job training cirriculum: may 2012 update

Facilitator Development Program Tracing the Project Quest Alliance June 15, 2012

“All human beings are born with unique gi4s. The healthy func:oning of our community depends on its capacity to

develop each gi4”. ‐‐Peter Senge

IntroducCon

IntroducCon Quest Alliance creates youth employability programs for high school drop‐outs that teach English, provide life skills and train for retail jobs. QUEST also works in the career guidance space, creaCng programs for in‐school and out‐of‐school youth to help students beLer align their skills with personal interests and desires. I was placed at Quest Alliance to enhance the design of the Skills to Succeed content and subsequently improve par=cipant sa=sfac=on with the curriculum. The overarching goal had been defined for me, but program details and project specifics were unclear. I began by outlining a process to guide me over the 6 months.

IntroducCon

Design Process

Immersion Research Design ImplementaCon

Get to know the people in my host organizaCon and the projects the team has worked on. Define a more specific project goal for my 6 months as well as a longer term goal for future fellows.

Understand the eco‐system of the project: who are the stakeholders, users, compeCtors, analogous organizaCons and inspiraConal work happening in the space.

Create a series of low fidelity prototypes that can be tested, evaluated and revised based on feedback.

Create a high fidelity design that can be implemented over several batches of students. Measure the program progress and track project outcomes.

Be authenCc to yourself and your situaCon.

Immersion

I gave myself Cme at the beginning to simply listen. I sat with everyone at Quest to beLer understand everyone’s role and thoughts about what Quest hopes to achieve. I wanted the team’s perspecCve on the organizaCon’s future as well as their personal aspiraCons so I could see where I would best fit. While conducCng the interviews, I pored through Quest literature to learn about the company’s history and how Quest messages themselves.

Immersion

Building relaConships takes Cme. I knew it would take a while to develop my co‐workers’ trust. I was anxious to get started on the work but knew that nothing would succeed unless I had support. To do this I had to open up, which was scary in a new context. UlCmately, it was a series of non‐work related acCviCes that gave me a place to be myself. It was through these acCviCes that I could share who I am while giving others the chance to beLer understand me as a person not just as a coworker.

Immersion

Let go of lingo.

Immersion

Immersion

Bridging gaps instead of building walls Designers love to par=cipate in academic masturba=on. The vernacular that is used amongst design professionals helps us beLer define and differenCate the work that we do, but it creates a wall between us and our partners. The internal naming of acCviCes and projects can speed along communicaCon in a closed group, making work faster and more efficient, but we need to check the effecCveness of using this same vernacular externally. During my first few weeks with the other Design Impact fellows and Quest team members, I realized how divisive my design vernacular actually was. The terms I was using weren’t universally understood and they were confusing people I desperately needed to connect with. The beginning of an engagement is when solid partnerships are formed and my audience was dri\ing. I needed to simplify my thoughts in plainly spoken ways that avoided the design jargon that I had become so comfortable using. Engaging with the community and building meaningful relaConships is a requirement for healthy social development partnerships. Vague and elusive design language doesn’t

support inclusion, rather it builds walls of protecCon, further separaCng people and industries. Designers, especially those doing community work, should try to strip away the industry vernacular and use language that is common and assessable to all. The work we do is valuable and we sCll need to sell the story to a larger audience, but we should do it in a way that bridges the gaps between people of all walks of life, building a creaCve environment for everyone to parCcipate.

Quick wins builds trust.

Immersion

While outlining the long term program, I took on a small project that focused on evolving a subset of the Skills to Succeed Curriculum.

