November 7, 2017
Prompt: Create your personal goals and assessments for this unit on task analysis. Submit your reflections on your personal goals and assessments.
The task analysis on the tutoring program was an interesting activity since there were few factors about the program I hadn't previously considered, such as the exact tutee objectives that should be accomplished at every tutoring session as well as the many functional tasks the tutee requires to gain autonomy. These objectives were intuitively realized, but had not been written down exclusively. This practice was enlightening and will further allow improvement of the tutor trainings and the program. Laying out the requirements and clarifying duties and tasks will help streamline the program and its processes even further so we may help our tutors provide a better service as they'll be more clear on their expectations and requirements. My goal after performing this task analysis is to come up with a few rubrics for self-assessment and post-tutoring evaluation.
November 22, 2017
Prompt: Create your personal goals and assessments for this unit on evaluation. Submit your reflections on your personal goals and assessments.
I enjoyed thinking through what and how to ask certain questions to determine which questions fit with each objective. Taking note of the faults of the Dick, Carey, and Carey (2009) format in evaluation, I will be reorganizing the order of the questions when designing the evaluation to make the flow more intuitive for the evaluator.
I found relevance and terminology to be of utmost importance in the process of writing evaluation questions and breaking down the components of a good tutoring session helped in outlining these questions. To really understand the meaning of the complex objectives, it was pertinent to break out each component of the objective individually to make sure each piece was completed. Matching evaluation questions with objectives feels more organized and allows easy identification to use only the most relevant questions. This is yet another reason backwards design and writing good, clear, objectives at the beginning of the course is so important in course design (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).
However simple the questions are, it still feels as though there are a lot to answer. There may be a better way to ask questions in a shorter format, but wording is so important to resist differing interpretations that I didn’t want to lose any of the clarity. Luckily, the tutee evaluation would only need to be completed after the end of tutoring sessions with their matched tutor. The risk of providing an optional evaluation is that student tutees may be more likely to participate if they largely benefited from tutoring, or if they found it to be detrimental, so it may be worth discussing mandatory program evaluation. Therefore, it would also be worth highlighting completion of the evaluation as part of the requirements for participation in this free program to aid participation.
From following the four levels of training outcomes, it appears that the most logical next step in the process of evaluating the program will be to measure the impact the training has on the organization (Hung, 2010). This step will not only provide more insight into the program but could also provide an interesting reflection and closing process for the final project in this course. I’m looking forward to that by pulling all the pieces together to see how much I’ve learned!
References
Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2009). The systematic design of instruction (7th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Hung, T.K. (2010). An empirical study of the training evaluation decision-making model to measure training outcome. Social Behavior and Personality. 38(1), 87-102. DOI 10.2224/sbp.2010.38.1.87.
Wiggins, G.P. and McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design (2nd ed). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Chapter 1: What is Backward Design? Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 13-34.