Needs Assessment

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Communication across the Curriculum Needs Assessment

Kimberly Bourque Louisiana State University HRE 7571 December 8, 2008


Bourque – CxC Needs Assessment HRE 7571 Performance Analysis

Executive Summary Introduction In today’s world graduates entering the workforce are required more and more to exhibit good communication skills. At Louisiana State University, a program exists to assist students with improving those skills before entering the workforce. Communication across the Curriculum (CxC) assists students with communication skills through the facilitation of communication-intensive courses. After the creation of this program in 2004, the Director of CxC wanted to gain more information about the recruiting successes to this point since a formal plan had never been created to increase interest in the program. Currently, CxC utilizes various methods to recruit faculty members into the program, including presentations at departmental meetings and in classrooms. Most of the recruiting efforts are done by word-of-mouth and on an as-needed basis rather than in a consistent and strategic fashion. Objectives The major goal of this needs assessment is to measure the faculty of LSU’s familiarity with the CxC program and then to compare the recruiting efforts to that of other programs around the country like CxC. The objectives for this needs assessment are:

1. To describe the level of familiarity of LSU faculty members with the Communication across the Curriculum program 2. To learn how faculty members at LSU prefer to learn about academic programs such as CxC. 3. To describe how other universities market communication-intensive courses.

Louisiana State University, Fall 2008

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Bourque – CxC Needs Assessment HRE 7571 Performance Analysis

Methods & Data Analysis To achieve the objectives of this study, a survey was sent out to the faculty members of LSU to gauge their familiarity with the CxC as well as their preferred medium of communication when learning about a new academic service. Approximately 23% (284 respondents) of the population (approximately 1,200) responded to the survey with 46% (133 respondents) measuring their knowledge of the CxC program at or below the somewhat familiar level. A majority of the respondents rated broadcast email to be one of their preferred modes of communication with regards to learning about academic resources. A second survey was sent to six programs like CxC’s at various universities to benchmark their efforts in order to rate CxC’s efforts; four programs responded to the survey. Each program noted a minimum communication-intensive course requirement for students at their University; a requirement that LSU does not have currently. This requirement suggests a built-in recruiting effort by the University in order to allow such drastic curriculum changes across the board.

Recommendations & Conclusion After the data was analyzed, with 46% of the faculty at LSU not reporting a working knowledge of the CxC program, this suggests that a larger effort to publicize the program needs to be undertaken with the development of a complete recruiting plan. This plan should list the goals of recruitment as well as how to implement such a plan. Another recommendation is for CxC to consistently publicize information about the program and services, rather than just through wordof-mouth and on an as requested basis. The goal of the CxC program is to assist LSU students with improving their communication skills before graduation, with one of those methods being the certification of communication-intensive courses. In order to best assist the students of LSU,

Louisiana State University, Fall 2008

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Bourque – CxC Needs Assessment HRE 7571 Performance Analysis

a comprehensive plan needs to be developed in order to implement, measure and assess the ways in which faculty and students are assisted.

Louisiana State University, Fall 2008

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