Personal Development Plan

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Blog Post: High-Tech Training- The Impact of Technology

 E-Learning – training delivered in an e-learning environment can be very powerful in today’s society. There are so many demands on people today such as work, families, the need for flexibility and an increase in financial responsibilities that require people to work. E-learning is a flexible learning situation that provides a window for reflection and assignment completion. If a person is committed, the implication for this is powerful.

 Blogs- blogs can be a very positive way to have students interact, reflect and discuss about any given topic. This is a great way for students to share their thoughts, reflections and findings with each other regarding content.

 Chat Rooms & Discussion Boards- chat rooms and discussion boards are used with distance learning and on-line learning for engagement by participants on any given topic. This gives a great opportunity for participants who are miles away from each other to interact, discuss, question each other, and provide suggestions on any given topic or content.

 Mobile Learning- Oh I love this one! Today smartphones and tablets are common items in the hands of learners. People are known for using them everywhere for everything. This is a great way for participants to participate in training activities on the go and in travel. It was a very useful tool for me personally as I traveled on a family vacation. I was able to retrieve documents and participate even as I sat at the airport. 🙂

 Dropbox- dropbox is a shared workspace. This is a very useful way for participants to share and
retrieve documents with each other. The documents can be saved by one person and updated or tweaked by another. This provides a great place for students to have a common workspace even though they are in different locations. www.dropbox.com

References
Article: Ahmad, N., & Orton, P. (2010). Smartphones make IBM smarter, but not as expected. Training and Development, 64(1), 46–50.
Article: Franklin, T. (2011). Mobile Learning: At the Tipping Point. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 10(4), 261-275
Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Stolovitch, H. D., & Keeps, E. J. (2002). Telling Ain’t Training. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.

Planning for a Needs Assessment

I have selected Bath & Body Works as the company I would design a needs assessment for. Bath & Body Works is a company that opened in 1990 and creates and sells fragrances for the bath and the body, including aromatherapy and scented candles. It has a 100 percent guarantee on its products and encourages the consumer to bring back anything that does not meet their satisfaction. Their motto is “Your happiness is our priority.” In preparing to conduct a needs assessment for Bath & Body Works, I would want to get buy-in from the following stakeholders?
• Customers that purchase the products
• Store clerks who make the day to day sales
• Focus groups that are made up of the two above groups
• Management who sees the “big picture” and has the data for the sales
o Upper level and Mid-level Management
• Training and Development Team
What questions would you ask during the organizational, person, and task analysis phase?
• In order to meet the goals of the business is an identified need visible? (Organizational)
• Is it a performance problem and does it have the potential to cost the company money?
• Is the identified need one that can be met through a training program? (Person)
• What employee knowledge and skills are necessary for the business to be a success? (Task Analysis)
• What specific tasks should the employees be trained in?
• What training has been done in the past and what data shows the impact?
What documents or records might you ask to see?
• Employee performance reviews and data (including personal characteristics and self-efficacy)
• Employee expectation documents
• Customer surveys on shopping experience
• Customer surveys on products
• Employee satisfaction data
• Employee termination data
What techniques would you employ and why?
• Observation- this will give upper management an opportunity to collect observation data related to the perceived “problem of practice.”
• Questionnaires- this gives the employee and the customer an opportunity to answer questions related to the “problem of practice.” I would suggest that the questions are similar, but are asked from the employee or customer’s point of view.
• Interviews- Face to face interviews or questioning provides an opportunity to uncover details and get information that might not be attainable in other ways.
It is important to analyze the B&B company in order to get as much data as possible. This would afford you the opportunity to meet the needs of all stakeholders and improve the company. The most important thing is to target the “what” and the “how” to make positive changes. If you are not careful in following the needs assessment process correctly, you could be putting a band-aid on the wrong problem and the real problem will re-surface.

If you want your organization to be successful in its endeavors, then you want your employees to be successful in their efforts. The truth about training is that when given the opportunity in an appropriate way, participants experience professional learning that is related to the work that they do and can meet the expectations that you have for them. In order to meet the needs of the learner in a training situation, the material/content must be relevant and appeal to the learner. This is a motivator for the adult learner. They want to receive something that they can use and through a process that appeals to them.

In a training program, it is important to know that you can target the learning you want for your staff. The content and learning can be as specific as you would like, therefore whatever area you identify as a need can be turned into a learning outcome for the training. The focus is on the result.

