Planning a project Unit 3b Skills: Implementing the needs analysis and drafting the mobility type Dear colleague, In the previous unit you had the opportunity to plan the needs analysis and collected the possible mobility schemes your institution may choose from. In this unit you will have the opportunity to collect field data and analyze it. Having completed this module, you: * Will have briefly analyzed the needs of your and the partner organizations * Will have a profile of the learners/teachers of mobility * Will have made decision on the type of mobility scheme * Will have selected the most appropriate Erasmus + mobility scheme You will need a bit more than 60 minutes to complete the present unit We wish you a pleasant work! 1. Document research and information from staff Having collected all possible documents and resources related to mobility and relationship policy, it is time to read them to find supporting information for mobility. This activity should be related to all institutions that are planned to be in the partnership. Activity 1. Documented need for mobility Activity for individual work or distributed work in the partnership 1. Search for specific information in the strategic document about aims, long term goals of the institution that could be fulfilled by mobility. Copy and paste sentences that are relevant. You can think of direct reference to mobility aims, networking, or strengthening international relations, but you could find indirect references about specific aims for skills development like language or vocational skills that could be supported by your project. 2. Formulate paragraphs based on those information about the direct and indirect needs of the institution. Pay attention to the simplicity and concentrate on the mayor issues! Do not spend more than 15 minutes, later in the application phase you will have enough time to formulate and develop further the idea! Feedback 1. Did you find business opportunities, networking opportunities, language skills development, marketing aspects, learner enrolment, international visibility? Could you use partner institution documentation? You may also consult with your mentor. After some desk research let us start with field research, the interviews. If you can organize it can be very rewarding later if you can do the same for the planned partnership stakeholders either by a contact person or by you. This can be the first networking exercise to build ups closer relationship among parthers. Activity 2. Stakeholder interviews Activity for individual or distributed work in the partnership 1. Organise 2-3 short face to face interviews with your institutional management, teaching and administrative staff about existing needs and problems that could be solved or reduced by mobility! Use the questions you formulated in the previous unit. 2. Summarise and analise your findings in a few paragraph. Use triangulation to compare all interwiews, and select the most important messages that would support your mobility programme. Pay attention to keep the interviews relatively short and concentrate on the related issues! Do not spend more than 20 minutes with one interview! Try to keep the findings not more than a half page and keep the messages specific. Feedback 2. If you are leading an institution, answer management questions yourself and invite some of your staff to make the interview. You may find interesting to talk to colleagues you normally do not have a chance to do so. In the case of partner institutions the energy and time needed for doing the exercise is a good indication for the boundaries of collaboration in the upcoming project. Now you are half way through the analysis work, you have most of the information you could gain from documentation and yourcolleagues. 2. Field research: learner survey The biggest data set is still missing, the learners’ (or parents) answers and profile. You have already designed a questionnaire, now you have to plan how to reach the potential target. You may think of delivering the survey in a traditional paper based form for example in the classes you teach, but an electronic form could be also useful. If you design an on-line survey you do not need to make the statistics yourself, the application will do it for you. You may use: * Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com) * Google customer surveys (https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home) * Any other open source surveys your institution uses. (One more example: Lime survey) You may also mix different approaches. Whatever method you use, you have to reach your target in a way. You probably will need the help of your colleagues who can help you. In many cases you will not have primary learner or parent data for privacy reasons, but you may easily disseminate your survey anonymously via mailing list, or by colleagues who will send it to their learners directly. Activity 3. Implement a mobility needs survey Individual activity - Design the implementation process! 1. Design the channels, 2. collect the people and addresses you want to use as multiplicators, 3. collect the partner institution contacts as well. 4. Make decisions of the timing: time to reach your target (learners, parents), time to fill in the suervey, return time (in case of print survey) deadline to close the survey, time to analyse it. - Design an accompanying cover letter, or letters in case of different targets. - Prepare the final survey to print, or create the on-line survey and publish it. Test it, and estimate the filling in time, that you can indicate in your cover letter. - Send out, the Cover letter with link to the on-line survey, or attach the print survey. This exercise will be a bit longer than usual in case of a simple situation it may last 30 minutes if all data and survey are available. Feedback 3. Make sure that you use accurate data, and all your colleagues understand your goals. Try to find the best timing for the process! If you leave too much time people will tend to postpone the answer. If you urge too much your target, they would also be reluctant to collaborate. Depending your situation, area, time of year, this time-scale could be from a few days to a week. In case of bigger breaks two weeks can be reasonable. You may also involve your planned partners in the design process as well. In this case you may consult with them about the timing of the questionnaire as well. Dear colleague! We are approaching to the most interesting phase of the needs analysis: the collection and analysis of data. 3. Data collection and analysis You have probably sent out the letters to reach your target. You probably reached your partner institutions, or you have already asked you learners to fill in the print survey. If you have reached the deadline, it is time to analyse the data. This module is not aiming at scientific analysis, only a quick one. Activity 4. Analise your resources! Individual activity Collect all the information you have! If you used different means for suryey, try to enter the print ones to the on-line survey so that you have the whole set of data in one place. The analysis may go sequentially question by question and evaluation by block. It is also common that researchers make a quick analysis based on objective data based on the closed questions and leave the slower manual analysis process of open questions to a later phase. Try to concentrate to the most popular motifs, or the top (top 3) rankings. We ask you to summarise your findings by the tree block of questions 1. What are the basic needs of your learners? (Mayor motivations, popular countries, time indication 2. What are the main findings in the specific needs block? (language skills, training needs, transport, accommodation, economic and administrative findings) 3. What is the profile of your mobility target group (learners, staff)? Please summarise the age, gender and other items that you had in the survey. It is quit common that we use diagrammes to present those data. Diagram making is strongly supported by spreadsheets and on-line survey tools. 4. Discuss your findings with your mentor! If you can ask colleagues to give you a hand, or if you are in the position to delegate this task, the final analysis could be finalized within 15 minutes, but the real analysis work may last a few hours. Keep the analysis short! If the survey was a page long the analysis should not exceed the two pages. Discuss your findings with your mentor! Feedback 4. If you are preparing larger project with more planned institutions, you may go for more than one target, either by time, profession, or country. In this case try to select the more characteristic ones. Try to find colleagues to help you, who are familiar with survey making. 5. Choosing an appropriate programme Now you know much more about your situation about partners, mobility needs and the profile of your participants, than you had when you drafted the project summary. You are much closer now to be able to select the most relevant Mobility type and scheme from the list you prepared in the previous unit. The next activity we invite you to select the the mobility schemes that best fit to your needs and participant profile. Activity 5. Select the most appropriate programs from your list Individual activity 1. Look at all non EU programs that you have listed, and in the light of your findings select one or two opportunities that are best fit to your project idea (with all information that you know about needs and profile already). 2 Check the Erasmus+ opportunities in the light of needs and profile, and select the most appropriate ones. This topic is discussed in more detail in the Module: European programs. ***Ide kérek egy linket az európai programokra*** Show and discuss your findings with your mentor, and partners as well. Feedback 5. Try to collect information on the tendering possibilities and managing agency of the program from colleagues who have already experience in that. Some programs are more straight-forward and easy to collaborate as grant holder, some others are more “tricky” and may hold hidden barriers. Dear colleague, At the end of this unit, we hope that you already have a detailed data on your mobility needs and participant profile, and have selected the most promising grants and programs. Next Unit is a knowledge unit about the project plan and work programme.