The NA presented in Work Sample 1 was conducted by five team members enrolled in OPWL 529: Needs Assessment. The client for this NA was Boise State University's Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning (OPWL) program, which prepares professionals to design learning and performance solutions at the individual, team, and organizational levels and has a history of adapting to changes in learning technology and the human performance improvement (HPI) field. The most recent OPWL program assessment was conducted in 2023. Since then, changes in technology, workplace expectations, and higher education have created a need to reassess the program's alignment with current professional demands.

The client asked the NA team to examine communication and collaboration in team-based professional environments, focusing on how well the OPWL curriculum aligns with expectations for OPWL-related roles and responsibilities. The NA examined OPWL graduates working in HPI-related fields, including their academic experiences and the communication and collaboration demands they encountered after graduation.

The first challenge the NA team encountered was that the OPWL Program was not identified as a client until week 7 of the course, which effectively left only 8-9 weeks to complete a full-scale NA, complete with a meeting with the client, coordinating the schedules of the 5-member NA team, interviews, data coding, a final report, and a presentation. 

A systematic process was used in the NA that moved from organizational and environmental analysis through performance gap, cause, and intervention analysis. The NA team reviewed course syllabi, assignments, portfolios, rubrics, and other OPWL program artifacts and conducted semi-structured interviews with five graduates. The interview protocol followed Gilbert's (2007) Behavior Engineering Model (BEM) and drew on the COREQ framework (Tong et al., 2007) to guide the interview process.

The COREQ provided a consistent structure used throughout the interview protocol for examining environmental and individual factors while allowing participants to describe their workplace experiences in detail. The NA team used qualitative coding to analyze the interview data, moving through open coding, axial coding, BEM alignment, and theme refinement. The NA team then compared the coded data with the program artifact review to identify patterns and areas where workplace experiences and program conditions aligned or differed.

The data and artifact analysis portions of the NA helped team SPAT uncover where communication and collaboration were readily present in the OPWL program and participants’ workplaces. The bigger gaps involved the consistency, effectiveness, depth, and application of the skills former OPWL students learned in their courses, and how those skills played out in complex work environments. Participants described challenges in translating analysis into influence and action, communicating with different groups, building credibility, pushing back when necessary, and applying skills across professional contexts.

The BEM helped the NA team examine whether these gaps stemmed from information, resources, incentives, knowledge, skills, and capacity, or motives. The analysis pointed primarily toward environmental conditions rather than a simple lack of knowledge or motivation. In particular, the data pointed to the following issues: 

• Inconsistent learning experiences (some students had different experiences depending on who taught the courses they took)

• Limited structured opportunities for repeated and varied practice of human performance improvement (HPI) skills across the various courses 

• Differences in feedback students received from professors 

• Limited continuity between coursework, portfolio work, and professional application

Solutions and the Feasibility of the Intervention Analysis 

Team SPAT used Force Field Analysis (FFA) to examine the forces that could support or constrain changes within the OPWL program. Driving forces included the program’s existing applied learning environment, workplace relevance, and opportunities for feedback and client-based work. Restraining forces included faculty workload, feedback capacity, variability across courses, and the need to avoid adding unnecessary structural burden to the program.

The NA team then used a SWOT analysis to examine internal and external factors affecting the feasibility of potential interventions. The NA team also applied HPI principles to keep the focus on performance conditions rather than assuming additional instruction was the answer.

The analysis identified five complementary intervention areas: 

1. Structured course presentation and feedback cycle

2. Cross-functional communication practice

3. Applied practice with feedback in complex contexts

4. Continued access to resources and emerging tools

5. Development of a learning think tank concept that team SPAT described as the ALIGN Lab

The ALIGN Lab, or Applied Learning in Group Navigation, was developed as a system-level intervention concept. The proposed model combines a structured entry point for students, distributed practice and feedback throughout the program, and a portfolio-based bookend to demonstrate growth over time. The concept builds on existing OPWL patterns, including the former bootcamp model and applied learning labs, rather than proposing another required course.

Conducting an NA at this scope required sustained attention to the full performance improvement process, from defining the assessment focus through data collection, analysis, synthesis, and reporting. Working within a 16-week course project also required careful attention to the relationship between available time, project scope, team member and client availability, and the level of analysis that could reasonably be completed.

The full project lifecycle reinforced the importance of aligning the assessment questions, evidence collected, analytical methods, and resulting recommendations. Using multiple methods, including program artifact review, graduate interviews, BEM analysis, Force Field Analysis, and SWOT, provided different perspectives on the performance conditions identified through the assessment. The process also demonstrated the value of examining environmental conditions before assuming that additional instruction is the appropriate response.

If this NA were starting from scratch today and I were leading the project, I would recommend structuring the work as a multi-stage assessment that could continue across successive OPWL student teams. Our team could have focused on participant recruitment and interviews, followed by data preparation, coding, analysis, and initial reporting, with subsequent teams building on that work through additional analysis, recommendations, implementation, and evaluation. Such an approach would have given each team more time to revisit the data and examine emerging findings in greater depth. At the same time, the constraints of a 16-week course reminded me that organizations often need to conduct substantial assessment work within limited time and budget. Within those constraints, the completed NA was comprehensive, detailed, and highly polished.

The NA was completed within the defined project scope and provided a foundation for further investigation. Because the project did not include implementation or evaluation of the proposed interventions, those activities remain outside the NA's conclusion. The OPWL client knew that, because the NA team worked under 16-week time constraints, subsequent student working groups would pick up where this NA left off and carry it further. The primary limitation was the 16-week timeframe available to complete a full-cycle NA. If I were conducting a NA of similar scope in the future, I would establish key analysis milestones at the outset and build in additional time for synthesis and refinement as findings develop. A secondary limitation tied to the timeframe was the small interview pool of five participants. A larger and more varied participant pool would provide additional perspectives and strengthen the depth of the findings.

Please see References for the full list of resources used in the OPWL 529 Needs Assessment Project.

Appendix A: Codebook and Data
Appendix B: Frameworks, Models, Tools

• Link to COREQ PDF. 

Appendix C: Ethical Due Diligence Materials
Appendix D: Needs Assessment Planning Tables
Appendix E: Figure E1 Interviewee Demographics