Planning for Needs Assessment
I was given an assignment to figure out how to approach the
needs assessments on a specific website by choice or what was given. I have chosen my own website, because I was
given a similar assignment from work to check out a group that trains staff on
how to do deal with behaviors and build the students moral character leading to
leadership skills. The website is http://www.flippengroup.com/ and they
broadcast their training for the corporate, sports, education and government
world. My boss had asked me what I
think about this program coming to our school to be part of our behavior
curriculum. I respond with I would need
to see data to prove to me with what they say does work for our type of
students. Before I started to look for
data, I put together a task analysis (Noe, 2010) to see on what points I would
want to look for:
1.
How much experience do they have, how long have
they been doing this?
2.
What type of population this group has worked
with?
3.
What type of learning theory are they basing on
their curriculum?
4.
Do they modify their procedures by the
population?
5.
How do they go about their training?
6.
If possible has there been an external research
done to determine the validity of this program?
As I search the web and found
M.B. Flip Flippen is the founder and Susan Flippen is the co-founder of this
group. The group can be found in
multiple social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. The Flippen group has won entrepreneur of the
year in 2011. The Dallas cowboys a national football team in Dallas, TX,
brought the Flippen group in to train their staff on how to assess their
players better. The Dallas Cowboys
wanted to know how to assess which players are leaders within the organization
and also for future players.
For the education sector the Flippen group has
done more than 2,000 training seminars each year, across the nation. Teachers get to learn to create a positive
environment, inspire and motivate students to learn, and build on self-managing
classrooms “http://www.sbnonline.com/2011/07/how-the-flippen-group-uses-multiple-avenues-to-help-people-reach-their-potential/”. I was able to find a training model that was
placed out the internet for a district out in Colorado, and they have set up a
training schedule that meets every month of the 2011-2012 school year with more heavy meetings from August to
November. I am unsure for how long the
Flippen group meets the staff per day.
In their meetings I was able to see their core principles, how their
data sheets are set up, the rubrics, assessment used, building of a 5 year
growth plan with staff and a logic model.
I even was able to find a study that was put in place to see if the
Flippen group does build moral character on high school students, their
curriculum is based on the social theory.
I was able to
find a research study on the practice of the Flippen group, click here to view the
research study http://jsc.montana.edu/articles/v6n27.pdf
.
This study was based on a school district on the south end of
Texas. The population of this study is
very similar to our students, at risk youth who drop out by the age of 16 and
lead into the life of crime. In this
study they worked with seventh and eighth graders and found out that because of
their immaturity the Flippen group was not effective on changing the students
behaviors because the Flippen group tried to instill self- evaluation. The study
concluded if tried with older students like tenth and eleventh graders then it
could be possible. If I were to compare
with my students I can see a handful of our students being able to learn from this
group but the rest would not. With the
rest of the procedures with training staff, our school already was able to assess
our students and form a positive learning environment and been able to motivate
students to learn. The issue we were
facing was the students were able to make a behavioral changes by depending on
the external stimuli, the school, after they graduate, our success story
diminishes, and the reason because the students no longer have the support of
the school, and most of them go back to their criminal acts. With this we were trying to find a way to
build on the student’s moral character.
With
this information I can now make a phone call and compare with what I found and
the answer they give me from my questions on the task analysis. After my phone call I was convinced this
program will not give our district any knew information, because their
curriculum is based on the students already having internal locus of control
and they only need to build on it. Most
of my students do not have internal locus of control. I gave my thorough report to my boss, the
principle of the school, the director of curriculum and instruction, and the
superintendent of our district. The techniques I used were
interview, with my phone call to the group and documentation that I found out
on the internet (Noe, 2010).
References:
Castro, V. Retrieved by May 10, 2012: http://jsc.montana.edu/articles/v6n27.pdf
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th
ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Smart Business, 2011 Retrieved by May 10, 2012: http://www.sbnonline.com/2011/07/how-the-flippen-group-uses-multiple-avenues-to-help-people-reach-their-potential/
Neal,
ReplyDeleteGreat job on your detailed assessment, also, I love you blog page and the fish. Do you feel that if you hadn't found as much information on the internet that you wouldn't of had enough information to effectively conducted your report or do you feel that without this document you still would have came to the same conclusion? What I have found is that some assessments have limited information in which to draw an accurate conclusion but because a report or finding is required one is provided. In my case causing more training concerns and wasted funding. What's your thoughts.
Once again, I enjoyed reading your post.
Sandra
Neal,
ReplyDeleteGreat job on your detailed assessment, also, I love you blog page and the fish. Do you feel that if you hadn't found as much information on the internet that you wouldn't of had enough information to effectively conducted your report or do you feel that without this document you still would have came to the same conclusion? What I have found is that some assessments have limited information in which to draw an accurate conclusion but because a report or finding is required one is provided. In my case causing more training concerns and wasted funding. What's your thoughts.
Once again, I enjoyed reading your post.
Sandra
Neal, Great Post, Question you said this your own website but then said you needed more data to determine if it was good for your school. Can you clarify? I am not understanding if it is your site then you already should know. By the way great page!
ReplyDeleteNeal,
ReplyDeleteYou took a unique approach to this assignment. The purpose of this assignment was to select a corporation and from the perspective of a trainer, do a needs assessment to determine if the company's existing training was meeting their employees needs and helping to achieve the companies goals and objectives. What you have done id to try to determine if the Fippen Group would be able to meet the training needs of your staff to work with students. I will approach my comments form that standpoint.
You did a nice job identifying questions to utilize in the task analysis. You based some of your comments on the Texas A&M study, however that study is several years old. Is there a way of verifying the result of the study with the school(s) involved. Were there any environmental factors which make your school different from the schools in the study? You need to do an organizational analysis of the Flippen Group. What stakeholders would you want to interview and survey for the organizational analysis? How could you find out if their strategies have changed since the study you cited was done? Has a formal Person analysis been done of your staff and students? Has the gap between the instruction your school provides and the student's need been clearly identified. What internal and external stakeholders need to be observed, interviewed or survey to verify the gap exists? Just a few thoughts.
Mike