Organizacija, letnik 39Predlogi za prakso{tevilka 4,april 2006
Training Needs Analysis Tool
Horov~ák Pavel1, Lavrin Anton2, Orosz Marián3
Department of Applied Informatics and Process Control, Technical University of Košice, Slovak Republic;
Pavel.Horovcak @tuke.sk, Anton.Lavrin@tuke.sk
3
Office of European Projects, Bo`eny Nemcovej 3, 040 01 Košice, Slovak Republic;Marian.Orosz @tuke.sk
1,2
The contribution is focused on four steps of training needs analysis - general template creation, construct file creation, elec-tronic questionnaire creation and evaluation of questionnaire results.It explains and specifies terms general template and con-struct file and their assignment in questionnaire design.Further it describes development, design and implementation of soft-ware support named ”Query”for interactive creation of electronic questionnaires and their evaluation within the scope of someLeonardo da Vinci projects solution (in three phases).The software tool is based on utilization of PHP scripts, cascading stylesheets and database system MySQL.
Key words:template, questionnaire, questions types, evaluation, internet, PHP script
Orodje za analizo potreb po u~enju
Prispevek je osredoto~en na štiri stopnje analize potreb u~enja:izgradnja splošne predloge, izdelava datoteke, izdelava elek-tronskega vprašalnika in ovrednotenje rezultatov vprašalnika.V prispevku je razlo`ena in specificirana splošna predloga terdatoteka in njun namen v na~rtu vprašalnika.Nadalje je opisan razvoj, na~rt in vgradnja podporne programske opreme"Query" za interaktivno izdelavo elektronskih vprašalnikov in njihovo ovrednotenje z ozirom na nekaj Leonardo da Vinci pro-jektnih rešitev (v treh fazah).Orodje programske opreme temelji na uporabi PHP skriptov, stopni~astih zaslonskih listov in po-datkovnega sistema MySQL.
Klju~ne besede:predloga, vprašalnik, vrste vprašanj, ovrednotenje, splet, PHP skript
1Introduction
Training needs analysis,if done properly,provides the ba-sis on which all other training activities can be considered.It is a process,which requires careful thought and analy-sis, which needs to be carried out with sensitivity.An indi-vidual’s learning is important to him or her,and the suc-cess of the organization.
The purpose of training needs analysis is to identifythe skills gaps requirements and training needs of an indi-vidual or group of clients.The results of a needs analysisdetermine the scope and depth of required education.
The main instrument of needs analysis is a question-naire. Questionnaire design and evaluation has manytheoretical and practical aspects.Many of them were dis-cussed in frame of the first international meeting devotedto the methods used for questionnaire development,eva-luation, and testing (QDET,2002). The benefits of iterati-ve questionnaire-evaluation research documents Esposito(2002).Independent and dependent interviewing compa-res and valuates Hoogendoom (2002),which for intervie-wing implementation has used the Blaise system – (Weer-
man, 2001; also VIROS,1999) in combination with Cent-ERdata’s C2B software.
Decisionarium (www.decisionarium.hut.fi) is thepublic site for interactive multicriteria decision supportwith tools for individual decision making as well as forgroup collaboration and negotiation.It is based on utiliza-tion of Java technology and designed by Hämäläinen(2005).
Our solution of training need analysis consists of fol-lowing steps – general template creation,construct filecreation (based on general template),electronic question-naire creation (based on construct file,by means of inte-ractive development tool “Query”) and valuation of que-stionnaire results.
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Templates as groundwork for questionnaire creation
The general template was developed to determine pro-gress development and training needs.For generalization
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of progress of work with needs analysis was the generaltemplate developed.The general template has the form ofregular text document.The template consists of five sec-tions and it is illustrated in [11]. The first section dealswith customer identification,the second one is identifica-tion of business area(s) for organizational education andtraining. The third section focuses on education and trai-ning which could be offered by the partnership,the forthsection aims to determine ICT skills.Section five concernsfinance, contract conditions and contacts.The flexibility ofthe template created in this form is the ability to analyzea broad range of business customers.
The Template can be used in several ways.The firstway is to use the whole template with all five sections.Thesecond way is to divide the template in two parts,which are processed separately.The first part consists of sectionsone and two.The second part of the template is created onthe basis of obtained results and recognition of customer’sneeds as identified by sections one and two.This sectionaids the training organization to determine areas of trai-ning needs and enable the creation of customized courses.General training to be offered includes processes of chan-ge management,reengineering, audit, process modeling,business processes reengineering.The training is intendedfor distance form of education based on web based lear-ning.
3Construct file
A n intermediate file based on the general template hasbeen created to facilitate questionnaire development.This file is entitled “the construct file”.The form is similarto that of the template file.The first column of templatefile (Section) remains,the second one (Items) is divided inthree columns,named No (Number of question),Que-stion (Text of question) and Type of question (one of thevalues Textbox,Select, Radio button,Checkbox, Text area, Note). The Question column is based on columnItems from template file,columns No and Type of que-stion are new.The last column Answers in construct filecorresponds to column Contents in template file.Exam-ple of such file is illustrated in [1]. Thus the construct fileis then used as groundwork in process of questionnairecreation.
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Interactive development tool“Query” for web questionnaire design
The basic idea was to create software that undertakes theroutine programming activities,related with questionnai-re creation.This software for support of interactive crea-tion of electronic questionnaire (named “Query”) wasutilized for questionnaire creation - section design,texts and types of questions,particular answers so as all the re-pairs and supplements - direct to sponsor.Questionnaire
creation in this way is fundamentally quicker and easier.Designed software hides for its user amount of speciali-zed internet technological problems,practices and solu-tions from the area of database systems (it operates withMySQL), the area of html technology,interactive scriptsphp, cascading style sheets css so as their mutual commu-nication. Thus it enables the user to concentrate on thecontent aspect of electronic questionnaire creation andevaluation.
A whole view of electronic questionnaire and its indi-vidual elements is solved on the base of consistent utiliza-tion of cascading style sheets (css).Cascading style sheetsis saved in the independent external file,which is incorpo-rated to result form of questionnaire by means of LINKcommand. The css file consists of named sections group,which are applied to the likewise named elements in theresulting html code of questionnaire.The coupling of indi-vidual elements of questionnaire to appropriate parts ofstyle file is specified by means of matched statement.By means of this technique single classes arecreated (also in cascading manner).
Named sections of style file are for example BODY,Nazov (name),Sekcia (section),Sekcianadpis (section tit-le), Otazka (question),Cislo (number),Znenie (text),Od-poved (answer),select, input and Popis (description).The-se sections are the basic building elements (or modules)of resulting electronic questionnaire.
A consistent system approach to questionnaire viewcontrol enabled entire isolation of view control from logicbuilding-up and own functionality of questionnaire.Du-ring the designing of final questionnaire it is possible tochoose one from more premeditates prepared style files(css),which ensures appropriate view.Comparatively sin-gle preparation of style file enables to achieve a uniqueview of each final questionnaire (and at the same timewith wide variability).
To authenticate the user,it is necessary to provide ausername and password.Once the users have entered thelogin and password they should select a new or a previ-ously created questionnaire.After that it follows the se-lection of questionnaire’s language.It is now possible tocreate new section,new question and answers to the que-stion. Texts of section,question and answers are in theconstruct file,from which they can be copied.The note toquestion is displayed before question,but it must be crea-ted only after the question’s creation.
Once the questionnaire is created,it is necessary todefine questionnaire settings (option Setting in menu Set-tings). It is possible to choose its viewing (suitable cssfile), type title of questionnaire,define the time interval ofquestionnaire’s accessibility,www page displayed afterquestionnaire filling and some other parameters.Option Preview in menu Settings enables to see the completedquestionnaire. Further it is possible to add,repair or dele-te any section,question, note or answer (options Add orEdit in menu Editing).Option Edit enables also deletingof appropriate object.
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5Questions types
Questionnaire implementation exploits several miscella-neous types of html input elements for answers on que-stions. The first type is multiple choice,where the respon-dent is required to choose one item (tag Select).The se-cond type is apair of radio buttons with values Yes / No.The third type is atext input (tag input),in whose user canwrite the answer in one line.The fourth type is acheck box, which can be indicated by mouse click.Each entrytype has defined adefault value (generally the first one),which is used when the user doesn’t choose an answer.The fifth type is a multi-line text-input,where the user canwrite the answer in more lines.
It is possible to assign a note to each question’s type,which further specifies the question.
can select the appropriate language.On the base of actuallanguage selection,the questions file in particular selectedlanguage will be assigned for processing.
7Evaluation of questionnaire
6Language alternations
Questionnaire evaluation (option Questionnaire in menuEvaluation) is offered through choosing aselection Que-stionnaire or Answer count (option Test is dedicated forvaluation of test forms).Answer count enables the displayof the frequency of answers to individual questions.Que-stionnaire is intended for presentation of filling question-naires. List of questionnaires can be ordered on a base ofspecific attribute (for example name and surname) selec-ted as the first option and filtered by means of the secondcriterion. A selection of other questions and one of theanswers to this question represent the second criterion.In our tool “QUERY”there is the first approach used.
