English Training With British Council: Quality Planning, Stakeholder Analysis, Capturing Customer Needs

English Training

English is a global language and so has become a platform connecting people, cultures, arts, science, by establishing communication among countries. English, like any other language is spoken with various accents and dialects and it demands the need for common and standard accent and grammar, as common grounds. And the services are provided by numerous educational institutions and organizations all over the world.

British Council is founded to create a user-friendly environment with better understanding in between UK and the rest of the world, in terms of culture. The larger and international organization initiated the operations in 1934 and expanded to more than 100 companies, with several programs and services in English language, society, arts and education. The organization provides the best material, all the time to the teachers of the organization and all the aspirants. The company communicates and guides the world, through radio, web and Television broadcast to teach English, in both the developing and post-conflict countries. The organization supports more than 3 millions of aspirants worldwide, gaining access to the trustful and reputed qualification and prosper their careers, by increasing opportunities of working. It conducts development programs for bringing the artists altogether and provide the support for the policy development and skill development in the respective creative industries.

British Council is considered for quality planning and analysis the English training service provider and

British Council services that offers and provides English training, is taken as the reference for quality analysis and planning.

As British Council is a huge and international organization, it consists of huge number of stakeholders and so most influential stakeholders are only considered.  

BC STAKEHOLDER	STAKEHOLDER EXPECTATIONS
Internal Stakeholder
Executive Team of BC	· Enhance the reputation of the organization, by improving the portfolio of BC in the industry of English teaching · Improving the share of BC in market in the respective industry · Consistently grow Return of Investment, through innovative learning courses
Package Designers of Expert Courses	· Consistent development in courses with growing investment · Growing cultural and innovative learning courses influence · Growing formal learning course packages reputation
Institution Shareholders	· Consistently growing ROI · Growing share value, right after purchase
Staff for Teaching	· Teaching to be efficient · Cultural learning effective adoption · Adopting effective and influential effective methods of teaching · Develop good products for English speaking
External Stakeholders
Aspirant or End User	· Ability to speak English · Opportunity for cultural learning · Growing ability for speaking · Competitive or less fee compared to competitors · To design effective packages from effective requirements and feedback · Growing support for learning · Efficient orientation, prior to commencement of course · Efficient and excellent course support during and after · Wider and growing learning possibility · Right and more value for money
Material Supplier	· Growing business with increasing regular orders · Growing profits · Growing involvement in further and new courses · Enhancing business relationships · Growing and reliable business potential · Growing supplies demand · Growing number of orders · Flexible course packages with innovative cooperation
Branch and Franchisee Partners	· Reliable support with prompt · Growing reputation of the brand · Minimum Franchisee fee · Efficient channels for communication for the new students · Prompt and reliable support for the study packages
Competitors	· Decreasing competitive advantage and stalled innovation exploited · Minimize the domination · Decreased or no monopoly
Regulations of Government	· For students, adherence to the legislations at national, local and specific · Adhering to the commitment to the offered features to the students
Expert English Groups	· Tremendous English improvement for the student · Appropriate guidance with no deviations · Packages to be more customized, based on the students’ unique needs

There are numerous ways and methods to capture the needs of the customer and Voice of Customer (VoC) stands as one of the significant and best strategies. The method helps to collect the opinion of the customer followed by categorization, based on the attributes suitable. A few of these ways for customers needs capturing are the following (Akpolat, 2004, Cooper & Dreher, 2010).

Voice of Customer method can be used to hear and collect the cutomer voice, as shown below.

• Customer visits
• Ethnographic Methodology
• Focus groups
• Interviews with the customer
• Survey questionnaire

It is an indirect way to collect the student needs and is effective. The organization’s employees prepares guide with a defined structure for conversing and goes along with the student, though the method looks similar to the customer interviews and survey questionnaire. Student, thus is enabled to express insights subconsciously and the data is analyzed to make it more qualitative (McQuarrie, 2008). More students have to visit the organization to make it more success, as it is an important factor. The resultant data is subjective highly, as influenced with different question styles posed and varied responses of students.

Voice of Customer can be captured very effectively with the interviews with customers and stands as a standard methodology that is cost effective too (Griffin & Hauser 1993; Akapolat 2004). Various factors influence its effectiveness, such as venue of interview, type of interview, one-to-one or group interview, interviews conducted with the students of present, past and future, modes of communication, like face-to-face, internet and telephone, interviews with both irate and satisfied students.