Finally, subsequent training needs can be identified by conducting an effective evaluation. This will give you or the trainer information on participant learning and readiness of application. The final goal is to use the resources of time and money wisely by designing a training that is specific, goal oriented, and measurable.

A professional project that experienced issues related to scope creep that I participated in was a 3 day summer professional development session for a middle school leadership team. This series of PD sessions was created by my office to train the new instructional leadership team (ILT) on addressing the needs of the adolescent learner.

Specific Scope Creep Issue:
• As we developed the project in the late Spring of the year, it became necessary to make changes to the content and the format for delivery. These changes created stakeholder stress in that the original content of the delivery was one that had been delivered previously for another school and now based on data collected from the newly hired team members, we found that the original content was not the content that would meet the needs of the learners. An adjustment needed to be made 4 weeks before delivery date.

How Issue was Addressed:
• Our team members researched the previous school locations of newly hired teachers (who had transferred from other local schools) to determine their PD history, which helped us to determine their current needs. This was not an original problem when the training was determined for the original team members. It was not until the new principal was hired and a massive turn over in leadership took place, that we realized the need to do another assessment to determine if we were on track for the current needs of the new team. This caused a major change in design, time to design, stress level and personnel in order to make the necessary changes within the next 4 weeks. A training of this level for 3 days is a major project if done properly. In preparation, our team collaborated and went from a team of two people to four people. Everyone jumped into the project with assigned roles and got the work done.

What Could Have Been Done Differently?
• To control the scope of the project the design and delivery team might have communicated with the upper leadership to anticipate any changes in school leadership staff before initial decisions on content and delivery. The knowledge and experiences of the participants were key for this training, so being pro-active in determining their needs was extremely important.

Week 5 Blog Assignment
Pamela Foster

Resources that would be useful in estimating the costs, effort, and/or activity durations associated with ID projects

Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

This site is a good resource for estimating and allocating resources for instructional design projects. It has lots of specific and detailed information related to estimating training costs, development hours, eLearning development time, and development times to create learning and instructional programs.

Designing Training Activities – How Long Does it Take to Design and Develop a Training Activity

http://thetrainingworld.com/faq/deshowlong.htm

This article provides detailed information on the best way to estimate time and cost for designing and developing a project. This article describes the challenges and solutions ID’s can count on to navigate through the design process. I think that this article would be helpful to me in addressing and being proactive when dealing with challenges.

Week 3- Blog Assignment
The Art of Communication
Pamela G. Foster

In my opinion, the voicemail message was the most intense message. I could hear the angst in the caller’s voice which could add a small level of stress to the recipient. The email message was almost non-descriptive to me. It clearly asked for what it needed, and explained the writer’s plight, but did not seem over the top in emotion as the telephone message did. Finally, the face-to-face message seemed to convey the true intent of the message. The facial expression, tone of voice, and body language seemed non-offensive and represented positive communication. What I have learned from this exercise is that face- to-face communication is best. It leaves little room for assumptions based on the voice and tone of the message. I will try to use face-to-face communication as often as I could and when using the other forms of communication, I will check to be sure my message is received the way it was intended.

A project that I designed and found room for improvement was a project designed for Supporting Services personnel. This project was one of my first after being assigned my new job responsibilities. I was proud of the deliverables, but after reflection, saw so many things I could have done differently to meet the needs of the learners. If I had it to do over again, I would communicate more with the director so that I may have more specific information on the desired outcomes. I would also get more information on the learner that the training was designed for. I also found that communication is a two way street and just because I have not been given the necessary information does not mean that I can’t ask those coaching questions to get myself the information that I need.
Because the job descriptions are based on the role that each supporting services team member plays in the system, the training should have been more directed at the job that they do. In my opinion, the content was too broad and not specific enough.

The participants were very engaged but at times could not participate because of the lack of knowledge around content that was not their content. This did cause some frustration, however because I was also the trainer, I was able to think quickly on my feet and change some of the direction in order to meet their needs.

Based on the feedback and the evaluations, I was able to re-create this particular training for the next implementation. The training was differentiated based on the jobs and needs of the participants. This time I researched the participants and their particular jobs prior to the training so that I could be sure each person had a direct connection to the training. The feedback was extremely positive and from the summative data, the content was exactly what they needed. I was very pleased with the second try, but also pleased with my reflection and actions taken for the first try.