Training the Trainers: Program Review - Research Paper Example

? Program Review (Fresh Eye) Insert Insert Insert 16 August Program Review Before implementing a program, it is always advisable to review it. Reviewing of a program is an essential effort that could transform key decisions making process during program implementation (Bresciani, 2006). This paper represents a review of the program ‘training the trainers’, which was earlier proposed and improved. For this particular discussion, an analysis of the program design will help to determine possible expected challenges during program implementation. This review also determines how to avoid or mitigate these challenges during program process. All these points aim at enhancing success in implementing this program and, thus, achieving the required objectives and goals of the program. Program design is very essential in program implementation. This is because it acts as a guiding tool in the program implementation. According to Wiggins & McTighe (2005), designing of curriculum and learning experiences to meet specified purposes is an essential act of the teaching profession. Therefore, since this program revolves around the education profession, its design will involve crafting of curriculum and learning experiences. The crafting must be designed to help the program implementation team to achieve the objectives of the program. This crafting is not an easy task since it requires employment of both tactics and experience. It also requires teamwork since it would involve several individuals and stakeholders. Therefore, this is one challenge that would be encountered in the course of program implementation. Moreover, for the design chosen for a program to be successful, there are various education issues that it should address. According to Kelly & Melograno (2004, p. 8), “it must address issues of individualization, accountability, and effective practice.” Incorporating specific students’ needs on the program will address the issue of individualization. Enhancing competence of the people involved in the program will address the issue of accountability. On the other hand, ensuring that the program meets the required standards will address the issue of effective practice. Addressing these issues is not always easy since there are several limiting factors. Some of the limiting factors are learners’ learning styles, educators’ instruction style and the learning environment available. This might make addressing the issues identified to be difficult, thus, it is another challenge that might be encountered during implementation of the program. Different learners have different learning abilities and characteristics. This program will involve teaching education professions on effective research practice and management. Therefore, the audience for this program will be the education professionals regardless of area of specialization. Such an audience consists of adult learners only. One major characteristic of these learners is that they have other responsibilities in their life, which they consider more important than learning. As a result, they would be combining learning with their other activities, responsibilities, and duties that they have to undertake in their life. This might distract them from the learning process, thus, making them not fully dedicated to learning. The lack of dedication might hinder the learning process among these adult learners. Therefore, this is another challenge that might be encountered during the implementation of the proposed program. Time and resources are two essentials of any type of program implementation. This means that any type of a program implementation has to use a certain amount of time and resources. A major characteristic of these two is that they are limited in terms of availability. It is always difficult to find sufficient time and resources for implementation of any program. As a result, the resources and time available for program implementation must be maximally utilized. In this research, a challenge of having insufficient time and resources might be encountered. This would call for maximum utilization of the resources and time available for implementation of this proposed program. Maximum utilization of resources and time might also be a challenge to the program implementation teams. This is because of the resources and time constraints that already exist since this program is a large, hence, requiring both time and resources in plenty. Educator’s work is a highly regulated profession. In this profession, various rules and regulations exist that must be followed when administering instructions to learners. The rules and regulations have been designed to ensure the wellbeing of both learners and educators involved in learning activities. For a large educational program such as this, it is sometimes difficult to ensure every person involved obey the required rules and regulations. As a result, this would be another challenge that might be encountered in the course of implementing the program that we had proposed. The program implementation team would mainly encounter this challenge since it would be the one undertaking the administration of instructions. Therefore, it might make achievement of the required goals and objectives to be rather more difficult. Education profession also has several standards that must be met by the learning activities. These standards are set by the government and other stakeholders to ensure wellbeing of the learners. To meet these standards, a high degree of professionalism and dedication of the educators is required. For a large educational program such as the previously proposed one, it might be difficult to ensure that every instructor give instructions that meet the required standards. This would be a very big challenge to the program implementation team. The reason for this is that if the program does not meet the required standards, it would not achieve the required objectives and goals. Therefore, the program team must ensure that it meets the standards no matter what it takes. As the program team, the challenges discussed above might be inevitable. To avoid the negative effects that might result when facing these