Here's a post for the cross-list discussion from Workplace.
Donna

________________________________

From: workplace-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:workplace-bounces at nifl.gov] On
Behalf Of Susan Reid
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 5:23 PM
To: The Workplace Literacy Discussion List; workplace at nifl.gov;
englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [Workplace 422] Re: Return on Investment Approach


It has been really interesting reading all these posts 
I so agree with what so many of you have been saying - the teaching
needs to be contextualised to that particular workplace and you need to
use the texts of the workplace and work with those 
 
Workbase started workplace literacy programmes in New Zealand in 1991
and I started working in them in 1992 as a teacher first and then later
manager and trainers of others. Until 2001 there were no govt subsidies
for these programmes and we had to sell them to businesses based on a
commercial return - sometimes it took a long time but you got to the
stage where you could describe in pretty clear terms to businesses what
the business benefits would be.
If a company told us they were having problems with excess waste we
would ask them how confident they were that procedures had been
adequately explained to their migrant  ( often long term residents from
Samoa and Tonga but increasingly from a range of other countries as
well) workforce and how easy was it for their employees to access their
workplace documentation systems 
One of the better stories was when a food processing company were having
problems with wrongly mixed products and someone explained that people
may not know how to recognise words except by their first letter and the
Production Manager turned to the Managing Director and said well that
explains why we are having problems with apple and apricot
 
We have tried to describe our approach using Return on Investment and
one of the publications on our website describes this approach
Voices from Management 

http://202.174.119.166/Document.aspx?Doc=VoicesfromManagementJan2003Fina
l.pdf
<http://202.174.119.166/Document.aspx?Doc=VoicesfromManagementJan2003Fin
al.pdf> 

 

For this publication we asked Dr Rod McDonald from Australia to do a
model of ROI. Rod had been involved in quite extensive research
undertaken by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Reseach
in Australia on ROI in training

 

In the late 90s an Australian researcher Geoff Pearson did an ROI study
on workplace literacy programmes called More Than Words Can Say - it is
not available online but I will post the Executive Summary from his
study to the list. Pearson found that companies were able to quantify a
number of benefits - participation in other training, take up of
promotion and direct cost savings - there were a couple more but I can't
remember them off the top of my head.

 

ROI is a very contested term and some managers are very cynical about
it's use ( with good reason) so we tend to focus on what we term the
business benefits

 

To do this we have to address on an ongoing basis the vexed question
that someone asked earlier - we try and balance the company's goals for
the programme with the learners'goals.This is an ongoing juggling act
but we have got better at it over the years.There is no doubt that te
company's goals drive the curriculum but we have also learnt  that
unfailingly learners want to transfer the benefits of what they learn in
the workplace to their home and community lives and we work really hard
to ensure that transfer happens.Most of our programmes work with migrant
workers but providers who work in regions outside the main cities where
migrants tend to live work with native born New Zealanders including
Maori who are tangata whenua (people of the land).

 

We have been influenced by the work of Tom Sticht and many Australian
researchers and practitioners such as Rosa McKenna, Lynne Fiztpatrick
and  Geraldine Castleton as well as people like Larry Mikulecky, Sheryl
Gowen and Glynda Hull. 

 

Essentially Workbase is a development organisation and one of the most
critical aspects of that role is to develop other providers to become
workplace literacy providers. Basically it involves providers shifting
from thinking of themselves as educationalists to busienss consultants
and some are better at this than others.There are so many aspects to
this and the providers in New Zealand who are considering shifting into
this field come from such a wide spectrum ( community providers to our
equivalent of community colleges).  Dr Ruth Schick from our office lead
a team to put this knowledge online. 

see a Programme Managers' Guide to Workplace Literacy Programmes

 http://elearning.workbase.org.nz/course/view.php?id=11&username=guest
<http://elearning.workbase.org.nz/course/view.php?id=11&username=guest> 

 

hope these resources prove to be useful in the US context 

 

Kind regards Susan Reid 

 

Manager, Professional Development 

Workbase the New Zealand Centre for Workforce Literacy and Language 

www.workbase.org.nz

see also NZ Literacy Portal www.nzliteracyportal.org.nz

 

 

 

________________________________

From: workplace-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Lynda Terrill
Sent: Wed 20/09/2006 1:38 a.m.
To: workplace at nifl.gov
Subject: [Workplace 417] FW: [EnglishLanguage 660] Curriculum,
materials,ASSESSMENT



Hello,
 
Here's another crossposting from the English language list about several
topics in workplace education.
 
Lynda Terrill
lterrill at cal.org
 

________________________________

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Sharon McKay
Sent: Tue 9/19/2006 9:24 AM
To: englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 660] Curriculum, materials, ASSESSMENT




--- How can teachers and administrators develop curricula and materials
that meet the needs and goals of the learners in class as well as the
needs and expectations of employers? 

I have had about six years experience in teaching and developing
curricula for Working English Language Programs in Northern Virginia.
Factors which improve overall success rate included:  worker needs
assessment, supervisor needs assessment, shadowing employees, developing
task analysis (what does the worker do?  When does s/he use English to
do it?), and worker and supervisor incentives (paid class time,
additional staffing, etc.)

When I was teaching, I worked with primarily authentic teaching
materials (which often meant searching the workplace on my own time).  I
used written materials found on the job whenever possible (Human
Resource forms, Quality control forms, safety forms, etc.) to build
lessons.  Problem-posing communicative activities based on supervisors'
and students'  needs assessment were lively and effective.  Writing
summaries of these and other OTJ activities helped students learn to
keep more accurate records and/or  formulate their own thoughts in a
more organized and timely fashion.

For literacy students, I used pictures taken at the worksite and
vocabulary building for dialogs first and then writing true stories.

A curriculum with a basic framework ( such as introductions/small talk,
customer interaction, management interaction, coworker interaction,
safety and quality control) needs to be super flexible to be effective.

I would venture that many English language learners we work with in this
environment thrive in non-traditional classroom settings using a wide
variety of teaching strategies.  Sometimes the 'how' might be more
important than the 'what.'

Now for evaluation, or 'the needs and expectations of funders' ---
progress is a lot more difficult to measure easily in the workplace.
Many of our ESL tools for assessment are inadequate at the K-12 and
adult education level.   Workplace ESL throws more variables into the
mix.  Funders, be they government or private, must have rationale for
refunding.

I'm curious about what instruments people are using in current Working
English Language Programs to measure progress in English language
learners.

Do you like the instruments you are using?  Why or why not? 



Sharon McKay 
Washington, DC 


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