Artifact #1: Personality Pool Needs Analysis & Final Recommendations
My Contributions
- Cold Call/Cold Email Survey
- Data collection rationale for Cold Call/Cold Email Client Survey
- Findings & Needs Analysis for Cold Call/Cold Email Client Survey
- Findings & Needs Analysis for Employee Comfort with Cold Calling Survey
- Cold Call Script Findings & Needs Analysis
- Recommendations (report and tables—majority of tables)
- Opportunities for Further Exploration
Summary
Created in EDIT 7150E: Principles of Human Performance Technology and Analysis, taught by Dr. Stefaniak, this group report for the small business, Personality Pool, includes a thorough needs assessment and analysis, chosen data collection tools, and subsequent recommendations.
The initial problem that the CEO of a small business introduced was a lack of satisfactory responses to their cold calls and cold emails. To collect data, I created a survey designed for potential clients after a cold call/cold email, with my group member creating another survey for Personality Pool employees about their comfort in delivering these marketing techniques. We encountered a roadblock when the first survey was given to the wrong population (existing clients vs. potential clients), and the CEO later declined to give the survey to potential clients due to fear of affecting potential sales, but we worked with the information we received.
The surveys revealed that clients were supportive of Personality Pool’s services, but I noticed a peculiarity—the clients had signed on with Personality Pool due to word-of-mouth or through meetings with the CEO, not cold calls or emails. The other survey, which received responses from the CEO and intern, cited daily outreach (from the CEO) or weekly outreach (from the intern). Some concerns were lack of client information, lack of training, the intern’s nervousness during phone calls, and handling unexpected questions from potential clients.
After analyzing this data, I continued into a needs analysis. As Dr. Stefaniak reminded us, instruction isn’t always the solution, and that’s partially what we realized—there may have been a larger organizational issue at play. For example, I suggested that she begin to delegate those responsibilities to free up her time for more CEO-specific duties. This would also rectify her other large concern, that Personality Pool was sending out cold calls/cold emails without enough research done on the potential client—less rapid outreach would allow employees more time to thoughtfully research potential clients.
Regarding an instructional approach, I suggested a more standardized training for the interpersonal communications of outreach, as I noted that the intern struggled more—after analyzing the cold call template, I realized that there may have been an over-reliance on the CEO’s inherent charisma, so the template lacked thorough explanations on how to win over clients. I also suggested and created (see Management) cold call and cold email spreadsheet trackers to keep track of client response rates, patterns with the industries of client response rates, etc., which was all only monitored informally.
Lastly, our team moved beyond the original client-suggested need of improving the cold calls and templates and realized, based on our constellation of data, that perhaps cold calls and cold emails were not the most effective solution for gathering new clients. We concluded the CEO’s cited charisma could be utilized for more in-person events and even podcasts.
Artifact #2: Multimedia Learning Squad Proposal
My Contributions (all or majority of)
- Performance Assessment
- Required Resources
- Task Analysis
- Performance Objectives
- Testing Methods
- Lessons 2 & 3 (and portions of other lessons)
- Graphic Design
Summary
In EDIT 6170E: Introduction to Instructional Design, my group (“Multicultural Learning Squad”) created a course proposal for a high school teacher client to train English educators how to incorporate multicultural elements into instructional writing, narrative writing, argumentative writing, and reading.
For the performance assessment, I organized all the pain points that our client outlined for us, notable performance gaps discussed in the resources provided, and even teaching problems I noted in additional literature I researched. After assessing the performance gaps between the desired and actual performances, such as 25% of students not being well-represented in the curriculum, deficits existing in the four instructional subjects mentioned above, lack of comfort in teaching multicultural elements, etc., I analyzed the patterns and learner profiles to discern potential causes, dividing them into “lack of knowledge or skill” or some other deficiency. The “lack of knowledge or skill” is where we intervened with instruction.
After detailing the possible resources we would require for every stage of ADDIE, I created the task analysis in Miro to determine key performance behaviors. This was divided into our existing ADDIE-organized goals, which branched into tasks that would be required to meet these goals (discuss how students can benefit from multicultural strategies, practice leading multicultural groups, compare pre-implementation and post-implementation student exam scores, etc.), and then simpler prerequisites that were necessary for task success (discuss the best practices of general class discussions in small groups, implement surveys that assess student opinions on new authors, etc.). Furthermore, in the performance objectives I added conditions and criterions to our original learning goals to make them actionable and concrete, paving the way for us to build our instruction off this foundation.
Lastly, the process of identifying performance gaps, brainstorming the causes behind these gaps, conducting a task analysis to break down performance behaviors, and defining the performance objectives made it possible for me to determine some instructional solutions—in the testing methods sections, I explored a variety of activities and assessments for learners to engage in the above goals and tasks, such as discussions identifying the best and worst multicultural teaching strategies they’d gleaned in their scholarly literature research, collecting potential multicultural texts, categorizing changes noted in student writing and reading performance, etc.