Image by Barry Switnicki
A Proposal for a Blended Re-Design with Engaged Active Learning
Question and Answer Segment for the Video Presentation.
Proposal for the Re-Design of an Executive Coaching Program.
This proposal is to convert a face to face program into a Blended program that has a strong foundational focus on an engaged active learning methodology. The proposal video especially has a broader focus rather than a specific detailed action plan as it intended to be submitted to senior management and stakeholders rather than individuals with a specific expertise in emerging teaching methodologies.
Note: This proposal has grown out of an earlier project, a Blended Re-Design, and as a result there are sections, or other components, that have been inserted into this document.
What is original/starting learning environment?
This Executive Coaching program is taught face to face (F2F) in four day modules in a variety of locations around the world. This is done in English and often in another language through consecutive interpretation. The venues are usually meeting rooms or classrooms without any special technical hardware. Class size can range from eight to seventy-five participants. For the purpose of this proposal, I will focus on a class size between twelve and twenty-five. I will also focus on locations in North and South America and Europe. In these locations, especially outside of North America, there is a partner organization involved that takes care of logistical support such as enrolling and supporting students, finding and booking venues, supplying Teaching Assistants, ensuring translation of materials and keeping records. I do not include Asia in this scenario as the cultural expectations of a specific teaching pedagogy would most likely produce different results, and the contracting organizations in these locations also have an expectation of a specific pedagogy that would not fit the parameters of what is being proposed.
This program has historically been taught in a lecture style with the day broken up with students practicing in either dyads or triads. There are lecture components that explain foundational concepts. There are also lecture components specifically focused on micro-skills, often followed by a demonstration by the teacher and a debrief. Students then, will usually go off to practice, and may take time to debrief among the each other or return and debrief with the larger group depending on the instructions from the teacher.
There is very limited pre-assessment, formative or summative assessment done until the end of the fourth module, that is optional, and will give students a credential as a professional coach. There is an oral assessment done at the end of the fifth module which is pass or fail, with opportunities to re-assess until students pass. Successful assessment will provide the student with a higher level certification and the educational and assessment requirements to submit for a credential with the international voluntary governing body that accredits Executive Coaches.
Systemic challenges this re-design is also trying to solve.
There are a number of historical components that have affected the overall effectiveness of the program. The first module of the program is designed to be a stand-alone course. The next three modules build on the first module introducing new concepts and tools which often incidentally support students building greater competency of the initial skill-set but not in a structured, systemic manner. The fifth module has a focused approach where students up-level the skills they learned in the first module to a prescribed competency level. This competency level is intended to be aligned with the credentialing requirements of a voluntary international governing organization. There is an oral summative assessment that students need to pass to exit Module Five successfully.
There are a number of systemic issues this redesign hopes to address:
- To build a more consistent flow throughout the entire program for students to build their competency to the prescribed level . Presently in terms of the basic competencies, there is a steep learning curve in Module One and again in Module Five.
- At present there is a discrepancy in terminology and definition of basic competencies between Modules One to Four, and Module five. This is primarily a result of Module Five originally being developed to meet the requirements of an outsides credentialing organization and then being reworked recently to be more aligned with the accrediting bodies requirements and the rest of the program not yet being reworked.
- There are distinct differences in how the basic competencies are being taught, demonstrated and described throughout the training's. There is a resource library of videos that would naturally be included in a redesign to a more flipped and online model. These videos would have to be used with a different perspective or adjusted to fit the new model.
What other problems are we trying to solve?
- First and foremost, the largest challenge is to switch this program from a "Sage on the Stage", lecture format to a more engaged, active learning pedagogy. This focus will be on the face-to-face (F2F) components as well as the Flipped components that will be introduced.
- There is minimal pre-assessment that is very subjective in nature with no real reporting mechanism for the students
- There is very little formative assessment that supports objective feedback to student or facilitator.
