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NEO STELLA
Introduction
Neo Stella is a young university that has been working hard to establish its presence in the higher education market. To compete with long-standing universities that benefit from strong reputations, Neo Stella has invested in creating high-quality courses taught by expert professors.
However, a recent survey revealed that 57% of graduates in the Educational Technology program remain unemployed six months after graduation. This is an issue for Neo Stella since graduate employment rates strongly influence future enrollment in the program, and in turn, affects the reputation of the university. Ideally, Neo Stella would like the graduate employment rate to be around 80% at six months post-graduation.
Therefore, the Provost has requested that a performance needs assessment be conducted to find out why Educational Technology graduates are not getting hire and how the university can help prepare them for the job market. After identifying performance gaps and root causes, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness proposed a plan composed of eleven interventions that would be implemented within the Career Planning Centre and the Educational Technology Program over the course of two years.
Skills Practiced
Systems thinking
Performance needs assessment
Gap analysis
Root cause analysis
Intervention selection and planning
Select the following to learn more about the project
The Process
When conducting the performance needs assessment, I used The Performance Thinking Network (2022)'s Performance Chain Model with a backwards design approach to do the following:
Identify the business objective
Identify the performance objectives
Identify the ideal performance task list
Locate the performance gap
Determine the root causes
I also asked four questions to ensure that each step in the model was linked together and I focused on a single group of performers, the educational technology students.
What is at stake for the organization (business result)?
What accomplishments (work outputs) contribute to the business result?
What activities (behaviour) are needed to produce the work outputs?
What conditions are needed to influence positive behaviour (behaviour influences)?
For the root cause analysis, The Performance Thinking Network (2022)'s Six Boxes® Model framework was used to identify the influences that enable or hinder performance in each box.
Once all influences were identified, an understanding of what was working or not in terms of performance became clear. The root causes were then mapped to the intervention Classification System in Sanders (2001) to determine possible interventions going forward.
All stakeholders involved in enabling performance were identified (Career Planning Centre and Educational Technology Program) and an intervention plan was created to address the performance gaps in each box.
Finally, the interventions were structured into a logical sequence and took into account the year of study of the performers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th year student). The final product is a two-year intervention roadmap.
Sanders, E. S. (2001). Performance intervention maps: 39 strategies for solving your organization’s problems. Association for Talent Development.
The Performance Thinking Network. (2022, August 20). Let's talk about the Six Boxes® Model. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxgUeAMM8hE
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