Planning for Needs Assessment

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/

Elevator Speech on True Training

“Elevator Speech” regarding the truth about training;

Do you remember those seminars when we had to go to every year to keep our licenses, and when we would hear a new style or strategy about dealing with our students?  We would get this great lecture that promised us how this would change all of the problems we encounter in class.  Once the seminar was over we would be pumped up on wanting to practice the methods they just showed us, but then realizing, how are we going to do this?  How can I modify what they talked about to the issues I am dealing with in my class? I even received this certificate stating I am an expert from this training.  How can I be an expert if I have no idea how to implement the lecture?  Real training is not only a lecture; it’s getting the practice to be fluent on the implementation and also the ability to generalize to new issues when they arise.   A true training will prepare the client to be able to adapt to the changes one would face, becoming an improved person in the field for themselves and their organization.  Here’s my card, call me when you want our team to prepare your next seminar and/or workshop. Thank you for meeting with me.

How to avoid Scope Creep?

There are 2 main goals that you as the project manager would need to think about when dealing with scope creep.

1. When planning always plan as close to detail as possible.  Project control is very important, this would lead to reconfirming the plan, assessing performance, taking corrective action and keeping people informed (Portny, 2008).

     2.       Best approach to change.  Changes will occur during the project time, so during the planning time make sure there is a section that allows modification to occur with less agony as possible and communicate to your team about the changes (Portny, 2008).

Here is a real life example:

The location of my job, there are two major buildings that consist of 6 different alternative school programs.  Our school has one building all to ourselves the other building has the remaining 5 programs.  The plans of building an expansion to the other building has begun 3 weeks ago.  As the project began the crew closed off certain parts of the building still giving us access to specific sections of the building.  The all of a sudden we were told the section where we would use to walk through to get to the gym we would not be able to use because the project it a little bit of a snag.  The gas line needed to be changed before construction began, and this was in the original plan, but in the plans it was stated as contacting PSE&G and they will come in and make the changes before construction, well PSE&G is stating no one has called them and that they will have to wait their turn, this delay could take several weeks before PSE&G cones out to change the gas line.  Well this makes a big issue in the projects plan because they have a specific timeline and if they finish before a certain date, the construction company gets an incentive bonus.  Well the person who planned this project thought of the scope creep very well because of instead of waiting they will work on the expansion side they thought about doing at the end of the project and work backwards to give time for the PSE&G to come in and do their part.  The project manager met with all of the school’s principals and the head of the maintenance department to inform them of the changes that need to occur and apologized for the changes.  So now our school and another will be taking a detour for next 6 months when walking up to the gym, but at least we know we will only be dealing with this at the beginning of the project and not at the end.  The project manger did a great job of making the changes needed for the project to continue as planned.
  
Portny, S.E., Mantel, S.J., Meredith, J.R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M.M., & Kramer, B. E., (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken. NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Tools for Project Management

For my project management class I needed to post two resource tools that would be useful in estimating the costs, effort, and/or activity durations associated with ID projects.  Below I have found two tools I like the first one is a directly below. Click on link to get insights on improving the decision process and the paradox world of bad decisions. I found this tool interesting because it gave some ideas to thin about and the meaning behind the mathematical calculations.  Since I have a back ground in Math, I found this tool fairly easy to follow.  If Math is not your strong suit then the next tool would be better for your liking.

http://www.visionarytools.com/decision-making/3-point-estimating.htm

The other tool is below for you to click on.  In this website “pptmagic.com” gives ideas on Project Management, but mostly are already developed calculations tools.   

http://www.pptmagic.com/projectmgm.htm

Here you have two tools that both will lead to the same result for your project management, the difference one helps you understand the meaning behind the calculations and how to produce your own calculation tool, the other tool also can give you the meaning but also the formulas are already made for you so all you have to do is plug in the numbers and the tool will produce the figures and even graph the solutions, to help you get out more data solutions. 

Which tool do you find helpful?

Effective Communication

Today’s blog I needed to give my thoughts after I finished going over each modality.  There are 3 modalities one an email message, second a voicemail message, and last a face to face video.  All of my thoughts are below.  Click on link below to see the modalities for yourself.  And let’s see if you agree with my analysis.

http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6145/03/mm/aoc/index.html

Let's Begin

Email message: If I were the one receiving this email I get the feeling that the work I had to do was urgent.  Mark’s report needs to be done as soon as possible because Jane cannot move on her report without it, and her deadline is coming soon, so now Mark will have to find a way to rearrange his schedule to finish his end to help her out, wondering why she didn’t tell Mark any sooner.

