New Initiative in Program Planning

As program planning goes, a lot of the work is done on a smaller scale, developing workshops and courses to meet specific needs of particular populations, often in workplaces or community-based organizations. I'm going to be planning a much larger set of programs over the ten months however, and so I'm going to be implementing a "soup to nuts" program planning process. I'm curious what my working process will be, because I want to see if my theories about emergent program planning will be confirmed.

I'm going to try to determine what the stages and transformations are within the larger planning process, and I want to keep an eye on which things take precedence at which stage.

FIRST STAGE - The Wide Open Field

This first stage is of course the easiest stage, because the "ingredients" are limited. At the same time, the open-endedness of having so few ingredients could feel quite overwhelming if I didn't completely trust that I would soon find out which direction to head across the field, and that order would come to the chaos. It is exhilarating, because so much seems possible, but also a bit daunting, because there are gopher holes all over the field, and I hope to avoid most of them.

So far, I have a very vague sense of my overall task (develop new joint programs between two institutions to cement an educational partnership and bring in new student populations), I have an equally vague sense of who I'll be working with, but I don't yet know the stakeholders or what they really want out of this or what they will call "success".

I'm going to spend about 50 hours doing general research. I've started with a broad environmental scan: Manitoban demographics, Canadian demographic trends, baby boomer and echo boomers (the target student population), labour market trends in Manitoba, active employment sectors, Aboriginal demographics, immigrant statistics and demographics. So far, I've checked into existing, comparable diploma and certificate programs in Canada, Germany (too high level), France (not much help), New Zealand. I've found a variety of research reports on trends in Canada's post-secondary world. I've started one binder to hold general research, and another to hold program ideas from other colleges around the world.

I'm getting a sense of how different programs are structured, as well as finding out something about full-time vs part-time, entrance requirements, program flexibility, and academic support components. I haven't found anything wildly exciting yet, and feel like it's too early to be able to see anything clearly yet. It's tiring, because there's a lot to take in. I remember this from when I started writing the online EAL teacher certification program. It felt a bit like trying to count the grasses in a field, one blade at a time. There's just not enough information yet to have anything 'gel'.

Next week is the first meeting with both sets of stakeholders - in one room. I hope to be firmly enough landed in the world of post-secondary joint programming that I can ask questions that quickly get at the heart of the matter. I need to know the "secret" hopes and dreams for these programs. I need to know how each stakeholder views "success". I need to get up to speed and into their brains in one one-hour meeting. Then the search will broaden out, I suspect, and I'll enter a new phase of data-gathering.