For the purposes of the IMVOCED project (as well as ot-her projects) it is necessary to present the questionnairein different languages.Various questionnaire languageversions can be realized in two ways.The first one exploitsa replacement of questions and answers together withlanguage code into the database table.From this tablea selection for appropriate language selection is realized.The second option is based on the creation of appropria-te script files for particular languages,from which the user
8Completion of questionnaire
The questionnaire is created direct on an URL.By typingthis URL into a browser the questionnaire is ready foruse. The respondent can type or select the appropriateanswer for each question.A fter answering all questionsand clicking the Submit button the answers are submitted
and stored in the database table.
Figure:1. Illustration of questionnaire in phase IFigure:2. Illustration of questionnaire in phase II
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9Phases of solution
The solution passed in three phases.On the IMVOCEDproject home page of the Technical University of Kosicethere are three phases specified with characters I,II andIII.
The first phase (I) represents a standard way of que-stionnaire solution.An html page was manually createdalong with a database table for individual questionnairedata saving and some PHP scripts,which ensures savingthe questionnaire into the database table,browsing andevaluation of questionnaires.
Questionnaire selection for browsing is realized onthe basis of name and address of organization.A t thesame time it was needed to solve a task of bilingual (even-tually multilingual) form of questionnaire.Chosen solu-tion worked using special variables for all questions andanswers ($variable = “question text?”).Values of variab-les for given language were saved in independent file(langfile).
To start the questionnaire it was necessary to choosea language.Based on this selection the appropriate file(langfile) was chosen.Adding new versions in other lan-guages generate a whole host of problems which had to beovercome for the final version of the template.These problems included changing questions,adding or deletingquestions and updating of tables,template and constructfiles.
The changes made were complicated,repetitive andlabour intensive.This gave rise to the idea of a system forautomated creation and corrections of questionnaire.This
first phase solution is on web page [1](using [2], [3]), eva-luation of questionnaire is in menu Administrator (Figure1).
The second phase (II) was based on the interactiveapproach. Texts of questions,answers and also sectionsusing appropriate forms are saved (or corrected) into da-tabase tables.From these tables they are consequently se-lected into electronic questionnaire or into answers eva-luation by means of group of scripts.Main functions ofthese scripts are creation of html questionnaire file (basedon data in database tables),creation of PHP file for que-stionnaire saving as well as creation of PHP file for tablegeneration. Any changes to the questionnaire’s structureare transferred to appropriate tables in the database.The program automatically corrects corresponding files andscripts, removing the need for programming (or repro-gramming) a questionnaire.
This system can also be used by persons with no tech-nical knowledge or background in internet usage.There-fore the investigator can create,correct and evaluate anelectronic questionnaire.
During this second phase solution the questionnairewas modified to create a template for the identification oftraining needs in TQM (@elezník,O. & Hurná) (based ontemplate WP4Template2 [6]). This modification can befound on web page [4], its evaluation is on the web page[4](Figure 2 below).
The third solution phase III built upon the secondphase, in terms of the user simplicity,flexibility and func-tionality point of view.
For this reason a new interactive
Figure:3 Interactive development tool “QUERY”Figure:4 Output of “QUERY”as questionnaire WP4
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development tool “QUERY”was developed for web que-stionnaire design (see Figure 3).
Tool “QUERY”supports the interactive creation ofan electronic questionnaire which enables the user tocreate new questionnaires,edit, correct or add existingquestionnaires (for example the change of question/ans-wer text,change of question/answer order,question/ans-wer adding or deleting and similarly for sections and alsofor questionnaire question’s description).This system isaccessible free of charge (Orosz,2004).
Using the tool “QUERY for interactive creation ofelectronic questionnaire some new questionnaires werecreated. The first one is a questionnaire for investigatingof evaluation of education process results in the TQMarea in frame of project IMVOCED.The questionnaire(named TEST03) was created in two language versions(English [8]and Slovak [9]). Evaluation of questionnaireTEST03 is accessible through option Questionnaire inmenu Evaluation in development tool (Orosz,2004). Questionnaire TEST03 is located on web page [7].
The second questionnaire is a general questionnairefor purposes of identification of needs analysis for WBLwith E-learning support,which was named WP4 and is lo-cated on URL [10]. This questionnaire was created utili-zing the general template [11]on the base of derived con-struction file Construct [12](see Figure 4).
The third questionnaire is an adapted questionnairefor purposes of identification of needs analysis for WBLwith E-learning support in the TQM area.The question-naire is named TQM and is located on URL [13]. This questionnaire was also created utilizing the general tem-plate [14]on the base of derived construction fileConstruct [15].
The fourth questionnaire deals with reconnaissanceof interest in training needs in area of TQM (September2001). It is named WP1&2,it was applied in 8 companiesand it is located on URL [16]. The manner of evaluationof questionnaires is described in quick user’s guide [17].
