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The Psychology of Learning

For this assessment, you have been given two case studies: one for a business and one for an educational establishment. Your task is to write a 3000-word report consisting of a comprehensive learning needs analysis based on one of these two case studies. To do this, you need to identify the learning needs for one of the case studies, address who the learners will be and what additional needs should be considered.

Please do remember that, as with all psychology assignments, your work should be underpinned with critically reviewed theory and research examples.

You should include the following elements in your report:

• Problem statement: write a brief (50-100 words) outlining what kind of training you would design for the case outlined.
• Academic literature review (approximately 1000-1200 words): review relevant training/psychological literature to your chosen training domain. Outline relevant psychological considerations when designing training in this particular domain.
• Detail the appropriate relevant aspects to the training needs you are recommending. For example, what geographical, budget, access requirements would be important?
• Target audience of learners. Consider the demographic, baseline levels of knowledge/skills.
• Competencies required for the learner. The competencies should take into consideration learners’ self-efficacy and what role their mindsets might play in the needs analysis. You should also consider whether the competencies can be addressed in a manner that fosters equality of learning for all learners.
• Justification for why those competencies is important for the training
• ‘Gap’ analysis (likely difference between baseline levels of knowledge/skills and those required to achieve by the end of the training session).
• Any additional needs to be considered for delivering the training, for example adaptations for disability.   You might also consider, for example, whether innovations in learning could be utilised to enhance the skills or accessibility of the needs analysis.

Please remember to consider work from across the module when formulating your needs analysis.

Whilst neither case study indicates the purpose of the business/education age to be considered, they do outline the issues. You must choose the issues you feel are most prevalent and write your learning needs analysis appropriately. You can choose as many as you wish but remember that you need to demonstrate criticality and wider reading, so it is important to be succinct and concise.

Business Study Case

This is an example of the impact a CEO can have on a company. It is based on a real situation but some of the names and company names have been changed.

You need to develop a needs analysis based on the work we have looked at so far in this module to write an assignment on how you would improve this company through teaching and learning

The first day jumped from strategy sessions to upcoming product discussions. But on day two, when the topic shifted to employee engagement, and with CEO X Links to an external site.in and out of the room, things went downhill fast. When, Yahoo’s head of h.r., glossed over results from a recent employee survey that showed dramatic double-digit drops in metrics like morale and trust in the company’s executive leadership, various vice presidents began venting to one another. Those murmurs of discontent erupted into outright heckling when another session—billed as an opportunity to improve communication—turned into a lecture from Yahoo’s top brass that many found patronizing. Vice presidents started calling out their superiors for “not listening,” “not understanding” and “not being interested in changing.” Some cursed.

“It was the most stressful and acrimonious professional meeting I’ve ever attended,” says one participant.

Such is the situation at Yahoo these days. More than three years after CEO X was brought in to turn things around, the original Internet media giant is still failing at its core business and getting whipped not only by Google Links to an external site.and Facebook Links to an external site.but also, by newer entrants such as Instagram, Snapchat and even the beleaguered Twitter Links to an external site. In the most recent quarter, its net revenue declined 8% and search revenue, a priority of CEO X’s, declined 13%. Overall traffic has continued to inch downward, and none of its new mobile apps has yielded inexperienced users or revenue on the scale Yahoo needs to offset the declines. The stock market has rendered its assessment: Yahoo, which has a market value of £31 billion, owns a £30 billion stake in Alibaba, an £8 billion stake in Yahoo Japan and has £5.5 billion in cash net of debt. While investors often apply discounts to the company’s Asian assets to account for possible taxes and other risks related to their eventual spin off, in many models Yahoo’s core business – with £4 billion in revenue and 10,700 employees – has an implied valuation of less than zero.

CEO X inherited a tough situation. The very idea of an Internet portal—a Yahoo or an AOL—is a relic of a Web era 15 years ago when advertisers were willing to pay dearly for a massive home page audience that could direct millions on to a plethora of services like Mail, News, Sports, Finance, Autos and Search. That model doesn’t compute in the mobile era, where apps and social networks dominate.

CEO X lost her chief accounting officer, chief marketing officer, chief development officer, a string of senior vice presidents and an alarming number of vice presidents from across the company in product, engineering, sales and human resources, with more defections to come.

Education Case Study

This is a mock OFSTED report for a school that requires improvement. For your assessment you need to write a needs analysis as to how you would improve the school using everything we have discussed in this module.

This is a school that requires improvement:

•  Outcomes are not good enough. Standards at the end of key stages are too low and are not improving quickly enough.
• The quality of teaching is too variable. Expectations of what pupils can and should achieve are not high enough.
• The most able and the middle-ability pupils are not enabled to reach the highest standards in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Teachers do not consistently use assessment information well enough to match work precisely to pupils’ different needs and abilities.
• Teaching in a range of subjects lacks sufficient challenge to ensure that pupils can make the best progress across the curriculum.
• Too many pupils are regularly absent from school.
• Some leaders are new to their roles and have not yet been able to demonstrate the full impact of their work on pupils’ progress in reading, writing and mathematics.
• Governors are not yet holding leaders precisely to account for standards in the school.

The school has the following strengths  

• Disadvantaged pupils and pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) make some progress.
• Pupils make stronger progress in mathematics than in English.
• Pupils benefit from a range of opportunities to develop spiritually, morally, socially and culturally.

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Increase the effectiveness of leadership and management, by:
•  sharpening the knowledge and skills of members of the governing body to more effectively hold leaders to account for pupils’ outcomes and the overall quality of their education
•  developing senior and middle leaders so they contribute more significantly to improving the quality of teaching and learning and raising standards
•  ensuring that the curriculum, especially in subjects beyond English and mathematics, enables pupils to develop greater knowledge and deepen their understanding across a wide range of subjects
• strengthening the monitoring and evaluation processes across the school to be focused and improving the curriculum, teaching and learning as well as pupils’ outcomes.
• Improve teaching so that all groups of pupils make consistently good progress, by:
• ensuring that all staff have the highest expectations of what pupils can do and   achieve
• ensuring that teachers provide greater challenge for all, including the most able and the middle-ability pupils, so that they make stronger progress across all subjects
•  increasing pupils’ attainment in reading and writing in particular so that more pupils reach the higher and expected standards at the end of key stages
• ensuring that a greater proportion of children reach a good level of development by the end of their school career.
• Continue to improve attendance and reduce persistent absence by further raising the aspirations of parents and carers to see the relevance and value of education, so that their children attend regularly.