Immersion

Curriculum Support Our goal was to develop more engaging student acCviCes to support the exisCng English curriculum. CURRENT CHALLENGE Curriculum: The current English curriculum is delivered mainly through digital lessons and supported with facilitator‐led acCviCes. The current lesson structure is monotonous and does not address individual learning styles. There is more emphasis on reading and wriCng than on pracCcing English. Facilitator: The vocaConal training facilitators vary in skill level and moCvaCon. Current training focuses mainly on teaching lesson content and the tools to access the content. There is liLle understanding of student needs and ability to individualize lessons to make them more relevant to the class. Student: The students are not engaged in the current curriculum because they don't see the relevance of what is being taught. E‐learning is interesCng because of the allure of the technology, but a facilitator is sCll needed for interacCve acCviCes, guidance, and clarificaCon.

Immersion: English Curriculum User TesCng

Ac=vity Development The team created 3 concepts that structured content around different learning styles; tacCle, visual, and audial.


Ac=vity Research We tested our low fidelity prototypes in two centers at different stages in the English course.


The Sentence Shuffle acCvity was easy for students to grasp. The acCvity could level up in difficulty by providing mulCple sentences to sort rather than one at a Cme.


The Storytelling acCvity proved difficult for individuals. Students were challenged to both create sentences and then string them together to form a conCnuous narraCve.


The Actor's Studio acCvity was very engaging. Students enjoyed being able to apply their English to personally relevant scenarios.


Small Project Wins This project gave me the opportunity to showcase a piece of my design process with Quest. The exercise of creaCng and tesCng acCviCes with a larger team got everyone involved in the evoluCon of acCviCes and exposed people to the way I structure work. By doing rather than listening, they were able to beLer understand the role of design. I also gained access to the end user. Although Quest has a lot of knowledge of the facilitators and students in the vocaConal space, they are not located in the community. I was relying on my coworker’s experiences and impressions, but hadn’t witnessed the environment for myself. This project allowed me to observe the space first‐hand and build a baseline of understanding for future work. The English Curriculum project was a great quick win that conCnued to evolve as I began the longer term project between Quest Alliance and Design Impact.


Immersion

Long term Project DefiniCon While evolving the English curriculum, I conCnued to define the long term project. There are two primary stakeholders in the Skills to Succeed program, the student and the facilitator. The student is at the center of the iniCaCve, but we chose to focus on the facilitator because much of the learning is dependent on how well she can deliver the curriculum. There are also secondary stakeholders that affect the learning process. These relaConships must also be understood to evolve the facilitator experience. •  Parent involvement in the learning process is key to a

student’s success. •  Peers influence student behaviors and decisions. •  Leadership supports facilitators & connects with the

community. •  Industry mentors can provide curriculum support and real

world insight to the students.

Immersion

Project Goal

Improve the facilitator’s ability to engage with the student and effecCvely deliver educaConal content to various types of learners. Outcomes could include: an updated facilitator training session, digital learning skills toolkit (DLST) and tools that help facilitators deliver content to different student learning styles.

Flexibility trumps process.

Research

Research

Design Research I based the research phase on successful projects that I had been a part of in my past. I included subject maLer expert interviews, comparaCve and compeCCve audits as well as contextual interviews with our facilitators. I wanted the team to have Cme to explore new and interesCng ideas to broaden the conversaCons that had been happening in‐house.

I structured the schedule according to the resources of the team and quickly found that my expecta=ons for comple=on were not going to be meet. Quest’s organizaConal structure was different than I was used to. Everyone had their own projects, each with unique ebbs and flows. It would be impossible to pre‐determine a set amount of Cme because my team’s other projects had their own dependencies that I couldn’t predict or control.

I needed to be flexible. The team worked with the Cme and availability we were given and I looked at the process through a different lens, one of relevancy. In the end, I cut much of the work that seemed redundant. It wasn’t necessary to get mulCple views on an idea that the team already had strong intuiCon for.

The project team tapped into other Quest staff members throughout the research to validate many of our findings and ideas. We didn’t need a comprehensive research program, we just needed valida=on for our inspira=ons and insights.

