Formative Evaluator's Report: Bridging the Gap, Phase II (Appendices)
Recommendations
  • An appropriate physical learning environment is really important to consider up front.
  • Need more lead time. The instructor should have been started at least a month earlier (20 working days). Essentially you are designing a completely new curriculum. And it has no text book. The curriculum here is completely new to the College.
  • For the instructor – when they are hired or interviewed their responsibilities should be outlined clearly up front. There is no job description. The roles and responsibilities should have been shared with them up front.
  • The equipment that you need to do your job needs to be ready as soon as the job is ready. Five weeks into the program before he had the computer and Internet access here at the office which meant he had to go to the College to check his email. And had to do a lot of the course research online and it was on dial–up which made it slower. The money wasn't there for high speed. If recommendation #1 was in place he could have done most of the research then.
  • The time to get permission for field trips is way too long. This goes through the funding partners. They need the money for transportation primarily. He tried to do two and could only do one because of the amount of time it takes to get permission. Have the funding built in for others.
  • All 8 of them should have the money much more along the same scale. Too many differences.
  • Everybody should be given a second chance, but not a third. There was no authority. There was no action. No penalizing part of it all. They had no teeth to get rid of unco–operative clients.
  • If I had my time back, I would have had to have had prep time. I needed time. I prepped at night.
  • He worked on a 30 hour basis and the students work 35
  • When you hire on the next instructor – they want to delineate their job descriptions are. A reading specialist would be the ideal type of person.
  • There was no money for field trips. This needs to be there in the future.
  • The testing and the interviews are too much. Just a simple CAAT test level B would have been fine.
  • Better orientation of the CLN and the sponsor in terms of their roles and responsibilities.
  • Not to be part of the selection committee
  • Making the pre and post assessments took up more time than anticipated. Didn't know what was expected. In future the pre and post should be circulated that are already done for helpful.
  • More flexibility in the program – they can't just up and go to do things. Everything is too rigid. Every hour they spend in the greenhouse they are expected to be in the classroom. There will be fallow times when they will have lots of time for academics. It is rigid that way.
  • Maybe on the beginning have all the sites starting the one time and all Academic instructors got together for a full week and better knew what they had to do. They would develop a better relationship with one another. I didn't know the others and there was no relationship there. At least a few more of the teleconferences.
  • Might have been a good idea for the students and the AI to have the same amount of hours. There was an extra hour that the participants were in that the AI wasn't supposed to, acording to her contract.
  • ½ day practical and ½ day academic was a great idea, but there was no preparation time. There were always students.
  • Pre– & post assessments and final reports would also have benefitted from more networking and collaboration from among the AIs.