British Council

The first step of interview is preparing the questionnaire or basic questions collection for accurate and appropriate information. Questions are prepared based on the interview objective. After collection of VoC, collection, analysis and categorization of information is done, based on the preferred attributes, such as basic, subconscious and spoken needs. And course package potential functional requirements select the attributes  (Yang, 2008). Quantitative data about student needs are collected, only during the right style, structure and circumstances. Then sample size is quantified.

Students’ needs and requirements can be identified with survey questionnaire, which is effective and cost effective method. It uses different media, like survey portals, mails and direct way, etc. Better level of accuracy of data is achieved compared to the interviews, as these questions are more formal and direct with no circumstances’ influence. Wider range of needs, feedback and requirements can be extracted, in terms of agreeableness, disagreeableness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, as the questions are easy to answer.

Collected data, quality of responses and questions are used for better understanding of the needs and requirements by categorizing and quantifying for analysis.

A focus group is a great qualitative data generation source and is formed by a group of students (Akpolat, 2004, Kitzinger, 1995). It is more the answering objective questioning and stands unique compared to the other methods. Initially, open ended question is posed to start the discussion, by the leader and continued by the members and is varied from the formal process of interview (Kitzinger, 1995). It does not involve formal process of reading and writing and so qualitative data is resulted. 

In terms of student needs and requirements collection, it is a comprehensive methodology (Cooper & Dreher, 2010). The method facilitates opinion expression and response, in comfort environment by student. It is more of contextual interview involving systematic observation and recording the session (Goffin et al, 2012). Questions are contextual, but not limited to questions and it is not formative method. The student’s voice is heard and recorded, so accuracy can be assessed. Hence, the method allows to capture the student expectations and needs in direct and indirect ways.

For British Council quality planning and analysis, survey questionnaire method is selected and the process is performed in total five steps.

The survey questionnaire is followed…

• To extract course package information from the students
• To obtain both student satisfaction and dissatisfaction evidence along with the ares of improvement
• To obtain the insights from the department of research and design, subjectively and objectively

Step 2

Survey plan is prepared to place questionnaire British Council website homepage. Sample size is anticipated with 500 students, with no time limit. Students are anonymous, except identified with their course codes.

Step 3

The course importance is questioned to rate and score by the students. Rating starts with 1, showing least importance to 5 most importance.

Poor	Average	Good	Very good	Excellent
1	2	3	4	5

Table: Rating and Result

S.NO.	COURSE ATTRIBUTE	SCORE
1	Ability to adopt to new environment
2	Ability to communicate effectively
3	Ability to give presentations
4	Ability to give public speech
5	Ability to interact with new people in English
6	Ability to speak English
7	Building positive attitude
8	Character enhancement
9	Confidence levels for conversation  in English
10	Conversational Skills
11	Duration of class session
12	Effective participation in group discussions
13	Fast reading and interpreting
14	Gain fluency of English
15	Give interview effectively
16	Grammar proficiency
17	Learn new vocabulary and phrases
18	Listening skills
19	Manage to speak with native speakers of English
20	Managerial skills
21	Play way learning
22	Practical oriented learning
23	Resources provision
24	User friendly class room environment
25	Written skills

Table: Attributes Considered for Survey

Students rate courses with score, from 1 to 5 and it is easy. A trial is conducted after questionnaire is ready against accuracy, validity and potentiality. Data collection is done from 400 students, then each attribute is analyzed after collecting the score and finding cumulative score and categorizing it to desirables, wants and needs.

CLASSES	Needs	Wants	Desirables
Final Cumulative Score	3.5 or > 1400	2 to 3.5 or 800 to 1400	1 to 2 or < 800

Step 4

Qaulatiy Planning And Analysis For The Service

The survey questionnaire is employed in the home page of the website.

Step 5

The student responses are collected from the website.

S.NO.	IMPORTANT FACTOR OR ATTRIBUTE	CUMULATIVE & FINAL SCORE	SCORE AVERAGE
1	Ability to adopt to new environment	699	1.7475
2	Ability to communicate effectively	1786	4.465
3	Ability to give presentations	1539	3.8475
4	Ability to give public speech	1156	2.89
5	Ability to interact with new people in English	1025	2.56
6	Ability to speak English	1962	4.905
7	Building positive attitude	1869	4.6725
8	Character enhancement	1625	4.0625
9	Confidence levels for conversation  in English	1689	4.2225
10	Conversational Skills	1268	3.17
11	Duration of class session	752	1.88
12	Effective participation in group discussions	1156	2.89
13	Fast reading and interpreting	1245	3.1125
14	Gain fluency of English	1635	4.0875
15	Give interview effectively	1428	3.57
16	Grammar proficiency	1256	3.14
17	Learn new vocabulary and phrases	759	1.8975
18	Listening skills	1058	2.645
19	Manage to speak with native speakers of English	798	1.995
20	Managerial skills	796	1.99
21	Play way learning	1146	2.865
22	Practical oriented learning	1623	4.0575
23	Resources provision	1356	3.39
24	User friendly class room environment	1229	3.0725
25	Written skills	1458	3.645

The above results are categorized into Needs, Wants and Desirables classes.