- There is a version of Summative assessment that has a primary focus of providing a platform for further learning. There is no clear cut lesson plan for this further learning component so it is very dependent on the experience and skill of the facilitator both in the subject material and teaching pedagogy.
- There is no continuing flow between modules.
- There is too much content in the program.
- Resources are now developed in a proprietary manner which restricts choice and options.
- There is an inconsistency in presentation of the competencies the students will have to master if they choose to take the entire program.
- The existing Flipped resources are interdependent in nature and do not consistently demonstrate the competencies that students exiting the full program, are expected to show.
- There is an inconsistency in terminology and how competencies are demonstrated throughout the flow of the program and with other accrediting and credentialing organizations.
Detail the level and (Elementary/Intermediate/Secondary) and consumption group (type of students) that you are catering the program to.
- Students are primarily adult who come from a diverse range of backgrounds. Some are complete neophytes to Coaching while others may have many years of experience and other training as professional coaches although they will not be proficient in this model of coaching. This can be an issue as they may come in feeling that they are expert, while their competency in this type of coaching is quite low.
Teams needed to solve the problem.
Ideally there would be a number of teams working on this project.
Functional Team
At least three functional teams would be involved in this project, Curriculum / Teaching, Technical / Software, Marketing / Cultural Interface. These would not be pure Functional teams as defined by Horn and Staker in Blended. Instead these would be frontline functional teams with "mentors" from other departments or areas of expertise that could be called upon to support seamless integration between pedagogy, technology, marketing, business function and culture components.
A Curriculum / Teaching team would be involved in:
- F2F Curriculum redesign
- Online or Flipped curriculum redesign. This then would be bumped up to the Lightweight team to ensure it can be seamlessly integrated.
- View existing videos for suitability. View approved and new video to create a list of "Even Better Ifs." These will be used for teaching, as well as pre, formative and summative assessment. There will be a need for collation of students comments that are not already in the materials to ensure new comments are added to existing materials.
- There needs to be a decision made regarding inconsistencies in terminology, definitions, and explanations pertaining to coaching competencies and how that will fit into documents authored by other coaching, accrediting and credentialing organizations. Once this decision is made there, materials will need to be scrutinized and adjusted. This area may also be passed along to the Marketing / Culture Interface team for further strategizing and implementation.
- Developing and incorporating cultural components deliberately into the curriculum and pedagogy. This would also be passed along to the Marketing / Cultural Interface team and Lightweight teams for further development and adjustment.
- Creating lesson plans that support key learning points for demonstrations.
A Technical / Software team would be involved in:
- Optimizing Video, Audio, digital image and other files for the Web.
- In-house video and audio editing or overseeing contractors.
- Technical components of creating online materials.
- Co-ordinating and supervision of changes with the contractor responsible for the existing Learning Management System
- Sourcing appropriate software for quizzes, and other online activities.
- Sourcing curation software if the existing LMS is not able to provide adequate storage and curation.
- Sourcing virtual meeting / blog space for "special interest groups" if the existing LMS is not able to accommodate this.
A Marketing / Cultural Interface team would be involved in:
- Creating a process for high scoring students (gamification component) to be recognized in the newsletter or other publicity materials.
- Answering the question of how students that create content or new research material that is inserted in the curriculum or library are acknowledged, and how this is integrated into the culture and marketing concepts.
- Creating a strategy and implementation plan to maximize awareness and value of the fundamental shift from an expert / lecture perspective to an engaged, active learning pedagogy. This would be applied to marketing and culture creation.
Lightweight team
The lightweight team would oversee the various functional teams integration what they have created. It would be composed of representatives of each functional team, as well as business process, financial, and a Heavyweight team representative to provide input from a more systemic perspective. The lightweight team would "sign-off" in developments and be the gate-keepers as to what would need further development or be directed to the Heavyweight team or management. The Lightweight team would also create a "Continuous Improvement" schedule that would regularly be updated. This would be separate from day-to-day maintenance of systems and processes.
