Background

The Idaho foodbank (IFB) recognized that incoming donations of domesticated meats, domesticated poultry, farmed fish, and wild game must always comply with Federal and State food safety regulations. While these incoming donations (or queries about them) were infrequent, the emphasis on compliance with food safety regulations is of the utmost importance to the foodbank.

Instructional Design Opportunity

When the food safety compliance manager recognized that the process of assessing incoming these specific donations needed support and enlisted the help of our OPWL instructional design (ID) team.

The client requested that the team review the current assessment process and develop performance support focused on regulation compliance and proper donation assessment at the warehouse.

Methods

The team got to work, using the Learning and Performance Support (LeaPs) model (OPWL, 2020) as a framework for our ID development. LeaPs is focused on the interconnected contextual relationships of instructional design (ID) outputs. These contexts are based on the following environmental factors: societal, organizational, and individual work. Within these contexts an ID project can gain better insight into ID work through phase-based activities.

LeaPs Phase 1: Empathizing and Analyzing Donation Assessment Practices at IFB

To kick off the project, the team reviewed multiple data sources to gain background knowledge. Data sources included:

• Review of current standard operating procedures: this review provided a foundation for the team to understand current procedures learners were required to follow
• Interviews with current management of safety operations: a structured interview to assessment practices and identify tasks required of learners during the donation process
• Extant review of donation guides: an opportunity that gave the ID team insight to how a job aid might look

The team then met with the current IFB food safety manager, setting aside any assumptions about the project to empathize and analyze the project requirements and to better understand our audience. This meeting coupled with further probing led the team’s development of a training requirements analysis, a task analysis, and an environmental analysis for the project.

From the analysis phase, the team identified that the ID solution would be comprised of a brief training on current donation assessment practices with an accompanying job aid as an on the job resource.

LeaPs Phase 2: Designing and Developing Performance Aids for Donation Assessment

After identifying critical tasks for success, the tasks’ steps, and where the tasks may take place, the team began to design and develop our solution. Using the information from phase one, the team created performance requirements detailing the desired performance, the conditions/cues in which performance would be required, and criteria for successful completion of performance. We created a brief training that focused on learners reviewing current assessment processes, then introduced them to the domesticated meat and wild game job aid.

Finally, the team provided IFB with a performance assessment instrument as a learner assessment after the training.

LeaPs Phase 3: Implementing and Evaluating Our Design

The LeaPs model blends the implementation and the continuous use of formative evaluation during the ID project. Constant communication, collaboration, and iterations of deliverables were key to ensuring that our performance aids and recommendations bridged the identified donation assessment performance gap at IFB.

References

OPWL 537 Course Instructors. Instructional Design Course Handbook. Boise, ID. Boise State Department of Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning.