All of the course creators wanted the course to count as elective credits, but the administrators did not think the course had enough rigor to be a stand alone elective. The name of the course was Success Skills. Each unit during the first semester of the following year we were going to require all students to take one of the 5 skills packets of work, and complete it, and meet with their facilitator to discuss it and review their work in it. The rollout of the Success Skills was to be a part of the opening of the new school.
The staff's concerns were that it would be difficult to get the students to complete the work due to the main fact that our students are focused on credits. They do not want to do extra work with no reward. We used volunteers from our ASB Leadership (Associated Student Body) class to test the course and got feedback from them at meetings where new units for the course were presented and staff members were divided into groups to go through one activity in the packet and present their findings. The students worked along with the staff members.
The students were honest in giving their feedback about the course and most liked it but said if it had no course credits assigned to it they would not want to do the work. Administration made it mandatory for us to assign the course the following school year even though the staff who had to create the course believed what the ASB students said about the course.
It was a shame to see so much effort not make it past 2 or 3 units, and to reach the full potential that it could have reached. Now that I know more about pre-planning a project and listening to your stakeholders, I can see the mistakes that were made by the project managers (higher level administrators) for this course. It is difficult to believe that higher level administrators for schools can lose touch with how students think so fast. Our ASB students volunteer countless hours of time on campus to plan and run lunch time events, fund raisers, and attend strategic planning sessions where we need to represent the student population. They are mostly over achievers, and did take the Success Skills course as part of their ASB grade. However, they said other students would not take it without some sort of reward; preferably course credits.
I had some success with students completing the work by counting it as extra credit in their English packet work. As long as they were getting something for their efforts they were not as reluctant or did not completely refuse to do the work, at least for the first 2 units.
The chart below demonstrates some of the positive and negative outcomes. "Post Mortem” Review Questions found on pages 42–43 of The Project Management Minimalist. Just enough PM to Rock Your Projects! were used as a guide to format the chart.
Positive and Negative Outcomes to the Design of the Success Skills Course
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Positive
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Negative
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Teamwork in designing each unit
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Administration gave the assignment, and deadlines, but did not participate in creating the units.
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A well balanced set of activities
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Administration would not allow a full course to be created adding elective credits.
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Approximately 12 hours of work to complete
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Students did not complete all of the assignments.
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One person in the Unit group was given the leadership duties.
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Once the unit was tested by staff and students no changes were made.
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All units were ready by the due dates.
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Staff was expected to have all students complete all the packets despite objections.
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Looking back at this experience with the knowledge I have about planning projects, it seems that this one was doomed from the early stages. There was not an established need for the course to begin with, especially since it was not being created as a required elective with credits for all students. On pages 30 and 31 of the book, Project Management: Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling Projects, the authors talk about defining projects, including what the need is for the project, and what the expected outcomes are. There must be a valid reason and that reason should be understood and agreed upon by the decision makers involved before the work on the project begins (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008). In the case of the Success Skills Course; once it was discovered that it was not really a valid course, but perceived as busy work by the students, there was no real need or reason for the facilitators to assign the extra work.
References
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hi Gayle, excellent blog post. I always learn from those working in the field. I know this was a great idea to the administrators but did anyone do a needs analysis? Just designing a course because it sounds good is not a good idea. If the students could have been involved with in the beginning and told it was for no credit you would have had your answer before all the work was down. If there is no incentive to do the work then you could expect bad results. I am curious as to the age of the target group. These course sound more like personal improvement which is not on the minds of students until they are in the workforce and can see the value in terms of advancement and dollars. If it was the normal college age group or younger then all motivation is for only those things that count toward graduation. If it doesn't count toward graduation then they see no real value for doing it and no motivation. Portny et al. (2008) say that extensive research (feasibility study) needs to be done to determine the chances that a project will succeed. Many time this is overlooked because of time or money restraints to the regret of the PM who has to manage a project that is doomed to failure.
