Mychal Davis

There are people and considerations that could be included in this project, but because of time and relevancy they are not included here. This project is not for facilitators outside of the organization Higher Ground, USA. Although it could benefit other organizations, this project focuses on the staff development of solely Higher Ground facilitators at this time. Similarly, this project is not intended for students studying group decision-making and/or experiential education. This project does not include theory or research about demographic-based influences on communication effectiveness within small groups. There is room for expansion of this curriculum to include demographic-based influences, but it is not relevant for the current purposes. 

 

Through completion of the website-based curriculum outlined here, ideas for quicker technology-based facilitation development were elicited. The use of other experts’ videos and articles supplemented the original content created for this curriculum. A recommendation for further staff development is the creation of in-house videos and/or short articles focusing on both hard and soft skills. By the limitation of time, this project was housed on a public website through the domain Weebly. It would be more effective and longer-lasting to import this curriculum into a web-based learning portal similar to Blackboard for participants in the course to converse with one another, track progress, ask questions to the facilitator and reference course material more easily.

This Curriculum for Facilitating Effective Group Communication will have a direct effect on each of the Higher Ground facilitators that take part in the curriculum opportunity this year. By way of these instructors, over 3000 participants will be effected by the facilitation techniques developed through this curriculum. This project is the next phase in staff investment and intentional development at Higher Ground. The Program Director will continue to implement phase 1 through an ORGL 518, Transforming Leadership, project that focuses on relationship building between professional and contracted staff and opening opportunities for technical skill development. Phase 2, the project at hand, will be presented to 43 facilitators and after completion a survey will be given in order to make this development tool better for next year.