challenges, it is necessary to mitigate them. Use of various tools introduced to aid individuals in the process of challenges mitigation will be efficient. The most popular tool is the Senge’s laws of the fifth discipline. This tool consists of several laws that could guide the process of facing a challenge. The laws are made based on various dimensional approaches of facing a challenge. According to Prosser (2010), these dimensions are system thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning. Like the variation in the dimensional approaches used to formulate these laws, their application to mitigating challenges vary across the different laws. There are about seven laws of fifth discipline that are directly applicable in this particular case to mitigate challenges. One of the laws of the fifth discipline that would mitigate the identified challenges is the law of compensating feedback (Gamson & Peppers, 2000). The rule of compensating feedback could indicate that the more you push individuals to learn the less they learn. This rule might be used to enable individuals to learn at their own pace. This will be reducing the hardship faced by learners in assimilating concepts. As a result, the challenge of limited learning ability brought by the type of audience would be mitigated. Another law is the law of ‘the easy way out leads back in’ (Gamson & Pepper, 2000). This law could be used to avoid use of shortcuts during the implementation of the program that was previously proposed. This would mitigate several aforementioned challenges. One of the challenges that it would mitigate is the challenge of limited learning abilities. If this law were employed, the educator would be ensuring that the learners understand the concepts taught despite their learning limitations. Moreover, it would mitigate the challenge of inability to meet the required standards during the delivery of instructions. This is because the failure to meet standards is always caused by use of shortcuts during instruction delivery. Another two laws of the fifth discipline that could be used to mitigate challenges are the laws of ‘cause and effects are not closely related’, and ‘small changes can produce big results’ (Gamson & Peppers, 2000). These laws could be used to come up with an appropriate design for the program implementation that would mitigate the challenge of program design. The first one among these laws applies in promotes understanding of program designing and implementation. This is because it explains how the causes and effects in a program correlate. The between causes and effects would be very essential in program designing. The reason for this is that it would help in coming up with a better design of the program proposed. As a result, the challenge of program design would be mitigated. The other above-mentioned law would be applied to facilitate any required changes on the program that we had proposed. Facilitation of changes would be leading to program improvement from time to time. As a result, the program design would be improved depending on the program implementation situation. Therefore, the challenge of program design would be greatly mitigated. ‘Faster is slower’, is another law of fifth discipline that could be very useful in mitigating the previously identified challenges. This law would mitigate several challenge among the ones identified. One of the challenges that this law would mitigate is the challenge of observing the required rules and regulations. When individuals in a learning organization undertake learning activities faster, they might find themselves violating rules and regulations without their knowledge. However, when they use the right pace, they can be able to observe the rules and regulation unless they are rebellious. Therefore, this law would mitigate the challenging of making all the educators obey the rules and regulations set to ensure wellbeing of the learners. Moreover, this law would enable the program team not to rush during the process of program designing. Avoiding the rush would enable designing of an appropriate model and, hence, mitigate the challenge of program design. The other laws that could be applied to mitigate challenges are the laws of ‘dividing an elephant into two does not produce two small elephants’ and ‘there is no blame and there is no outside’ (Gamson & Peppers, 2000). These laws could mitigate almost all the challenges identified in this program. The first one among the two helps in avoiding fragmenting the problems that might be encountered into much smaller problems. Problems fragmentation could complicate the process of finding solutions thus hindering implementation. Therefore, avoiding problem fragmentation will be mitigating almost all the challenges earlier identified. The other law could be applying to avoid shifting of blames during program implementation. Shifting of blames could hinder program implementation through hindering decision-making and problem solving. Therefore, by assisting in avoiding shifting of blames, this law would be mitigating almost all the challenges identified in this program. Senge’s shift is a common approach used to address challenges. This approach makes use of Senge’s laws of fifth discipline. The approach tends to shift a challenge to a position where it could be either avoided or resolved. Although it is not viable for any type of challenges, it is viable for the particular challenges previously identified in this paper. When this approach is used, causal patterns of a challenge are identified. According to Davis & Davis (2011), this causal patterns form a good starting point for diagnosing problems. Problem diagnosing could assist in solving problems associated with a challenge and thus address the challenge. Other approaches to problem solving attempt to handle a problem without diagnosing it. In most cases, this results to failure of the problem solving process in handling the existing and emerging problems. As a result, the other problem solving approaches could not be effective in addressing problems that result from the identified challenges. Therefore, to avoid this, it is crucial to diagnose a problem before attempting to solve it. Almost all the previously identified challenges happen because of an existing problem or a problem expected to emerge. Therefore, addressing these challenges will be attempting to solve them or suggesting solutions. Therefore, they are problem-related challenges. For this kind of challenges, problem diagnosis is actually crucial in order to achieve the best possible effects. Senge’s shift approach of addressing challenges enables this type of diagnosis to be undertaken when addressing the challenges. Therefore, it is very viable for the challenges previously identified in this paper. However, this approach has some limitations when used to address a challenge. According to Gamson & Peppers (2000), this approach sometimes shifts a problem elsewhere instead of solving it. This means when it is the only one used for the specific challenges identified, it can shift problems, thus, making them to concentrate on a certain program implementation phase. The concentration of problem would make problem solving rather difficult, thus, elevating the challenges. Therefore, this approach need caution to address the particular challenges previously identified. It should also be supplemented with other approaches of addressing challenges so that it can become more viable. According to Rudestam & Read (2009), corporate training currently involves use of learning management system, content management tools, and blended formats. This makes it the most developed field of education. Being the most developed field makes it have challenges that are not common in other fields of education. Collaborative approach could be very effective in addressing the challenges experienced in this field. Shared vision enhances collaboration among various individuals involved in an activity. Leveraging shared vision would promote the vision shared by different people in this type of a learning environment. This would promote collaboration, thus, resulting to significant improvements in this learning environment. One key advantage that leveraging shared vision would have when employed in corporate training and learning environment is that it promotes collaborative activities and teamwork. By doing this, it could enable people involved in this learning environment to work together. This could enable them to supplement each other and, thus, avoid each other’s weakness. Corporate learning environment also involves large and complex programs. For these programs to be effective, they should be well integrated and coherent. Another advantage of leveraging shared vision on this type of learning environment is that it could promote both program integration and coherence. This is because it would make activities in the programs undertaken in this learning environment to be done collaboratively. Several ways exist that could be adapted to make corporate training become a more effective learning organizations. One of the ways of achieving this is through effective curriculum designing. A curriculum is a very important tool since it guides the other subsequent activities aimed at promoting learning. For this organizational setting to become more effective, the curriculum used should be adequate and sufficient. To achieve this kind of a curriculum, integration of the alternative curriculum and mandated curriculum is paramount. These two curriculums when integrated together would supplement each other, thus, making the activities undertaken in this learning organization to cohere. The coherence would promote their effectiveness in terms of enhancing the learning process. Technology makes difficult tasks much easier. It can also make the activities that were once time consuming to become more simplified and thus use less time. Therefore, another way of making corporate training to become more effective is through employment of technology. The most common technologies that are appropriate in this learning organization are the computers and projectors. However, these are not the only technologies that can enhance effectiveness of this learning organization. The technologies employed in this case could either improve the curriculum designing, delivering instructions, or in administering assessments. If these were enhanced, this organizational setting would become a more effective learning organization. Program review is an essential activity to undertake prior to program implementation. The reason for this is that it assists in the identification of challenges. For this program review, four challenges were identified. These challenges are curriculum-crafting, limitation in learning abilities, resources and time constraints and enhancing individualization, accountability, and effective practice. Senge’s laws of the fifth discipline could be applied in various ways to mitigate these challenges. When used well, Senge’s shift that applies to Senge’s laws can be somehow viable in addressing these challenges. However, it requires to be supplemented with other approaches to increase its viability. Leveraging ‘shared vision’ will be very viable in the learning environment. This is because of the great things it would help to achieve in this learning environment. However, several improvements can be made on this learning environment to make it better. Some of them are effective designing of curriculum and incorporation of the latest technology into the learning organization. References Bresciani, M. J. (2006). Outcomes-Based Academic and Co-Curricular Program Review: A Compilation of Institutional Good Practices. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing Company. Davies, R. H., & Davies, A. J. (2011). Value Management: Translating Aspirations into Performance. Farnham: Gower Publishing Ltd. Gamson, W. A., & Peppers, L. G. (2000). Simsoc: Simulated Society Participant’s Manual. New. York, NY: The Free Press. Kelly, L. E., & Melograno, V. J. (2004). Developing the Physical Education Curriculum: An Achievement-Based Approach. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Prosser, S. (2010). Effective People: Leadership and Organization Development in Healthcare. Abingdon: Radcliffe Publishing Ltd. Rudestam, K. E., & Read, J. S. (2009). Handbook of Online Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Read More