Voicemail message:   With this message Jane might of made Mark feel she needs his help to finish with Mark’s data, even though her tone was neutral she seemed a bit stressed out.  She obviously does not want to miss her own deadline. 

Face to Face: When I saw the video her, she looked to causal, but her body language gave me a passive aggressive attitude.  The flicker of her eyes looking in a different direction when talking, pointing her finger out, not directly to me but she does have a pointed finger.  Even the smile at the end was too much to be making the situation seem friendly but in her mind she must be saying I need your data now, and I’m not taking it anymore. 

After finishing the 3 modalities I would say the voicemail was the most honest and better delivered message of the three.  The email message seemed too harsh, where the face to face showed too much body posturing.  I would probably have gotten annoyed from the email message; because it is insinuating that I did not do the work as well as the face to face video.  Related to f2f, Jane came off as she was tired of asking for Mark’s data, and wants it as soon as possible.  The smile at the end definitely shows she is trying to hide her frustration.  Jane’s tone of voice is at the same level but her body language relays the opposite sending an ambiguous message.  Dr. Stolovitch suggested the two best ways for effective solution is avoid unclear statements and document everything.  Jane needed to be clear in delivering her message not sending mix signals, and if she was having issues with Mark then she should have document all the times she tried to communicate with Mark about getting his part done for her.

References:

Stolovich (n.d.), Communicating with Stakeholders [Video]. Laureate Education. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com.            

Post- Mortem: Collect Data Effectively

In my previous job I wanted to change how we recorded data.  My previous employment, I was a teacher for autistic adolescents for a private school within Rutgers University.  This program is viewed as a prestigious evidence based ABA program.  My class and another dealt with severely behavioral students.  Staff needed to be alert every second when interacting with these students, and was difficult to keep up with recording data has accurate as possible and telling with the behaviors at the same time.  All data was recorded with pencil and paper, at times different clickers with labels to keep up with the high frequency behaviors.  Since I am into computers and enjoy seeing the new technology tools to use, I have come up with a plan, to have an easier way to collect data and have the data automatically in graph form into a database for the supervisors to look at whenever possible so not to wait to latter part of the week for the assistant to finish graphing manually.   

Now we are talking about 7 years ago, when this happen, palm pilots were popular at this time, there was even a mini computer called OQO that was very popular but very expensive.  I have thought about purchasing palm pilots with the program called Documents to Go that gave a compatible version of Microsoft office excel.  I had made a data sheets that automatically lead into calculation into graphs.  The staff member would have the palm pilot attached to their belt of in their pocket and have a headphone and microphone wired to the palm pilot using Dragon Speaking voice program.  Staff would get a list of codes to memorize that would label specific behaviors and frequencies to the excel sheet.  At the end of the day they would sync the palm pilot to the computer and those excel sheets will have the data of the day already in graph form ready to be viewed. This process would lead to allowing staff to have free hands to deal with the behaviors and allow staff to observe the behaviors without having to look down on a sheet to record data.  My plan was well thought out in the sense of technology aspect, but was not by cost and adaptability (Stolovitch, n.d.).

When I presented my plan to the directors of the program, they have asked, does these palm pilots work with Mac computers? How much will it cost to purchase the palm pilots for all of the staff, how about the licenses for the Dragon Speaking program (Portny, 2008)?  We have a database made already with Filemaker pro on the Mac server for our IEP’s, will the excel graphs be able to be used on our database?  All of  these questions I did not consider on my plan(Stolovitch, n.d.), because I am more of a PC person and I wasn’t using the Mac that was given to me, I used my en PC to take on the data, but still able to log on to the Mac server.  I had thought we can have two different systems and possibly the directors can see the plus side to the PC world and give up the Mac.  I was wrong because the director in my school is a big fan of Mac and is the one who services the Mac to make sure everything is working correctly (Portny, 2008). 

The idea I want to do was a good one but it was not feasible with the resources that I needed to work with (Portny, 2008).  Not all was lost; my directors did agree that there needed to be a better system to record data so they had asked me to find out about video cameras, they thought about putting video cameras in all of the classrooms and hallways linked a specific room for anyone to go into to look at the behaviors of the day to take data.  For data collection outside of the building they would consider some type of portable device to use.  They would also update their Filemaker database to see if they can link some portable devices.  If I had a chance to do this all over I would have taken time to see what technology devices I have already to see what will be compatible with it for my plan to succeed.  I would also have to see what will be cost effect.