ReplyDeleteHi Dennis,
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by. You are so right that if the administrators took the early steps to see if there was a need for the course and if grades 9-12 would take the course for no credit up front, it would have eliminated a lot of work and stress for the staff.
That is usually not the way a lot of things are done where I work. Our goal is to prepare our students to be successful after high school by teaching them necessary values while they are still in high school. However we are dealing with teenagers and some are more mature than others.
They do have lives, too, and several are very active in sports and take their grades seriously. Some even attend the community college where that is next to our campus. For those students it has to have credits or they do not want to spend the time. Other students would rather be playing Xbox or Play Station.
Rocque,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great example of a fantastic idea. While it appears to have been developed well, the results were less than what was hoped for I am sure. I went through the post mortem questions from The Project Management Minimalist: Just Enough PM to Rock Your Project, I can't help but think had the administration taken the time to go through Phase 1: Determine Need and Feasibility, many of the roadblocks that you all encountered and ultimately the projects demise could have been avoided with a better understanding of this first and crucial step. Portney et al, also indicates on pages 77 and 78 that there are two questions that should initially be asked. "Can the project be done? and Should the project be done?" If the answer is no to either one of these, the author indicates that under no circumstance should the project move forward. The reasoning for developing this project has not been clearly defined by the administration.
I also really like the point you bring up about stakeholders being in touch with your audience. So many times management has so many ideas, that if they just stopped and thought about their audience, I can bet that many projects would never be developed. Any person can tell you that the overwhelming majority of kids will not take a voluntary class or even a portion of a class that does not provide them credit. They are not at the age of true self awareness, and probably don't really care about Initiative, Responsibility, Communication, Teamwork, and Commitment, sad to say. The course might have been better developed for fellow teachers and administrators rather than high school students who's primary goal is the WIFIM - What's In It For Me factor. The administration should have done a survey of the students to see what the interest level was among the students, advising them that this course would be for informational purposes only and not a grade. They would have been able to judge the lack of participation early on in the project management process, and thereby save a lot of time, money and other resources.
Hello Heidi,
DeleteThanks for the reply. Both you and Dennis spoke about the age of the students, and their emotional development levels. The WIIFM does play a huge role with the students that attend our school. I suppose it is that way everywhere. They even hate to throw their trash away at lunch time or in the class room, so we do have to give them reasons why doing even the littlest things can benefit them. It is always easy to say our generation was not like that, and it is scary to think that we were.
Hi Gayle,
ReplyDeleteI am testing to see if my response is going through. I had sent one earlier but to not see it posted.
Hi Rocque,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this experience on your blog. Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer and Sutton (2008) list not involving all key project stakeholders as a common pitfall (Portny et al, p. 106), but in your case, they seem to have been included, and then ignored which almost seems worse, because it now undermines future attempts to learn from mistakes, and try again. Students who invested so much time, and effort for nothing in the last project will now be hesitant to support future projects, and certainly pass on their negative experiences to other students. However, thank you for sharing, because this is an excellent way for designers, and project managers to learn from others’ experiences and avoid this pitfall. It does appear that vague objectives, and possibly weak leadership (Portny et al, 2008) at the upper level might also be contributing factors to your frustration in this project.
Reference
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hello Deb,
DeleteI appreciate your response, and I agree with your observations. We have mostly all new staff members since this time, but there are enough of us still here, to want to make sure the new curriculum we write addresses all of our students who will be taking it and whether or not the course will be A thru G (UC system) approved for our students who would like to attend 4 year universities or state colleges after graduation.
Hi Rocque,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your experience. The course (if given credit) sounds like a great opportunity for students to build leadership and teamwork skills in a safe learning environments. It's unfortunate that admin didn't see the need to give course credit and not enough research and preplanning was done before the project started to save the sanity of the staff (and students) involved.
My middle school is currently undertaking a school wide mentoring program which "sounded like a good idea." However, there was no research done before hand and the program seems to be reinventing the wheel at every turn. So frustrating!
On the bright side, its nice to reflect on experiences and hopefully not repeat the same mistakes in the future