MIT 530
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e-Learning: Online Education
Needs Assessment Plan
Needs Assessment Report
Change Management Plan
Summative Evaluation Plan
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Context and Conditions
e-Learning: Online Education was completed as partial fulfillment of MIT 530: Evaluation & Change in Instructional Development. The project was completed during the Spring 2007 semester under the guidance of Dr. Sue-Jen Chen. My team was approached by the UNCW Office of e-Learning who expressed concern over being able to meet all of the support demands of the online teaching faculty at the university. A needs assessment was conducted in order to identify the performance gap(s) and to develop a change management plan.
Scope
Allison Rossett’s Training Needs Assessment Model (1987) was used as the theoretical foundation when my team conducted the needs assessment. The purpose of the needs assessment was to determine how the Office of e-Learning, with their limited staff, could reverse the trend of being reactive rather than proactive with regard to anticipating faculty needs. We reviewed extant data and gathered more information on the “actuals” through interviews and a survey. The resulting quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS. After the actuals and then the optimals were properly identified, we proposed solutions to fill the gap between the two.
A change management plan and a summative evaluation plan followed the needs assessment. This robust project was completed within a semester.
Role
Four graduate students worked as a team on the needs assessment portion of the MIT 530 project. At different turns, we each acted as instructional designer, survey creator, survey administrator, survey results analyst, and technical writer.
I completed the change management and summative evaluation plans by myself. On those two portions of the project, I served as instructional designer, change agenda, summative evaluation planner, and technical writer.
Reflection
MIT 530 served as a great vehicle for expanding my needs assessment abilities, as well as my change management and summative evaluation planning. A sound and thorough needs assessment is vital for the success of a project. This class delivered a lot of information in a small amount of time, but the project put some real world experience to the content I learned. I am glad summative evaluation was added to the MIT 530 curriculum.