Heavyweight Team
- This team would be responsible for getting partner organizations on board with the new pedagogy that would be unfolding. There would need to be an educational component developed for the partner organizations to understand the benefits of the new pedagogy and the benefits to their students and themselves.
- This team would be coordinating with partner organizations initially in supporting the structure of collecting resource materials such as video, from countries outside of North America and in different languages.
- Presently there is a resource library of videos that presently are "expert" based. These are lecture type videos that are of an expert talking about a subject. These are videos of live lectures that, of course, do not necessarily present all of the pertinent information or data on the subject. If the videos are shifted from the perception of being the "defining explanation" about the subject to a "starting point", this would allow them to become more useful as a foundation for students research and exploration. This would also promote greater student engagement and ownership of their learning. This would entail the heavyweight team getting faculty "on board" with this systemic shift.
- There is a resource library that presently has video demonstrating competencies by an "expert". By virtue of the subject matter there is no such thing as the perfect skills demonstration although by the omission of teaching and working with this concept, students are learning both what is superlatively demonstrated and what could be improved on without understanding the difference. I believe this calls for a philosophical shift in how both video and live demonstrations are utilized. The Heavyweight teams part in this shift is supporting staff to make a foundational shift from being the "expert" that demonstrates a very high skill level to one that demonstrates competency that can continually be built on. This would also support the concept of "What Went Well" and "Even Better If" that is introduced later in the program, much earlier and more consistently.
Autonomous Team
I believe there could potentially be a function for an Autonomous team as the proposed pedagogy and process is quite disruptive in nature. Using a more engaged pedagogy is quite unique in the corporate training world and I believe there is an "added value" opportunity. I also believe that inviting students to potentially contribute to the resource library also has a potential "added value" component also. This program already promotes two components of uniqueness that sets them apart from the competition:
- A global perspective of Executive Coaching with educators that have international experience and exposure.
- Students become part of a global community.
This would reinforce and further develop both of these added value factors as the resource library would have video of students in English and other languages with English translation. See resource library section One new added value factor, would be the component where students could contribute to the curriculum by offering video and other presentations done inside and outside of class to potentially be included into the resource library. In addition, student research and cutting edge awareness could also be added to the existing curriculum, creating a "living curriculum" that is continuously improving (CI). The marketing potential of these added value components should be explored by experts. This is utilizing the concept of the facilitated network such as is being used by Sal Khan.
The Student Experience
The intention is to provide students with a learning experience that is substantially more active and engaged than they are commonly used to. There would be a clearer set of expectations, roles and responsibilities for students and facilitators / teacher and teaching assistants. Students would be encouraged to be in charge of their learning experience. They would also be encouraged to research and create, and share those creations. Students would be empowered to step out of "being a student" and more into being a "co-creator" and part of an engaged, actively learning community.
What we want students to control.
Students would be able to control:
- their optional learning components at their own pace, place and path and time.
- when they do the flipped "out of class components" at their own pace, place, and time.
- formative self-assessment remedial components and essentially do them at their own pace, place, time and path.
- their own pace (as long as it is before start of next module), time, and place for the summative assessments between modules.
- their own pace (as long as it is before the start of the next module), time, place, and path for the pre-module work.
- their pace and path when in small groups researching, reflecting, working with scenarios or concepts with the expectation they then will present to, and teach their colleagues.
Teachers Primary Roles
Teachers would also function as facilitators, helping to make learning easier. They would be encouraged and supported to let go of an expert based structure to one of co-creative learning. There would still be Socratic type teaching and some lecture style but this would be minimal. The teachers primary function would be to support learners to step up and investigate, challenge, research, mentor and teach each other. It is important to realize that this is not about "dumbing down" the teachers role but rather keeping the teaching foundation and expanding it with facilitation and other new skills to support the shift in function.
This will give teachers opportunities to let go of being the subject matter guru and the pressure that can cause and to learn and master their new skill sets.
Hardware, software and physical space.
