Project: Educational Advisor Onboarding and Training
Analysis of Training Needs
After a year of working with Upward Bound, I realized there were some greater systemic problems with the operations of our program. Prior to taking the position in July 2019, the program had been in a period of neglect and had high turnover rates, resulting in a failing of executing key projects and meeting grant goals. To correct the ship, I began the work of putting together a stronger training program for our educational advisors, who serve as the foundation of our program. This work started in April of 2020, in conjunction with a consultant SME (Raquel Perez). We designed clear objectives for the position, building a Roles and Responsibilities Matrix that would serve as the underlying foundation for training. From here, I was able to lay the groundwork for training.
Design of Training
After assessing the key foundational objectives, I began with the outline of a handbook for the position. A handbook would provide a lasting document of the key processes the job would need and would be a way for future directors to sustain the systems I was creating with my team. Here you can see a sample of the handbook outline created in MS OneNote - my preferred brainstorming tool for building out any writing projects
I was then able to begin assessing what training formats would work best for the individual activities.
Some of the non-technical processes (such as building relationships with our partner schools or developing a recruitment presentation) are one-on-one coaching sessions between myself and the employee.
The more technical processes, however, demand demonstration. After consulting with senior leadership, I proceeded with planning to design video trainings and quizzes for the program using Canvas LMS.
Project Management
As you can see, this quickly evolved into a large scale learning project. There are over sixty five onboarding training initiatives within this single position. My job encompasses much more than just onboarding and learning design, so my concerns were how to manage breaking this project down into something manageable and to prioritize the most important aspects a new advisor would need immediately.
I lean on Microsoft Planner and Project for keeping my team and myself on schedule. Here you can see our Kanban-style management process.
Development
Canvas provides an excellent module based course system and is UTA's preferred LMS for all staff training and University teaching. This system allowed for my team to track the progress of our new hires as they complete the trainings and provide proof of compliance training for both the University and Department of Education.
Here, you will see a video I have produced using Canva to give an introduction to the training. While I have a skillset in Adobe Illustrator and other authoring tools, Canva is often my preferred software tool for many activities where I need to both present and record, and do so quickly. I often enjoy working with themes and metaphors to help keep audiences engaged in the learning process, but also to bring about clarity and understanding. Here I am working with the metaphor of space travel to mirror our applicant's "journey" in applying to Upward Bound. (There's a 30 Rock reference in there too, if you're a fan!)
UB Application Process LD Introduction Presentation (1).mp4Educational Advisor Handbook Part 1.2.pdfI also was able to begin the designing of our Employee Handbook in accordance with the outlined objectives. This is a sample of the handbook, created entirely in Adobe InDesign by myself and written by myself.
Implementation and Evaluation
As we have progressed to implementation, advisors are now reporting more clarity in their position and delegated workload. They are now completing a self-assessment scorecard at their 90 day evaluation (for existing advisors it comes at their 1 year evaluation).
Evaluators (myself and the program coordinator) have a reflective measuring tool that allows for comparison. Once an educational advisor submits their Self-Assessment, we are able to assess gaps and consistencies, and this provides a stronger guide for employee evaluation and coaching.
Other tools of evaluation are at play as well, including monitoring of quiz performance on the Canvas LMS to inform weak spots of the trainings. Over the course of the year and a half of implementation, we have revisited the process as a team and continue the work of improvement.