1. Joseph is a member of team of trainers, community developers, and nutrition specialist that is currently working in rural Cambodia to develop an educational and action program related to infant and child nutrition. This group is associated with an international nongovernment organization based in Japan. What the team has learned in the three months they have been in Cambodia is that mothers do want their assistance because their children are both undernourished as well as malnourished. In addition, grandmothers and older aunties are the ones who feed the children as the mothers primarily work in the fields during the day, and sometimes into the evening hours. The feeding practices, except for the introduction of bottle feeding for infants, have remained the same over a number of generations. They have also observed, although they do not know why, that there are local food resources (e.g., fruits, potatoes, and plants) that are readily available and even though they are fed to older children, these foods are not given to infants up to two years of age.
How would you conduct a needs assessment to determine what type of program or training is needed (to improve the nutrition of infants) in this situation? What are some of the “contextual” and “cultural” issues you would need to consider in this situation? Be specific.
4. Imagine that you work in a company that is a large multi-national company. You have manufacturing sites in over 15 different countries. The company manufactures components for industrial washing machines. The washing machines clean tents, or big fabric awnings, etc. Since the company started all training has taken place at the corporate office in Cleveland Ohio. The trainings for how to operate all the machines are given to managers, in person, 2 times a year. The managers are then expected to go back to their home office and train the local employees on how to work the very large and very complicated machines. The expansion to locations outside of the United States has only been in the last 10 years. Over the last 10 years not only have there been more than the normal mechanical failures of the machines,, there have been 7 injuries to workers. You have just been hired as the HR Manager. You want to convince the CEO that on line training would be a better alternative than in person training . What would you say to convince the CEO of the benefits of an on-line format? What other types of trainings/transfer of learning/ would you recommend.
7. Juanita wants to demonstrate that she is doing a good job as the new training coordinator for a new safety training program, but she is not sure how to proceed. She works in a company that produces large trailers and other heavy equipment. Her predecessor was on the job for years and ran a rather informal shop; other than a big chart displaying the number of accident-free days for the company, he kept no systematic records on the safety training.
Juanita has access to some figures about the number and types of trainings programs offered, with the number of participants in each program, but the data are incomplete; the figures were not kept for all programs, and there is a great deal of inconsistency in how the figures were gathered and recorded.
Juanita asked her predecessor if there were any evaluation reports about the previous training program, and her predecessor’s response was, “You’ll know if they’re bad, because the trainees or supervisors will tell you.”
Juanita wonders how she can demonstrate that the safety training programs she will be implementing will be doing what they are designed for —lowering the rate and severity of accidents in the plant.
What would you suggest Juanita do to demonstrate that her safety training programs are really making an impact on the actions of the employees and subsequently reducing the numbers and severity of accidents at the plant? Be specific and creative.
8. Rosemarie, who was serving as a keynote speaker for a statewide conference in adult education, had asked the person who was in charge of planning the program to tell her about her audience. Based on these discussions Rosemarie put her speech together, but within the first two minutes of her speech lost the attention of the majority of her audience. What do you think happened? Give two reasons this situation may have happened? What could Rosemary do to improve the situation?