A\er compleCng the subject maLer expert interviews and research audits, we started to cra\ a plan for the contextual interviews. The objecCve of the research was to beLer understand our facilitator’s moCvaCons, aspiraCons, and knowledge in the vocaConal and career guidance space. We were looking for paKerns in thought and gaps in knowledge that we could exploit in a training session re‐design.

The research consisted of 90 minute long, one‐on‐one sessions with facilitators trained in career guidance and vocaConal development.

Research

Research Plan We conducted 18 interviews in two different states, Bihar and Karnataka. We divided the research into two parts, career guidance and voca=onal development. We spoke with 6 teachers trained in career guidance and 12 facilitators working in voca=onal development.

The sessions included an introductory discussion to get the parCcipant comfortable and beLer understand their career journey and the tools and techniques they use for delivering curriculum content.

Two acCviCes were created to beLer understand the parCcipant’s values and aspiraCons. This was accomplished through discussions around a grab bag of objects and a card sorCng exercise. The final series of acCviCes included worksheets that focused on facilitator competencies and challenges /opportuniCes that exist in the larger eco‐system.

Research

Career guidance is not a widely accepted role with teachers in India. A challenge for us was locaCng a mass of people trained to do this.

Career Guidance Research

We chose to talk with teachers in Bihar whom Quest had conducted career guidance training sessions with.


Another challenge was communicaCon. We translated the assets into Hindi and up‐skilled a local coworker to run the sessions. We communicated process and intent through a series of phone calls and did a run through with Deepak the day we landed. Jayashree’s Hindi was good enough to course correct and lead the sessions when necessary.



We found that spirituality is a big driver for teachers, as is the idea that educaCon is a channel for social change.

Back in Bangalore, we planned a day long workshop where facilitators working in vocaConal development would come from nearby centers to parCcipate in the one‐on‐one research sessions. We tapped into resources from the Skills to Succeed program that Quest Alliance developed content for. We contacted the cluster of centers located in Karnataka to screen for parCcipants.

Twelve people represenCng a range of facilitator personas came to the workshop.

The main reason for conduc=ng a day long intensive workshop was to minimize =me and cost of travel. Since resources are limited, work‐arounds are necessary to get the informaCon needed. We were aware of the trade‐offs in consistency, relaConships with the parCcipants and biases that may arise from hosCng mulCple facilitators at once.

Jaipur

1 center

Jammu & Kashmir

8 centers

Ahmedabad

1 center

Bangalore1 center

Kolar1 center

Mysore1 center

Chitradurga1 center

Skills to Succeed LocaCons

VocaConal Training Research

The biggest challenge was building capacity within Quest to conduct mulCple interviews at once. We held a series of sessions in‐house so the team could both facilitate and parCcipate in the acCviCes.


At the workshop, 6 team members were available for facilitaCng the research. Each person conducted at least one session.



Early insights revealed a foci around responsibility, relaConships and spirituality. Many users seek to serve and change the community.

A\er conducCng iniCal research, the team spent Cme synthesizing the learnings and building a framework for the training session re‐design. The following pages include insights from the facilitators.

Research Synthesis

Building personal iden=ty is important for facilitators. IdenCty was defined by our parCcipants as having self respect, voice, and gaining recogniCon. Many facilitators, especially those who have overcome social barriers, voiced self‐respect as an important personal value they have, but sCll sought the ability to be heard and recognized.

Research Synthesis

Facilitators need more mo=va=on and support. An informal support structure exists within the school that is used reacCvely to troubleshoot problems. The program should include a proacCve system that saCsfies the facilitator’s desire to grow oneself and as a team.

Research Synthesis

Classroom learning is being affected and offset by outside forces. Parents are the biggest influencer in student decisions. They spend the most Cme with them and are most invested in their growth. Parents also feel pressure to fit in with community beliefs and have a difficult Cme resisCng the mainstream. Bringing the community into the classroom or extending learning out should be a goal for the program.