The fifth questionnaire deals with quality valuation oflearning materials created in frame of ICOTEL project.Questionnaire will be applied in 10 companies and it is lo-cated on URL [18]. Other application of the questionnai-re (Horov~ák,2005) will be applied for needs analysis inthe same project as well.
10Conclusion
Exploitation of electronic questionnaires for market re-connaissance is currently much augmented activity on theside of all producers and suppliers of miscellaneous pro-ducts and services (Peter and Donnelly,1992; Delina andLavrin, 2003). Designed tool “QUERY”for interactivecreation of electronic questionnaire enables electronicquestionnaire realization without requirement on techni-cal, technological and programming knowledge,what enables its exploitation in a wide range.The main prefe-rences of designed system are the automation and inte-ractivity of creation process of new electronic question-
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naire, a simplification of editing,corrections, adding or re-moving of questions or answers for existing questionnaireas well as multilingual support enabling creation of vari-ous language mutations of the same electronic question-naire.
A pplications of questionnaires confirmed good per-formance of developed tool.In the future there will be ne-cessary to make-up some supporting services such asHelp, user guide,installation guide.Future developmentwe expect in area of application’s exploitation extensionin other areas of investigation what will require new met-hods of questionnaires formation and valuation.Notice:The contribution was solved in frame of pro-jects KEGA 3/3084/05,KEGA 1/3126/05 (B),KEGA 1/3124/05 (L) and ICOTEL (LdV) SK/02/B/F/PP/-142261.
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(Accessed15. November 2005)
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(Ac-cessed 15.November 2005)
[4]Php template file for Q1.Available from:
(Ac-cessed 15.November 2005)
[5]Questionnaire Q2 IMVOCED Entry Questionnaire Avai-lable from:(Accessed 15.November 2005)
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(Accessed 15.November 2005)
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(Ac-cessed 15.November 2005)
[8]Questionnaire Q3 Overall Evaluation of Course (two lan-guage mutation) Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)[9]Template file for Q3 Eng.Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)
[10]Template file for Q3 Svk.Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)
[11]Questionnaire Q4 WBL with E-learning Support – Needs
Analysis General Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)[12]Template file for Q4.Available from:
(Ac-cessed 15.November 2005)
[13]Construct file for Q4.Available from:
(Ac-cessed 15.November 2005)
[14]Questionnaire Q5 WBL with E-learning Support – Needs
Analysis General Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)[15]Template file for Q5.Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)
[16]Construct file for Q5.Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)
[17]Questionnaire Q6 Questionnaire of improving vocational
education in TQM Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)
[18]Quick guide (Evaluation) for Q6.Available from:
(Accessed 15.November 2005)
[19]Questionnaire Q7 Questionnaire of Icotel SK/02/B/F/PP/-142261 (http://icotel.ktl.elf.stuba.sk/) Available from:(Accessed 15.November 2005)Pavel Horov~ákis Associate Professor of applied informa-tics at Technical University of Košice, Slovak republic, Fa-culty of Mining, Ecology, Process Control and Geotechno-logy. He graduated from Faculty of Electrical Engineering,TUK, in Technical Cybernetics in 1972.Since 1972 he hasworked as a researcher and lecturer at several faculties/in-stitutions at the Technical University in Košice (in the areasof:control engineering, graphical presentation of processes,information, monitoring and control systems developmentand management, and distance education).He has partici-pated in several international projects (Leonardo da Vinci,Socrates, ICoTeL).He delivers lectures in Informatics, Algo-rithm Process and Programming, Programming in C, Pas-cal, Java, Real Time Systems, Internet Technologies. Dr. Horov~ák published anumber of papers in journals relatedto application of ICT.
Anton LavrinAssociate Professor has been working as aresearcher and lecturer at several faculties/institutions atthe Technical University in Kosice (in the areas of:control engineering, information systems development and mana-gement, TQM and software quality, innovation managementand distance education).He held several managerial posi-tions like:Vice-rector for informatics, Director of the Institu-te of Life-long Education.Dr. Lavrin has participated in se-veral international projects (Tempus Phare, Leonardo daVinci, Socrates, 5FP and 6FP).Currently he is the delegate/ member of the ISTC / on behalf of the Slovak Republic.
Marian OroszHe graduated from Faculty of Mining, Eco-logy and Geotechnology, Technical University of Kosice, infield Process Informatization. T oday is Member of staff onTechnical University of Kosice at Office of European Pro-jects - representation in advisory and consultant servicesguaranteed by department according to approved specifica-tion and participate in establishment of the international uni-versity undertaking.He participates on ERA Slovakia pro-ject as a web administrator of the Slovak national mobilityportal.
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