EDLD 5301 ~ Week Two

(Previously published October 23, 2012 -- Accidentally deleted and retrieved)

This week I learned that action research is passion driven to solve issues on campus.  There are nine common topics that can be addressed on campus.  These common topics are staff and curriculum development, individual teachers and students, school culture, leadership and management, school performance, and social justice.  I learned this week that you have to identify a topic for an action research plan, collect data, and develop a plan for improvement in the area of the topic.  

After watching the videos assigned, I learned that better results for an action plan involves looking at an issue that is practical.  You should be interested in the topic and the outcomes.  You should research your topic to see if others have studied and implemented improvement successfully.  I especially enjoyed the quote from Dr. Chargois, “if you’re green, you’re growing, if you’re brown, you’re dying.”  Never stop learning.

I met with my site supervisor to discuss a topic for action research.  We talked about food service on campus needing improving.  This year will be the end of a ten year contract with the current campus food service provider.  My site supervisor would like me to survey students on campus for fast food choices they prefer offered.  He wants to know if students prefer brand fast food or maybe more quality cafeteria food.  My site supervisor wants to place me on the RFP committee that will be making the decisions on the upcoming food service contracts.

Another possible topic of interest is staff professional development.  Many of our new hires are not properly trained when hired.  A goal would be to design department training manuals for new hires and refreshers for current staff.  Design and develop training workshops and eventually design training materials and videos to offer online. 

The topic I am most interested in is developing a customer service initiative.  This topic can be overlapped with the staff professional development topic.  Many employees on campus are not trained properly, not only involving job duties but good customer service training.  Many employees are not skilled in dealing with anger management, telephone skills, body language, student diversity, or conflict resolution.  My site supervisor would like me to lead a committee that is charged with designing workshops and manuals to train and teach good customer service on our campus.  This is the topic we are leaning more toward as my action research project.  My site supervisor feels this is an important topic and a needed change on campus.  He feels training employees to better handle situations that arise, will in turn, produce better customer service for faculty, staff and most importantly, students.