MIDDLE MANAGERSMOTIVATIONAL STRATEGY IMPROVEMENT

Youliduzi Niyazi
Fall 2014. EDIT 730
Motivational Strategy Program for Middle Manager at Yildiz.Inc
Cognitive Apprenticeship Prototype Proposal
Application of Constructivism
Constructivist instruction emphasizes that learning occurs, as learners are actively
involved in a process of meaning making and knowledge construction. Learners make
their own meaning and knowledge. Constructivist teaching fosters critical thinking and
creates motivated and independent learners.
My proposal aims to recommend a motivational-strategy training program in
constructivist learning environment for middle level managers at Yildiz. Inc., a young
retail company, not only to develop their skills to create and plan strategies to improve
employees motivation based on understanding of the individuals values, needs and
situations, but also to improve their skills and knowledge in integrating factual
information with theoretical information to derive a sensible solution to various
motivational problems at work.
In an organization, motivation is an internal engine in productivity. Helping them
taking their ownership of learning, the constructivist leaning environment applied for this
program will provide these middle level managers at Yildiz opportunities to become
highly motivated to function their roles at work to make their employees highly
motivated.

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The Problem
Q: Usually you are very energetic, efficient, cheerful, corporative, accurate and
productive employee at the front line of a company. But one day you received news that
your husband overseas is cheating on you. Since then you became totally different person
in your workplace, increasingly withdrawn, gloomy, slow to complete tasks, and
forgetful. Whom do you think you could comfortably voice your situation in your
workplace if you need help?
A: No I dont know. I should tell my manager at work but I dont think she cares.
The example above was taken from a employee motivation survey. According to the
whole picture of the survey, the middle level managers at Yildiz need to improve their
skills to understand their employees needs, values, and situations. Because they are the
most capable of communicating employee needs and wants, because they are the ones
who can easily access to see what makes an employee happy or unhappy in the
workplace.
Target Audience
This program targets primarily middle level managers at Yildiz, who have been
effectively working for this company from more than three years to six years by bring out
the viability and growth to their departments and this company. These mid-mangers
taking on not just management duties but wider business development and client
relationship responsibilities. They are knowledgeable and skilled in the operational facets
of their own managing work but, the current situation suggesting that they are lacking
skills and strategies to really understand the importance of employees motivation based
on individual values, needs, and situations .

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All participants are highly motivated because after this course all middle managers will
have an in person meeting with CEO, concerning the workforce improvement plan in the
future. Everybody knows that this is a good opportunity for them to express themselves
to CEO with their successfully done course works.
General Knowledge Domain
The content area will be to build and practice motivational management skills, planning
and creating strategies, and decision making in various motivational problems based on
employees values, needs, and situations in the workplace. And also depended
understanding of the importance of integrating factual information to theoretical
information to generate better solutions to different motivational problems.
Learning Outcomes
The goal of creating this strategic motivational plan is to give mid-level mangers the real
world experience of understanding the employees needs, values and situations to
identify and handle motivational problems in the workplace.
Within this content area, learners will be able to
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Identify positive and negative motivators appropriate to a specified motivation

problem.

Integrate factual information with theoretical information to derive a sensible

solution to a motivational problem within a limited time frame.

Plan the strategies of motivational action in response to a specified motivation

problem.

Learning Activities

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The constructivist based model that best fits with this learning problem is cognitive
apprenticeship. First of all, the invited industrial consultants and senior managers are
available throughout the program to coach and mentor learners. Learners in this
environment are encultured into authentic practices of strategy plan making activities
which emphasizes cognitive skills and technology enabled reflection, articulation, and
exploration. (Collin 1991) (as cited in Dabbagh and Bannan-Ritland, 2005). Students
will be presented realistic and complex problem-based scenarios in workplace that allow
learners to critically think and practice in the various real world life. The content is
provided through various learning activities that help solve the problem. This table
shows the six instructional strategies in CA.
Table 1. The six instructional methods of cognitive apprenticeship (excerpted from
Wang (2001)
Modeling

Provides opportunities for students to observe an experts practices. The

learning situation

Must include exemplars of how an expert performs

the tasks.
Coaching

Offers students help in the form of hints, scaffolding, feedback, modeling,

goal setting and reminders while they are carrying out tasks.

Scaffolding

Provides temporary support by teachers for those parts of the tasks

students have difficulty erforming. The support can take the forms of
suggestions or direct help. Fading consists of the gradual removal of this
support until students are on their own.

