New challenge facing my organization<\/p>\n
According to statistics collected from 6 years of continuous survey, undergraduate students and above remain the dominant group of prospective students (73% of the total students continuing their student careers abroad); however, the data also indicated a potential indicator worthwhile noticing \u2013 an increasing trend can be seen it the portion of students in primary and secondary schools who intend to further study abroad, which is an increase of 4% (New Oriental Education., 2020). It is based on this growth that the marketing department in my company\u00a0 predict a surging market in English training business, a virgin land deserving a new strategic scheme \u2013 it begets a challenge to new curricular design and pedagogy adjustment, which will be an arduous task incorporating various stakeholders from leadership to teachers on the front line. The plan aims to provide a toolkit that serves to initiate a technology change with reference to the potential business opportunity.<\/p>\n
Identify the problem with current course design<\/p>\n
Since the early 1990s, the traditional curricula design of IELTS exam training has been divided into 4 distinct courses of the exam (listening, reading, speaking, writing), each is taught separately. The course design is aimed at undergraduate students aged 18-21. The characteristics of this group is that they have relatively less study pressure from their universities and therefore more time to spend on training courses. Also, many of them are at the peak of their English language level, given that they have just completed high school learning. Adding to this point is their independent learning capability, who do not need much mentoring support and can associate knowledge in sperate courses by themselves. However, the teaching mode doesn\u2019t apply to younger learners in primary and secondary school years. The features of teenagers are different, following are some of key characteristics.<\/p>\n
First is their lack of after school time \u2013 the majority are inundated with compulsory school work. Adding to the point is that most of primary and secondary schools are boarding schools, which means that distant learning will be more propriate model for this group. Another point is their inadequate learning capability \u2013 those in primary and secondary school only have basic English grammar and vocabulary knowledge, which is incompatible with the current academic standards of our training course design. Given this, it requires a new course design, from course content, digital platform to pedagogies.<\/p>\n
Strategies around leadership (who will lead the initiative)<\/p>\n
The first step we need is to clarify the project scope and organizational goal for student success \u2013 the action is based on Team A\u2019s toolkit (Eric, Jean-Pierre, Shelley & Vanessa, 2021), by which we will define the organizational policies on all facets of the projects, whether these be charters, standards, procedures or personals, etc. (Cox, 2009, p. 68). It is with the well defined project scope the clear goal that my organization can appoint the right leadership and strategy. According to aforementioned requirement for change, the project will need the participation of almost all departments, namely, course design, teaching and IT teams as main body, with budget, training staff as supporting teams. Based on the project scope, \u00a0the intended audiences of this project are the directors of education, sales and marketing departments of my organization, whom I believe will be the appropriate leaders for such an overarching project. The cooperation of the 3 key department will the core of the whole project from design to implementation; the 3 leaders will act as the key role to address the complexity of the project (Watts, 2014). Apart from the identification of intended audience and leadership, I will identify the role of myself in the project to be a member of course design team \u2013 this role is based on my experience as both a teacher and course designer for many years, not to left behind is my understanding of discrete demands of students\u2019 and different age groups.<\/p>\n
Change management (impacts, stakeholders),<\/p>\n
While the leadership is appointed, it comes to the change management, which mainly focus on scrutiny of stakeholders of the change and the impacts on them. Again, addorcing to Team A\u2019s toolkit (Eric, Jean-Pierre, Shelley & Vanessa, 2021), stakeholders are the judges who have the right to assess the success of a project (Jergeas & Williamson, 2000); it is important to identify all the stakeholders in the project upfront so as to avoid any undesirable consequences and uncertainty to the project caused by them (Karlsen, 2002). The key stakeholders of the change include students, course designers and teachers, coupled with other internal and external individuals participating in the project, namely, IT service, research company, financial and training teams. As for the impacts, the change is expected to make course align with the demand of students, while teachers in each course will be more effective with the new course design. Also, while the change will inevitably require extra costs, the success of the change will increase revenue for the organization from a long-term perspective.<\/p>\n
Project management (resources, timelines)<\/p>\n
As for costs of the change project mentioned above, the change project management serves to manage the three key elements of the costs \u2013 the collection of data for decision making, resources and timelines. The detailed items are as following:<\/p>\n