Graduate Studies Online Course Services Mini-grant

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Psychology 267: Employee Training & Development

Course Description

The graduate students in my course, Employee Training and Development, are all students in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology cohort. In recent cohorts, this has ranged from 5-11 students. The incoming class (Fall, 2024) has 10 students in their cohort, and we expect to admit another 5-10 students for the Fall, 2025 cohort. This class provides an in-depth view of strategic planning, training, learning, evaluation of training, and employee development, with an emphasis on an applied training project. It fits into the department's curriculum as a required course for the Industrial-Organizational Psychology graduate program.

Catalog Description: PSYC267. Application of psychological principles to problems of employee training and development; techniques for determining training requirements, motivating trainees, providing feedback on trainee performance, ensuring positive transfer of training to the job situation, and employee development programs. Graded. Units: 3.0. Pre-requisites: None

Motivation for Graduate Studies Online Course Services Mini-grant Participation

In the past, all I-O students have been employed in relevant positions on a full-time basis, so we have attempted to accommodate their busy schedules by offering the graduate classes in the evenings. Given this background, it is important and relevant to students to get a high-quality education and be able to demonstrate that they can apply what they have learned to the workplace. The students in the cohort enjoy a sense of community through prior coursework and proposal development, and are understandably concerned with educational access and time constraints. Thus, expanding the accessibility through online modalities is important for our program.

I see many opportunities for improvement for this course design, particularly in the areas of educational access and time constraints. I envision being able to achieve and demonstrate many of the student learning outcomes in the online asynchronous activities, and hope to add many of the community and collaborative components within the synchronous online environment. I think the newly designed course will be the best combination of learning environments for our I-O graduate students. Applying the Quality Matters structure will improve the delivery of course content, and benefit the students through improved: accessibility, objectives/competencies, assessments and feedback, learner interactions and support, and use of instructional technology.

Alignment or Engagement Changes Addressed in Course

(1) Improvements to the Course Overview and Introduction (see screenshot in Image 1 below).

QM Standard 1 addresses the clarity and accessibility of materials in the Course Overview and Introduction. As part of this course redesign, I adapted the OCS homepage template to provide student's with access to the key components of the course at-a-glance. I also improved the course introduction with a course overview video, module link, and navigation tools. Some of these improvements are represented below in the Image 1 textbox.

(2): Improvements to Learning Activities and Learner Interaction (see example of learning activity in Image 2 below).

Part of the QM General Standard 5 addresses three types of course engagement: learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner.

As part of my course redesign, numerous weekly activities have been developed to ensure that the course learning objectives have been accomplished. Examples of these activities per category include:

Learner-content: reading the textbook chapter and taking the chapter self-assessments (interactive quizzes), reading the assigned journal article and answering essay prompts, and documenting progress on a training project by writing a weekly action research report.

Learner-instructor: engaging in an interactive lecture (instructor presents the lecture, students provide examples as prompted), instructor weekly feedback on the journal article essays and action research reports.

Learner-learner: peers learn from each other during the interactive lecture, and group discussions of the journal article critiques and action research reports.

(3): Inclusion of contacts/links for Academic Support Services & Resources (see example in Image 3 below).

QM General Standard 7 addresses Academic Support Services, with Essential SRS 7.3 referencing Academic Support Services and Resources.

Sacramento State University has established templates to include detailed information (e.g., location, contact information, and links) to a wide variety of academic support services. At this time, I have included the standard template in my course redesign. Even if students in my graduate class will not need to use all of these support services, it will be very reassuring to them to see the range of help available, should they need it.

Evidence of Redesign

Examples of Redesign
QM General Standard 1: SRS 1.1, 1.2 Course Introduction/Overview Course Overview (Canvas Homepage)	QM General Standard 5: Learning Activities and Interaction [Learning Activities Example] Example of assignment with learner-instructor and learner-learner activities	QM General Standard 7: Learner Support Sacramento State University Template for Support Services Student Services Available at Sacramento State University

Faculty Bio
	Professor Strickland obtained a Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Purdue University, as well as the national Senior Professional in Human Resources credential. Her teaching and research interests include workplace psychology, critical thinking, training, and stress management. She also has conducted numerous applied research projects that focus on training and program evaluation within organizations.