All For You

It was my turn to present my poster and boy was I a ball of nervous.  It is funny how most of my professional life I have had to stand and deliver training to all levels in the various companies I have served and this night I was probably more nervous than I have ever been.  It seemed that Dr. Carter was pleased in my poster presentation.  The class all appeared to like my ideas behind my program plan.  I am so thankful that this is now behind me and I feel really good about my progress throughout this course. 

I have definitely made leaps and bounds throughout this entire course.  Going into the course I did not have big expectations because I have been in the field for a few years and really did not believe I would learn anything too new, however I was totally incorrect.  I learned a great deal from this course.  The skills I picked up from class was relayed into my job performance and was mention in my performance apprasial.  I believe that my current employer and myself got our monies and time worth.  I look forward to the rest of my course work and how this course will relate to the others that are forthcoming. 

The blogging and wiki assignments were new to me this year, even though at times there were chanllenges with the password issues the advantages out weighed all of them by far.  My employer were just starting to use them when I started the class so by having to do them on a regular basis for class really gave me an advantage at work.  This proven to be a plus for me on my performance appraisal as well.

Probably the most profound revelation was that there is actually a textbook that helps program planners do their job effectively.  I have program planned many courses and never once did I even imagine there could be a tool out there to make my life easier.  I will keep my textbook and activity book for this class for sure.  They will definitely help in my future developments.  This course rocked!!

Thanks to Dr. Terry Carter for everything……

Last night’s session was a lot of fun!  When Dr. Carter presented our in classroom assignment everyone including myself were a little hesitate of developing and designing a program plan evaluation.  Everyone did an excellent job in the very limited time we had to do the assignment.  The two groups had two different approaches to doing the evaluation.  The group I was in developed a qualitative evaluation and the other group’s presentation was more in line with quantitative.  It was very interesting that we both had different approaches.  Dr. Carter was very impressed with our creations. 

Jenifer also facilitated an exercise after our in classroom assignment.  We read the “Pocketed Veto”  and discussed our “ah ha” or comments about the reading.  The reading was about an evaluator that was doing an evaluation for a company as his master’s program assignment.  He did not follow-up well through out the evaluation.  The consultant that worked on the evaluation did not make deadlines and did not bring forth her suggestions or concerns in a structured way.

Ali and Laura both facilitated an exercise in this session.  Laura’s exercise was around qualitative and how to interpret it.  I was in the group that messed the entire assignment up.  We did not follow the directions and made up our own.  After Laura’s presentation, Dr. Carter facilitated learning by explaining effective evaluation.  There are a lot of considerations when developing an evaluation plan.  Ali’s exercise was next which consisted of arts and crafts.  Dr. Carter was in my group and she was the scriber for the group.  We had to weigh our suggestions on return on graduate school investment.  My group was the older group and we focused on family and the responsibilities that go along with having a family.  The other group’s comments were very different from the group I was in which reflected in a very small return on investment.  This was a big eye opener for me because if I had to this exercise before signing up for graduate school I may not would have been here today.

Today’s class was focused around the advantages and disadvantages of individual and focus group interviews.  They provide more in-depth information and allow for a personal connection between interviewer and interviewee, which most times enhances data quality.  However, they can be a more expensive method of data collection and can b difficult to schedule due to scheduling conflicts.  Overall, the advantages out weigh the disadvantages of not conducting individual and focus group interviews at all. 

The interview can take form in three different ways such as

Unstructured (a conversational approach), Semi-structured

(one or two structured questions which allow for probing questions), Structured (this techniques is best for telephone interviews)

Buddy facilitated an engaging activity, which involve the class separating into two focus groups.  The two groups were:

1.      How to prepare for foreign travel

2.  Picking a commencement speaker for graduation.

A leader was picked from each group and they had to record our brainstorming ideas.  These ideas were shared with the entire class and by far we generated more ideas together versus working off on your own.  Outcomes from focus group are much richer than a single interview or survey.