In one- two paragraphs you should write the proposed title of the project, what the project will be about, and why you selected that project. You will not be graded on any other portion of this course until the topic proposal is completed and approved by the professor.

Please note that there are restrictions on the topics that will be approved for your project. If this happens to you, please do not be discouraged. Your instructor may raise concerns about your topic to help ensure that your topic will be approved.  Ultimately, all topics must be approved by the professor and you will be notified if there are adjustments that must be made.

• Considerations for the behaviors chosen:
  • Can have a a plan written and implemented within the next 9 weeks 
  • Should be a specific behavior, not a large category
  • Should be increasing the behavior
  • Should be in within your scope and ability to implement an intervention around (should not be large changes in structure)
  • Be able to implement the intervention within the 8 weeks and start taking data within next 3 weeks
  • Intervention should be within your control (not firing people; bonuses; pay per performance)

2)   

Create a powerpoint that is a minimum of 4 slide to present to the course. 

This presentation should include:

• Topic proposed
• Rationale
• At least one citation to support targeting this area 
• Questions/concerns for the group regarding topic

3)  

Be sure to include:

• The organizational background (name of agency, location, products/services provided, number of staff, number of clients/customers and other relevant stakeholders)
• Assessment (describe the assessment you used and its purpose)
• Report your findings (what's going well, areas of struggle/need/pain points/inefficiencies) and preliminary, functionally equivalent interventions.

Here's an example:

ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND

The School, located in Everytown, USA, provides educational and related services to students from kindergarten to 8th grade.  The students were not able to be maintained in their public school district due to behavioral concerns.  The school provides academic, social emotional and behavioral services and support to the 37 students enrolled.  The school also provides professional development to their staff (21 full-time and nine part-time employees) and community-based resources to students, families, and school districts.

The School administration was interested in conducting an assessment to identify potential performance improvement opportunities for their school.

ANALYSIS LEVEL AND TOOLS

The PDC-HS is an individual level assessment that has 20 yes-no questions that are completed on a checklist. The PDC-HS can identify potential causes of their problematic behavioral excesses or deficits (Carr & Wilder, 2016). The main areas assessed by the PDC-HS are training, task clarification and prompting, resources, materials, and processes, and performance consequences, effort, and competition. The PDC-HS also includes sample interventions for identified/scored areas of potential performance improvement.

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Of the 20 questions, three answers were no, indicating a possible need for intervention. Those questions included: “Is the employee ever verbally, textually, or electronically reminded to complete the task,” “Are there sufficient numbers of trained staff available in the program.” and “Is the task simple or does it involve relatively low response effort.”

Recommended interventions and supporting literature: Task clarification and prompting (Bacon et al., 1982; Cunningham & Austin, 2007; Gravina, et al., 2008) reassess task process and personnel (Diener et al., 2009; McGee & Diener, 2010), regularly highlight task outcomes (Methot et al., 1996), and reduce aversive task properties (Green et al., 2008).

SUMMARY

In order to increase effectiveness, the School would benefit from addressing issues with the behavior support services.  Interventions with high impact and simple implementation were suggested.

This plan will help develop opportunities for improvement to redesign behavioral contingencies and plans for implementing them. Behavioral contingencies are what support performance on the job. As the environment the organization operates in changes, the individual employee’s behavior needs to change as well. This includes a well-designed and managed job with a comprehensive job description and performance management tools.

APPENDICES (attached)

Appendix A: PDC-HS

4)  

Find 4-5 articles that support the topic and proposed interventions that you are including within your project. 

These articles should be peer reviewed and related to organizational behavior management. 

Submit an assignment that includes the reference for each article and key elements of the study (participants, IV, DV, experimental design, results, etc)