changeplan

Change Plan - Public Disaster Preparedness Education

        This document is prepared for a course on education and change OTL-505-1 at Colorado State University - Global Campus. As this website is already established, the change plan resides on this page, and is designed to facilitate the development of shared professional presentation resources for instructors in the disaster preparedness program at The American Red Cross, Mile High Chapter. This program is designed to share the already existing course lesson plan and template that has previously been generated for public disaster preparedness education. Implementing the use of online and collaborative tools is the goal of the change plan, a step which will make providing public disaster preparedness education easier for volunteer instructors at The American Red Cross and also increase the efficacy of the courses and improve compliance with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) guidelines. 

Section 1: Context

        This course lesson plan and template and change plan presented here are primarily designed for adult preparedness volunteers who indicate their willingness to teach public disaster preparedness education courses at the Red Cross Preparedness Training Academy (Hixson, 2016a). As instructors we will then work together to peer-review one another's presentation resources and to learn from instructors who have been teaching the courses as they exist before this change. The restructuring of public disaster preparedness education at the Red Cross is necessary to maintain compliance with FEMA guidelines and to work along better with the Incident Command System (ICS) for emergency management that was established after Hurricane Katrina. Participants are volunteers who have the time and resources to commit toward becoming instructors after the initial training at the preparedness training academy event. The population which the instructor teaches to depends largely on the type of presentation expected by the existing infrastructure, either a "Be Red Cross Ready" community preparedness training presentation or "Red Cross Ready Rating" courses which provide certifications for businesses to maintain disaster preparedness awareness. The students are also typically adults in a variety of business or living situations.

Section 2: Data-Driven Need

   The shared presentation resource presented here explains data which was collected in support of collaborative working environments for teachers. Dallsgard (2006), demonstrates statistically that collaborative software in learning spaces improves learning outcomes by including collaboration and social learning. Several web logs such as the one at  http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/05/25/lesson-study-when-teachers-team-up-to-improve-teaching/ demonstrate empirically that teacher collaboration improves the practice of teaching (MindShift, 2016). Collaboration is one of the key factors of this change plan because as the shared presentation resource illustrates, collaboration also reduces the effort needed from individual instructors while developing peer-reviewed presentation materials for teaching public disaster preparedness education, in a way that makes use of online resources and tools such as in the example lesson plan. 

Section 3: Literature Review

        Haddow, Bullock & Coppola (2011), in a 4th edition textbook discuss clearly the Incident Command System (ICS) and the guidelines expected for public disaster preparedness education according to the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) recommendations for preparedness, the text first reflects on education programs which had existed before ICS and mentions that the academic approach to preparedness education is becoming increasingly valued. According to Haddow, Bullock & Coppola (2011), preparedness education courses are expected to "1. Present citizens with the facts about what to expect following a major disaster in terms of immediate services. 2. Give the message about their responsability for mitigation and preparedness. 3. Train them in needed lifesaving skills, with an emphasis on decision-making skills, rescuer safety, and doing the greatest good for the greatest number. 4. Organize teams so they are an extension of first-responder services, offering immedate help to victims until professional services arrive." (pp. 110-111). The current Be Red Cross Ready infrastructure does not currently by itself offer the education required by these guidelines, but could with a combination of other coursework offered by The Red Cross. A new approach to preparing materials for and instructing public disaster preparedness education coursework is necessary in order to meet the new federal guidelines.

Section 4: Change Plan

        This section describes the change plan created for implementing the use of shared resources which had been created for a course on education and change (Hixson, 2016b; Hixson, 2016c; Hixson, 2016d). The system for implementing change is based on course materials designed for that purpose (Hord & Roussin, 2013). Given that the plan is designed to create a system for meeting FEMA CERT guidelines as required by the federal government, and it reduces stakeholder effort in meeting those guidelines, the only concern for this implementation is the resilience of the status quo. Stakeholders will want some guarantee that the outcomes from the preparedness education program will in fact increase compliance with CERT guidelines, as evidenced by the formative assessment built into this change.

Part 1: Strategies for change and the skeletal plan for implementation. 

Part 2: Innovation Configuration Map (Hord & Roussin, 2013; Hixson, 2016c).

The innovation configuration map is designed to measure the outcomes associated with a proposed change, by component, where 1 is the most effective outcome for each component and 5 is the least effective.

Innovation Configuration Map

Adapted from http://sdmasterteachers.wikispaces.com/Innovation+Configuration

Change Topic: Implementation of an effective and collaborative public disaster education program according to FEMA CERT Guidelines, instead of existing systems that cannot be measured for accountability.

Appendix I. Post-hoc assessment form

Part 3: Stages of Concern and Levels of Use

        In previous coursework I had explained a concern that the Hourd & Roussin (2013), stages of concern concept was actually a complicated concept that really only elaborated on the level of awareness stakeholders share in the implementation of the change. In the current coursework, workable interventions are required for each of the seven strata of community awareness and levels of use. What follows is an adaptation of the Hord & Roussin (2013) stages of concern as well as the levels of use required by the change plan. This adaptation is based on social cognitive theory and social learning for the motivation of change as described in an article that elaborates the stages of social involvement and self-enhancement that contribute to self-esteem through participation in social groups (Tasdemir, 2011).

Part 4: Monitoring the Implementation

As volunteer instructors move through the strata of community awareness, the way in which they conduct the cited benchmark (shown in appendix I of part 2 above), will demonstrate the efficacy of course presentations and course materials. Receiving the data from completed post-hoc assessments in order to assess the performance of public disaster preparedness education groups, will also provide feedback about the level of use that the instructor is engaged in. As instructors begin to use the assessment tool, and their level of use increases, the amount of data about the performance of the training program increases as does the efficacy of the course presentations themselves which is based on review of the post-hoc assessment in the system demonstrated on this page.

Section 5: Reflection

While working with a team of volunteer educators, the social aspect of learning and teaching becomes relevant as course instructors collaborate to develop shared online course materials for the teaching of public disaster preparedness education. Volunteer instructors will be responsible for formulating the lesson plans and presentations given to the larger student audience, and the progress of the training program will be monitored using an assessment. 

The Hord & Roussin (2013), strategies demonstrated in the text on change through learning over-complicates the process of implementation. As you can see in the materials generated according to the system, what was once a simple course lesson plan that is designed to host shared materials, has become a complex innovation with many rich-media elements that are largely not needed in order to properly implement the change. The elements about the system described on this page which are positive all are related to measuring the stakeholders' readiness for change and the need for change itself. The innovation configuration map and the levels of use assessments are not needed to evaluate the performance of the innovation. The provided benchmark formative assessment and the data which is provides can accurately measure the performance of preparedness instruction according to the confidence demonstrated by students in preparedness education. On the page containing the actual lesson plan, a pre-existing template for benchmarking the performance of the innovation exists as shown in a screen capture here.