Research Synthesis

There is a tension between a facilitator’s role in the classroom and their desired rela=onship with the student. Many facilitators sCll follow a chalk and talk pedagogy that uses disciplinarian techniques and teacher‐led approaches instead of making learning relevant and purposeful. The pedagogy limits meaningful relaConship building and should shi\ to to a student‐centric approach which includes real world learning situaCons.

Research Synthesis

Student engagement increases when a student is ac=vely involved in the learning process. Curriculum must show relevancy to the student, be interacCve and aLracCve. Games, acCviCes and learning by doing are viewed as successful techniques to be used in the classroom but facilitators only see them as one‐off tools and lack the ability to create new content.

Research Synthesis

Facilitators should be encouraged to understand the student through one‐on‐one discussions as well as group ac=vi=es. Curriculum delivery can be individualized through mulCple types of acCviCes that assess student skill and by building personal relaConships that expose student backgrounds and amtudes.

Research Synthesis

Assessments need to expand from teacher and technology‐driven to include peer and community member evalua=ons. Student comfort varies across the different types of assessments. Involving peers and community members adds relevancy to the assessments, decreases student anxiety and captures one’s holisCc performance.

Research Synthesis

Facilitators have different comfort levels with using technology. Technology is seen as producing objecCve assessments but is not fully understood by the facilitators as ways to deliver engaging content. Technology use must be supplemented with interacCve learning techniques, such as paired learning, to provide opportuniCes for peer collaboraCon and micro‐teaching.

Research Synthesis

A\er synthesis, the team began deconstrucCng the current training program and rebuilding it with the high level insights and ideas gleaned from the research. We established a series of design principles to guide the redesign.

Deliver content in digesCble pieces. Integrate pracCce sessions for facilitators. Create a supporCve environment for personal and team growth. Create tangible outputs that allow for reflecCon. Emulate a student’s learning experience through the design of the facilitator’s experience during training.

Design

Measure the baseline and the ideal.

Design

Measurements are difficult Before joining Design Impact, I had never had to do measurements and I didn’t fully understand their value in the space. Done correctly, measurements jusCfy and provide feedback on a non‐profit’s approach. Minimally done, they evaluate the program’s baseline performance to maintain support and guarantee more funding from a board or other governing body. In the worst case, measurements produce vague numbers that can be used as inspiraConal markeCng to drive public interest.

Quest’s set of metrics for the Skills to Succeed program was based primarily on student placement aUer comple=ng a course. Placement is a very important metric as the program trains students for employment, but the so\er and more important story was the life skills being taught. Life skills are a group of personal and interpersonal skills that help students succeed in any situaCon. This group of students desperately needs exposure to and Cme to pracCce these skills. We weren’t measuring the facilitators ability to reinforce life skills or student performance because it was difficult to assess. Life skills takes Cme to build, much longer than

Design

a 3 month program, but the team believed creaCng this foundaCon for growth was the most important aspect of the curriculum for the student. How would we ever know if our intent was being met if we didn’t try to evaluate it? The team had a meeCng to align everyone with the vision of the program and discuss potenCal outputs, outcomes, and metrics for our ideal approach. Although our funders weren’t going to hold us accountable for these results, we felt an improved set of metrics was important for us to eliminate uncertainty about the program and improve our understanding of the total performance.

This exercise was a big learning for me as well as Quest in aligning intent with supporCve data. Just because you measure something doesn’t mean it has to be published. Measurements can exist as internal feedback for program iteraCon and improvement.

Both Quest and I embraced our tensions around measurements and came up with more inspired metrics that aligned with the soul of the program, providing skills to help students survive in life. This was a small step but huge win for the students.

India does not need pixel perfect.

Design

Evolving the design As the team started working on the re‐design I kept comparing our progress to projects I had been a part of in the past. The content and thinking was there, but I wasn’t saCsfied with the outputs. I knew that I couldn’t ask more from the team as they were already stretched thin, so I started taking on more of the work to get it done. It was through a few conversaCons with team members that I finally realized what Indians mean when they talk about Jugaad. Jugaad is the “fix‐around”. It is the art of improvisaCon and problem solving with what you have.

