Spend $1 Million on Technology for your Institution
Assignment: I would like EACH of you to prepare a proposal for spending 1 million dollars on technology in your institution (school or non-school workplace). There should be a three paragraph executive summary including a statement of the problem, the proposed intervention and the way(s) in which you will determine effectiveness. That should be followed by a detailed budget and rationale, including vendors and costs.
Project Proposal
(Download PDF)
Prepared for: Gary S. Stager, Ph.D.
Prepared by: Daniel Wood
May 31, 2009
Proposal number: EDC 667 – Assignment 1
Executive Summary
Problem Statement
Current learning opportunities for employees lack authenticity, hands-on experience, and the social interaction necessary to fully prepare them to be engaged in their role and become effective members of a learning organization. As a consequence, employees learn the majority of their role on the job. While on-the-job training is valuable, it often leads to a negative experience for the employee and the customer (internal or external), and ultimately impacts the organization due to lost time and investment. Learning has been proven to be a social activity that is based in experience within a given context. When training becomes disassociated with that context, and does not include opportunities for the application of knowledge, it loses effectiveness and the results are poor learning experiences and business results. Compounding the issue is the lack of consistency between learning and development tools and employee knowledge building and sharing technologies. This inconsistency results in cobbled together solutions that are incompatible and require inordinate amounts of time to develop.
Proposed Intervention
The Mzinga Social Learning Suite is being recommended as a comprehensive learning solution to meet the current challenges for employee learning and social knowledge building and sharing processes. This fully-hosted solution includes a complete Learning Management System (LMS) with embedded social learning tools, a robust design tool for collaboratively creating highly interactive simulation-based learning content, a virtual classroom environment for distance learning, real-time reporting tools, and ongoing support and development tools for employees. By moving to the use of a completely integrated solution, effective learning and development content may be created and shared across multiple business units, avoiding duplication of efforts, increasing opportunities for collaborative development, and ensuring seamless compatibility. Rather than spending time piecing together disparate tools for learning content, developers’ time will be invested in working together to create immersive learning experiences that achieve the benefits of on-the-job learning without the negative impacts.
Measures of Effectiveness
The effectiveness of this approach to employee learning and development will be measured through the following qualitative and quantitative data:
Qualitative:
- Employee sentiment – Do employees find the learning to be engaging, challenging, enjoyable, and effective?
- Customer response – Are customers responding more positively to employee interactions, based on survey data?
- Leadership feedback – Are leaders seeing a change in the culture of their teams that is oriented to learning?
Quantitative:
- Key Performance Indicators including, but not limited to, the following:
- Customer Issue Resolution (CRES)
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
- Quality Assessment (QA)
- Average Handle Time (AHT)
- Sales-Per-Call (SPC)
Proposed Budget
Proposed Budget