolova
By: Orzu Kamolova, Master’s candidate in Educational Technology
| This post is part of a series dedicated to the Master’s students in the Consulting in Educational Technology course (ETEC 693) that Sonia instructed at Concordia University. |
| I have been busy, since I am taking summer intensive courses and one of them is about consulting in human performance and instructional design. What is it?, you may ask. I am not 100% sure yet if I can answer this question. It seems to me that a consultant is exactly the same as a project manager. The consultant is a professional who comes to the organization, and does investigations to solve the problem; and before coming to the solution the consultant needs to pass through several positive and informative steps or negative and challenging ones to tackle obstacles. During the class I felt like I was in a human relations class since most of the learning happening in my head was connected to soft skills, cognitive thinking of the consultant, human touches to problem solving, and of course, professionalism and expertise.
So, what did I learn?, you may ask. I learned about techniques, models, and theories and read lots and lots of articles. The list of the assignments was not an easy one, but step by step I am managing them and so far so good. The most interesting part of the class has been interviewing a real consultant and speaking with the guest speakers invited by our instructor, Sonia. We learned a lot from this experience and got the idea that it is not easy to be a consultant, but it is an interesting and challenging job where you learn from everybody and everything on the spot. It is a kind of investigation process where you do interviews and use models, everything is well planned and predicted—well, sometimes, but not most of the time, it seems. From my experience in this course, I would love to work as a consultant and integrate the solutions. _________________ |
| Orzu is doing her second Masters in Educational Technology at Concordia University. She is passionate about changing environments to shape people’s behavior. After taking Sonia’s class she is more prepared for working with corporate clients in local and international arenas. |
October 2, 2011
Tags: challenges, consulting, solutions Posted in: Student Voices
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