Learning and Assessment Design

It is now widely recognised in most organizations that

• learning does not take place solely through group training events
• without active and regular assessment, skills development may slow to a halt or even regress.

In addition, unless learning and assessment are conducted in a context that is a thoroughly familiar and real-world for the learner, there is a danger that it will be discounted as being unconnected with practical needs. However, there is no “one size fits all” solution for effective learning and assessment strategies.

An organizational skills audit can often be a very good starting point to identify the balance of skills and competence strengths in an organization and to identify gaps that may need to be filled. This type of analysis must always take full account of corporate strategy as learning and assessment which fails to take this into account will surely involve waste of resources.

The ODL team has substantial experience in carrying out and acting on the analysis resulting from a skills audit by identifying, designing and producing the most appropriate learning vehicles for the individual organization and its circumstances. These generally include

• materials to support self instruction or in-house tuition
• tightly tailored training activities set in the context of learners' work
• identification of experiential learning that will form an appropriate package within the learners' everyday jobs
• effective and non-threatening assessment strategies to enable the learners to gain positive feedback from the assessment process.

The team's extensive experience in these areas benefits greatly from its involvement in the national UK arena of standard setting, qualification design, skills development, competence assessment and vocational education. However, its expertise derives most of all from work with numerous operational organizations facing everyday real world challenges.

Examples of recent projects

This is the five star ODL version of the commonly used training needs analysis. We have carried out the analysis for a wide range of clients who are convinced of the need to integrate skills development plans closely with business strategy. A combination of staff and management consultation, business analysis, taking stock of existing skills and creative planning enables the ODL approach to lead to truly practical development plans that make a real contribution to business and organization development.

A core belief of the Company is that skills training is most effective when participants are completely comfortable with the context of the learning experience. The ODL team has developed specialist skills in tailoring training materials and design of training events so closely that many participants believe that case study and role-play situations have been drawn directly from their own organizations. In sectors as diverse as meat and poultry production, financial services and the public sector, ODL training events material have been hailed as a breakthrough in terms of clarity and direct application to the everyday experience of the participants.

In the specialist field of National Occupational Standards and Vocational Qualification structures, the ODL team has earned a reputation for delivering projects on time and within budget resulting in outcomes that are especially attractive and acceptable to employees. The team has developed techniques for widespread consultation that are both cost effective and identify all the key sector issues. After that stage of the process, clarity and attention to detail in draft reports and standards enables the client to achieve sector approval without undue recycling of issues. The team has completed numerous projects in this area on behalf of UK Regulatory Bodies and Standards Setting Bodies, including the Council for Administration, the Institute of Customer Service, The Meat Training Council, the Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body, the Accountancy Occupational Standards Group and the Financial Services Skills Council.