- One of the key focuses of this approach is to keep everything as low tech as possible. Often as technology advances so does the size of software programs, video, images and audio files. The more low tech, simple, and optimized Flipped and digital components are, the easier it is for students and faculty to access especially when resources are not up to optimum "first world" standards.
- There would be a version of "bring your own device" with the intent that each group of students working together in the class would have at least one laptop, tablet or smart phone so they could search the internet, if they wished to access articles, videos, and papers.
- Students would need to have some form of computing device and internet at their residence to access flipped components and online assessments. Students are adults and the overwhelming majority would have this equipment at work, at home, or in both locations.
- As a starting point, we would continue to use "Academy" as the Learning Management System and augment it with software such as Socrative Teacher for the quiz and reporting functions. There is a process in place presently looking at the effectiveness of the present LMS as student satisfaction levels are not as high as they should be. This component might entail activating a Heavyweight team although I believe the Beta could be done at a Functional level. It would only require approval. This is an area that would benefit from more investigation and research.
- Teachers and students could us smart phone for shooting video onsite perhaps augmented with tools such as an automated Swivl Camera mount for shooting.
- The organization has an existing department dedicated to audio and visual recording and editing.
- I would suggest purchasing and training personnel in the use of Camtasia to help produce video instead of more powerful editing equipment as it is much faster and will produce a decent product quickly. Questions for reflection and other components can be incorporated into the videos much easier and simpler this way.
Models of Blended Learning proposed
There are a blend of blended learning models incorporated into this proposal.
There are a blend of blended learning models incorporated into this proposal.
- There is a Flipped type component where students will have activities and learning to do between each Module. These subjects will then be addressed in class in a more active manner.
- There will be a modified Flex type component for optional content. There will be number of optional subject areas with a requirement that students choose a minimum number that have a completion date before a specific module. There would be a formative testing component that would enable students to "sign off" as having a specific level of comprehension that would give them "points" towards their completion of the module and/or program, as well as participation prizes (gamification component). During that module there will be the opportunity to work with other students, Teaching Assistants and the Facilitator to further learn and integrate the subject matter. In class this would be set up as a form of station rotation where students would choose the subject station to join.
Image by Kim Switnicki, 2015
Shaping and maintaining a positive culture.As greater clarity emerges as to the desired culture, there will be a clear structure and process set up to support it that is evident throughout the entire organization. The clarity of expectations and benefits will start with marketing, through enrollment conversations, all facets of learning and including the feedback and student contribution structure. The intent is that all staff of the program, paid and volunteer are clear, with reference materials, of these expectations and benefits regardless of their duties, front line or not.
Culture priorities
As a faculty and school:
- We (the school) are invested in your (students) success.
- We are the "Gold Standard of Coaching".
- We are also the "Gold Standard of Coach Training."
- Our students are our greatest asset.
- We are changing the world "One Conversation at a Time."
- We are a global community
- You are expected to be actively engaged in your learning before, during, and in-between each module of your training.
- You are responsible for the quality of your learning.
- You are part of a larger global community of coaching and engaged active learning.
- You are a highly valued "cutting edge" coaching researcher and co-creator.
- You are a learner as well as a collaborator, mentor and teacher.
Much of the proposed changes are add-ons to existing resources that are already in place for the online programs currently being taught. In fact, many of the proposed changes can be applied to the online program as well.
The areas where new costs will be incurred are:
- Teaching new skills to teachers
- Collation and inclusion of students offerings to the curriculum and resource libraries. This would either be an addition to a present staff persons duties or an contract component at the trainer level.
- Development wold be done primarily in-house or through existing contracted services and staff.
Summary
This proposal is intended to give an overview perspective of a Re-Design that would significantly shift the culture of the Executive Coach training program to one of co-creation and engaged active learning. This program can be unrolled over time on a schedule that would best fit the priorities and budget of the school. This would also allow for careful monitoring of student satisfaction, increased learning, retention and increased enrollment as a result of the changes and marketing of those changes.