I recently when back to visit still have some friends there, and I heard they have a whole new data system, similar to my old plan but they did not think about the issues with the wireless system.  They had purchased iPod’s/itouch with a data app that automatically sync wirelessly with the server.  The issue I hear is when anybody uses the microwave in the building it cuts off the wireless signal in the area for the time the microwave is in use, having staff frustrated that the data was not sent to the server. Causing issues because the app does not store the data it takes from the person’s input and then sends it to the server when the person presses finish then clearing the sheet for the next collection.  Actually one of the directors had walk by and overheard our conversation and asked me what I would do to fix the solution?  I had asked when the app is sending the data to the server what type of program is it sending it to? And do you have choice of different places to send it to (Portny, 2008)?  The director showed me the app and I noticed that it would send the data to any device that has Numbers in it.  Numbers is Mac’s version of excel.  So I tried if the app would send the data to Numbers located within the same ipod/itouch.  The app allowed this to happen, so I told them just have them send the data to the itouch that they are using, and then at their lunch time or the end of the day have the itouch  sync to the teachers computer wired or wirelessly the numbers file.  Then the teacher computer will automatically sync to the server later in the day.  This way if anything happens you have data backed up in three locations.  I was happy to know that the plan I made in the beginning was functional it just wasn’t planned right, but I did learn from my mistakes (Stolovitch, n.d.).

References

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Stolovitch, H. (n.d.). “Project Management and Instructional Design.” Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6051999&Survey=1&47=7515625&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Future of Distant Learning

Distant learning is not a new idea, this type of teaching has been offered back in the 1700’s, the difference is as technology got more advanced like audio and visual devices in the early 1900’s. Audio and visual devices has modified how training has been used for over the years, this became the building block on how teaching in schools and universities would need to change. Universities have already started to change to either full online distant learning or to mix traditional and online learning. K-12 schools are now opening the doors to distant learning but are faced with some road blocks.

The future of distant learning will grow in all levels fields but some may take longer than others. Here is what I think would open up for the future of distant learning into two categories 5-10 years and 10-20 years. First the 5- 10 years we can see more partnerships between universities and corporations to specialized degrees and specialized certification programs, textbooks and printed materials will be replaced by online materials, and a greater number of different majors within traditional majors will be offered. For the future 10-20 years I can see the perception of the college campus will change from one dimensional to multi- dimensions, courses will vary in length instead of being semester based, institutions will be leading for the adoption of new technologies, there would be an increase in vocational specific instruction, and offer ways to engage and support different learning styles.

When completing any project, as instructional designer, we need to have a well thought out project, utilizing the design models that we have learned for example the ADDIE mode. As an ID, we need to also use the AEIOU approach to evaluate our project. When utilizing both of these approaches it will lead our outcome of a well thought out project in distant learning. When technology glitches occur, customers are not relating it to the design of distant learning. Also ID needs to take into consideration their populations learning styles (Simonson, 2009) and state the distant learner’s attributes (Dabbagh, 2007), so their distant learning project can be successful.

Distant learning has the advantage to use multiple ways to present material. The creativity of the design will reflex this. Many times I have been in a brick mortar type learning, and when the teacher would narrate a specific idea I would have to think about in my mind to see how it would work. In a distant learning design I can use technology to also present the idea as a visual. This would help me understand the material easier, so I can learn more things about the topic causing more interest and motivation on learning.

With this idea in mind, designing for distant learning can be opened to so many ways, with the use of simulation software, online educational gaming, differential instruction, etc. Hardware technology will also allow a better feel of human connection with simulation and gaming programs. When I presented the works of Pranav Mistry “Sixth Sense” (http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/), definitely allowed me to see how the training industry can change with this Mistry’s invention. He was able to invent a product that allowed the computer to adapt to the humans experience of the world, instead how it is now humans adapting to the restrictions of the computer. If I would take one of the examples from above, a partnership with corporations and universities with training to a specific certifications and combine it with Mistry’s invention, this would open up to the changes of how trainings will be held. As an instructional designer I will need to stay in touch with the new technology that is available to us and consistently think of new designs that can enhance learning.

References

Dabbagh, N. (2007). The online learner: Characteristics and pedagogical implications. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 7(3). Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol7/iss3/general/article1.cfm

Mistry, P. (2009). Sixth Sense. Retrieved from http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson