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Context Analysis

Organization Context

The organization is a University with several locations in Asia. Due to the growth in

students and the amount of area that has to be covered the need to add field academic

advisors arose. A field academic advisor takes care of the student’s immediate needs for

advising purposes. At this time there were four advisors, two in the main office and two

in the field. Due to restructuring and implementation of a new online forum, the advisors

were restructured into two groups; academic advisors who would see students daily, field

phone calls, do preliminary evaluations and answer emails and auditors who were

stationed in the home office to handle official evaluations and graduation reviews.

The four original advisors were moved into the office because they had the most

background with evaluations and four new advisors were hired for the field. The four

new advisors had background with the university but not in the academic department.

Needs Assessment

Initial training involved observing current advisors and doing practice evaluations for

three weeks. No training schedule was setup, no structure and the person conducting

training had not been told exactly what the academic advisor should know before leaving

training.

After several months of the academic advisors being in the field issues began to arise.

This was due to wrong information being given to students pertaining to their preliminary

evaluations, graduation and transfer classes; even the basic things like who to contact
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when you had a problem or question were issues. It was at this time that the Student

Affairs office decided that a training program needed to be put into place and all four of

these advisors retrained.

Topic Analysis

I. Catalog Contents

a. Academic policies

b. Academic plans

c. Types of Courses

When trainee completes this section they will be tested on academic policies, academic

plans and course prerequisites.

II. PeopleSoft and DMS Usage

a. Finding students information pertaining to courses and evaluations

b. Adding/Dropping courses

c. Finding students documents and viewing them

d. Looking up non-students documents

e. Viewing school legends and what we use it for

When trainee completes this section they will be tested on the following information find

student records, tell whether they have had an official evaluation, find transcripts from

non students, and find information on a prior school.

III. Different Types of Transfer Credits

a. Military, credit by exam, transfer and foreign credits

b. ACE recommendation, what this means to you

c. Amounts of each credit that are able to be used

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d. Articulations/decoding credits

When trainee completes this section they will be tested on the query, TES and ACE to

look up credits, send off articulation requests, amount of credits for each category and tell

why we do not except certain credits.

IV. Preliminary Evaluations

a. Setting up a preliminary evaluation sheet

1. 2nd Bachelor

2. Bachelor

3. Associate

4. Certificate

b. Different requirements for different majors

c. Usage of upper level requirements

When trainee completes this section they will be tested on the requirements for all degree

plans and credit usage.

V. Counseling

a. Choosing a career path

b. Graduation requirements

c. Calming anxious students, making them feel at ease with you

Trainee will conduct practice scenarios demonstrating the proper skills for counseling.

This outline will work as our guide to the material that we plan on covering in a two –

four week time period depending on the trainees prior knowledge and test scores; a 100%

is expected from all tests.

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For the retraining process the training will take place through Skype as to not disrupt the

work schedule of the academic advisors and inconvenience the students. One current

auditor with the most background and proven knowledge will be put in charge of the

training program and will be the one to clear each trainee to be able to assist students in

the field on their own.

Current academic advisors will send all their work to the trainer for assessment before

passing it on to the student. The trainer will then give feedback on the work within three

days. This process will help catch errors and teach the academic advisors at the same

time.

Once the academic advisors are out in the field on their own they will be assigned a

senior buddy, this will allow them to have someone to call when they have a problem.

This buddy will report to the trainer as to any problems that they think could become

problematic; it might mean that the academic advisor needs retrained in an area.
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Reference

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction.

Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Rossett, A., Sheldon, K. (2001). Analysis: The study we do in order to figure out what to

do. Retrieved June 13, 2009, from NW Linik Web site:

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/analysis/analysis.html