We didn’t need a completely defined training session, we needed a defined approach with room to move. My lens began to change. I set up a structure for capturing thoughts in an organized way and let the team fill in the work as needed.

Working in India requires you to embrace the beta. NGO work can exist as a series of iteraCons because the system is organized to test hypothesis’ not fully developed ideas. Nothing is perfect and it doesn’t need to be, it simply has to work. My role as a designer is to ensure that the funcConality works and is inspired enough to push the system forward in a meaningful way.

Design

A\er research, the team deconstructed the facilitator training session into a pre‐training manual and mulCple learning sessions across one batch to make content easier for the facilitators to digest.

Pre-Mailer Initial Training Check-in 1 Check-in 2Prior to training Before course begins 1 month later 1 month later

Design

The content delivered during each training session is acCvity‐based to promote a learning‐by‐doing approach, something we had learned from the research. The training sessions only include informaCon that is immediately applicable to the upcoming course curriculum.

Pre-Mailer

3 weeks before training

Program background

Learning theories / support material

Content outline

Lesson plan samples

Assessment of pre-mailer

Initial Training

4 days

Understanding facilitator values

Discussion on current understanding of learning & challenges

Pre-mailer review & Intro to training

Facilitator journal

Intro to student centric approach

Curriculum deliveryGeneral facilitation skillsCurriculum specific skills

Customizing content

Buddy system

AssessmentsDigital (if applicable)FacilitatorPeer

Scheduling

Surprise presentation

Check-in 1

2 days

Review of curriculum specific skills delivery from initial training(journal share-out)

Review of assessments from initial training

Curriculum deliveryUpcoming skills

Assessments- Community

Relationships- Community

Check-in 2 (*if applicable)

1 day

Review of curriculum specific skills delivery from Check-in 1 (journal share-out)

Review of assessments from Check-in 1

Support for what happens after the course

Design

Let go.

Design

Wrapping things up At the end of my 6 months, we were starCng to author some of the training sessions. I would be leaving soon and wanted to make sure there was one cohesive document that organized all of the thinking thus far. We opened up our ideas to the larger group to get feedback and help with asset creaCon before the iniCal training session. Based on the feedback, we reduced the number of training sessions to save cost and evolved some of the sessions to make them more relevant for the facilitators.

Our big evolu=ons included an improved facilitator journal that tracks with a facilitator’s personal and professional development, integra=ng learning styles into the curriculum, reducing the amount of assessments and delivering content in diges=ble amounts.

During the 6 months, I wanted to do the design process instead of teaching the process. I felt obligated to control the project to keep it manageable and in scope. I was open to new ideas as long as it fit within the structure.

Design

It was this structure that I struggled with over the en=re fellowship. The process, the schedule, the need to constantly generate‐ all of these are great goals but they became too much of a focus. Although I never witnessed any disdain for the approach I was taking, I quesCon it. Rigor has a place in every project, but could I organize a program that allowed for more freedom of exploraCon? Is there value in an approach that factors in the context even more? Could I have supported a freer thinking environment? Could I create a process without process?

India taught me to be brave, trust myself, be open to new experiences, and that entrepreneurial thought is engrained in the Indian culture so use it. But my biggest learning was knowing when to let go and allow the seeds of serendipity to sprinkle in.

I had full trust in my team and when they took control, great work always followed. CreaCvity thrives in an environment where trust and respect live. It can be difficult to fully open oneself to the possibiliCes, but it can be highly lucraCve in the social design space. A\er all, It is the smallest ideas that ul=mately lead to big change.

The next steps include tesCng the training sessions and integraCng the feedback into the next rev for large‐scale implementaCon.

Design

Thanks.

Contact: Ali Maiorano [email protected] www.d-impact.org

Design Impact

job training cirriculum: may 2012 update

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