Articulation Requires that students explicitly express their knowledge, reasoning, or

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problem solving processes for problems or issues that they are tackling.
Articulations can include students engaging in a dialogue, verbalizing
their thoughts, or assuming the role of monitor or critic in cooperative
activities.
Reflection

Offers a mechanism for students to externalize their metacognitive

processes and hence open them for evaluation. It enables them to compare
their own problem-solving processes with those of an expert and other
students.

Exploration

Invites students to tackle and solve problems independently. Usually,

instructors set general goals and teach exploration strategies. Students
then are encouraged to focus on particular sub-goals within learning tasks,
or even revise the general goals in order to come up with their own
problem solutions.

In this proposed program students will be presented realistic and complex problem-based
scenarios in workplace that allow learners to critically think and practice in the various
real world life. The content is provided through various learning activities that help solve
the problem.
Learning activity 1.
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Articulation and Modeling: The program will be taught through the

Motivational Strategy Cognitive Apprenticeship on line learning environment
where learners given authentic problems through different activities available

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on CA online learning evironment. After learners are given a problem (for
example, Described on page1) ,the mentor will ask learners to analyze the
cause of the problem and the appropriate ways to solve it. Learners will
analyze the presented problem with each other with an aim to create openended questions on motivation, which reflects employees individual needs,
values, and situations. Then, the mentor will be modeling the best solutions
through showing the video and explaining about how experts solve the similar
problems in the similar situations. During the activity, misconceptions are
always corrected.. Assessment will be come through the peer and mentor
feedback to the questionnaire and the corrections and advices that are made.

Collaborative Learning: Learners will work collaboratively in a team, to

create their questionnaire, a group goal, on time. One team member will be
responsible to submit their final questionnaire to the mentor in a time line. The
mentor will integrate each groups questionnaire to create the final
questionnaire to use for future employee survey activities to study the
employeesmotivation in the company. Learners will be able to make
comments on the other groups questionnaire. The on line learning
environment also allow learners to share the information they found useful
and practical.

Coaching and Exploration: Learners are able to access to all activity

descriptions and learning goals. Also they can contact with mentors (industrial

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consultants and senior managers) by email, or face-to face on appointment
from beginning of the program to the end. search, Instructional Library
are the available for learners to get access to as much resources as they want
to enhance their individual learning.

Reflection on Performance: After each activity learners will write a

reflections paper and a short motivational strategic plan. Learners will help
each other to develop their draft strategic plan to create the final, better
motivational strategic plan. The available tools in website helps to learners to
develop their work as much as they can by allowing them making comments,
editing their works, ask for help from mentors and peers, getting access to
assignment rubrics. Also they will give a short presentation about which
degree they have been benefited from this activity and

Assessment

At the end learners will be assessed on their capacity to work through the problem to a
logical conclusion, assessing is mostly embedded in the learning activities which are, the
interaction with the mentor and peers by using the available tools on the website, mentor
and peer feedback during all discussions, final motivational strategic plan created by
learners, short presentation about the final strategic plan. Learners will also be asked to
write reflections regarding their learning experiences, connecting it to the work they have
completed whenever possible and self assess their work.

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Conculusion:
Many researchers and theorists have been empahsizing that in constructivist learning
environment learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge
construction. With the advanced technology system today, the computer based various
tools and technolgies or the communication and computer system has been impacting our
educational system in a great extent.This paper amis to pupose a designed framework
which successfully integrates the problems from real workplaces into a on line cognitive
apprenticiship learning environment. It is a framework which relect the effective
implications of construstivist learning environment, particularly the cognitive
apprenticeship. Because it provides learns the opportunities to construct their own
learning in an engaged online constructivist learning environment.
Resources:
Dabbagh, N. & Bannan-Ritland, B. (2005). Online Learning. Pearson Education, Inc.
Upper Saddle River, NJ.
http://www.acs.edu.au/enrolment/problem-based-learning/motivation.aspx
Sneh soni, Essential skills for manegers. Available at
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140707135641-100431088-essential-skills-formanagers
Valencia, C. (1998). Motivation and Productivity in the Workplace. Retrieved August, 27,
2012.

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Why middle manaegment is key to your comnpay to success. Available at:
http://humanresources.about.com/od/motivationsuccess/qt/why-middlemanagement-is-key-to-your-companys-success.htm
Wang, F. K., & Bonk, C. J. (2001). A design framework for electronic cognitive
apprenticeship. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 131-151.