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Service Learning Project

 

SERVICE LEARNING PROJECT

LAKESIDE BAPTIST CHURCH


 

What is service learning?

Service-Learning is an educational experience in which individuals participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs; use knowledge and skills directly related to a course or discipline; and reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of personal values and civic responsibility.

SERVICE LEARNING PROJECT CLIENT:
Lakeside Baptist Church
Birmingham, AL

Using The Systematic Design of Instruction by Dick, Carey, and Carey as a cookbook, my team and I set out to discover the performance improvement needs of Lakeside Baptist Church.

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Phase 1: Front-End Analysis

(Goal Analysis, Sub-skill Analysis, Entry-level Skills analysis, Learner Analysis, Performance Context Analysis)

We interviewed the Subject Matter Expert (SME) to discover which of their gaps could be filled with an instructional solution.

  • The interview was conducted in-person for an hour via audio recording, and a questionnaire was used to guide the conversation in order to discover viable instructional goals, the sub-skills needed to be learned to accomplish those goals, and their required entry-level behaviors.

  • In order to help guide a relevant instructional strategy and the development of engaging instructional materials, we also conducted learner and performance context analyses with our SME (due to a lack of access to the actual learners).

LEARNER GROUP: Lakeside Baptist Church Small Group Leaders

Of the specific areas of improvement that were identified (that would enhance small group leaders’ acumen and align their skillset with the vision of Lakeside Baptist Church), we chose to reach the overall goal of “connecting with and following up with new guests.”


INSTRUCTIONAL GOAL

In small group meetings, small group leaders will
connect with new guests by demonstrating welcoming behaviors;
following up with new guests via phone, email, or text within 48 hours;
and turning in complete new guests’ contact information.


INSTRUCTIONAL ANALYSIS

(Goal Analysis, Sub-skill Analysis, Entry-level Skills analysis)

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Phase 2: Instructional Strategy

(performance objectives, sample assessments, instructional sequence, practice/feedback)

Performance Objectives are written statements that function as the benchmark for learner mastery. They are the standard that instructional designers use to justify their design decisions, and they direct the evaluation of the instructional unit’s effectiveness. Performance objectives consist of: measurable criteria, conditions for performance, and the behavior/skill that is to be acquired.

Review the following gallery below for some samples of this project’s terminal and performance objectives, and their corresponding assessment examples:

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Phase 3: Instructional Material selection and development

What To Do When Your Guests are New? - Workbook

Our analyses and instructional strategy concluded that a workbook was the best means of delivering instruction to master the skills associated with the instructional goal. Our workbook contains instruction, exercises, practice tests/reinforcements, and feedback. We and our client/SME are confident that the workbook fulfills the instructional goals. On behalf of my team, I delivered a hard copy of our spiral bound, full color, professionally printed 26-page workbook to our SME at his office for him to implement the instruction.


Phase 4: SME and small group formative Evaluations

During the development of the workbook prototype, our team facilitated feedback sessions in order to evaluate the condition of the prototype and assess it for effectiveness according to the instructional goal. The following descriptions summarize the feedback.

SME FORMATIVE EVALUATION

  • Disregarding his bias, during his one-to-one evaluation, the SME gave feedback that largely spoke towards the alignment of the workbook’s objectives with the organization’s goal.

  • He also regularly mentioned that the workbook was versatile—capable of being implemented in multiple formats.

  • SME RECOMMENDATIONS: He most notably suggested that we reduce the time of one practice exercise from 2 days to 5 minutes. We implemented this recommendation so as to increase the likelihood the learners would complete the entire workbook. I believe this critical revision potentially bolstered leaners’ motivation to complete the workbook learning activities in one sitting.

SMALL GROUP FORMATIVE EVALUATION

  • The small group represented a sample size of our target learners, in the sense that they attended the small groups of the leaders that would be receiving this training.

  • The small group evaluators were more critical, and their observations engendered the bulk of our revisions

  • Some of those revisions include:

    • Increased the font size

    • Adjusted the spacing of certain graphical elements

    • Corrected grammar and syntax errors

    • Verbiage updates

    • Revised strict directions for the short answer questions to be less constraining. (i.e., Use the space below to describe 5 unwelcoming behaviors.)

    • Filled empty white spaces at the bottom of pages with pictures and other visually stimulating content.

    • Reduced the overall wordiness of each section by narrowing the focus of each section towards succinct messaging

    • Added verbiage that would prevent those demonstrating already welcoming behaviors from being demotivated.

    • Decreased the time span of the role-playing exercise in the “Following-Up with New Guests” section from 2 days to 5-10 minutes.

    • Added an Answer Key to the end of the workbook

Though we delivered a viable product and considering everything that I have learned to complete this project, there a few things that I would have done differently under a different set of time and financial constraints. First, I would have conducted small group evaluations with sample learners that more closely resembled our target learners. Secondly, in addition to our role-playing practice exercises, I would have also included emotional videos that introduced welcoming behavior scenarios in order to build more opportunities for long-term memory storage and recall.

Due to the lack of access to the small group leaders that would be receiving the workbook’s instruction, we were not able to conduct summative evaluations to further confirm its effectiveness towards mastery of the instructional goal.