Qfd Method

The student needs and requirements are correlated with ten specifications of product design, with Quality Functionality Design method. The method is implemented by using score and average rating. Average score is the reference for 1-3-9 rating and value system with scale of 1 to 5.

9, as strong relation

3, as medium relation

1, as weaker relation 

Once the better scale ratings are given, in terms of assigning the relationships, the final absolute score is to be calculated finally. The absolute score can be obtained from multiplying the factor of importance with 2 and relating and assigning this value to the relationship and it should be continued for the attributes followed that match the requirements of the design. Then finally, the absolute value is to be summed up.

Then the QFD can be tabulated as below.

	STUDENT EXPECTATION	IMPORTANCE SCORE	REQUIREMENTS OF COURSE DESIGN
			Practical sessions with conversation	Resource material, audio, video	Reading comprehension	Group discussions	Half sessions for speaking effective English	Attitude orientation activities	Mock Interviews	Grammar sessions	Creative interactive sessions	RSLW sessions
NEEDS	Ability to communicate effectively	8.93	9			9		9	9		9
Ability to give presentations	7.695	6			6	6	6		6	9
Ability to interact with new people in English	5.12	9		9	9		6	6		6
Ability to speak English	9.81	3	3		3	9		3		3	3
Confidence levels for conversation  in English	8.445	9			9		3	9		6
Duration of class session	3.76	9		3			6
Effective participation in group discussions	5.78	6			9		6			6
Gain fluency of English	8.175	9	3	9	6	9	3	6		9	9
Learn new vocabulary and phrases	3.795	6	3	9	6					6	9
Resources provision	6.78		9
WANTS	Ability to adopt to new environment	3.495	6			6		6	9
Building positive attitude	9.345				6		9	6		6
Conversational Skills	6.34	9			6	6	6	9		9
Give interview effectively	7.14	6			6	3	6	9		6
Grammar proficiency	6.25		6	3		3			9
Listening skills	5.29	9	9		6			6		9	9
Manage to speak with native speakers of English	3.99	3			6	9		9
Practical oriented learning	8.115	9	9		6		6	9		9
User friendly class room environment	6.145	9			6		6			9
Written skills	7.29		3	3		3			6		9
DESIRABLES	Ability to give public speech	5.78	9			6		6	6		9
Character enhancement	4.0625	6			6		9	6		6
Fast reading and interpreting	3.1125			9		3					9
Managerial skills	3.98	6	3	3	9		3	6		9
Play way learning	6.225	9			6		3			9
	TARGET VALUE		50% Sessions	For all sessions	Weekly once	Weekly Once	With every session	Last  but three sessions	Weekly Once	First four sessions	All basic grammar	Weekly once
	ABSOLUTE SCORE		51	54	132	48	147	108	99	48	21	129

Table: FMEA Method

Design requirements are collected from 5 highest scoring.

1. Attitude oriented sessions
2. Creative interactive activities session
3. Group Discussions
4. Mock Interviews
5. Practical sessions with conversation

These attributes should be added to the design of new course.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis for course design in future, by taking likelihood measure and risk severity.

SIGNIFICANT ATTRIBUTE	FAILURE	EFFECT TO COURSE PACKAGE	FAILURE CAUSE	POSSIBLE RISK BEFORE ACTION	RISK CONTROLLER	RISK POST ACTION
				P	S	R		P	S	R
Attitude oriented session	Session is not influenced with attitude	The purpose is not served	The training become ineffective	3	5	6	Make the class more effective	3	2	4
Creative interactive sessions	Interaction is not happened	Purpose of session is not served	Students are not involved	3	3	8	Trainer becoming an example	2	3	3
Group Discussions	Discussion is not taken place	Purpose of the discussion is not served	Students have fear	5	6	12	Discussion is initiated with the trainer	1	4	5
Mock Interviews	Students cannot give interview	The objective of the session is not fulfilled	Very difficult questions addressed	3	4	7	Start with easier questions to let student participate	1	3	2
Practical sessions with conversation	No participation of the students	Class sessions becoming ineffective	Students are not made comfortable to open up	2	5	13	Students are to be motivated to speak	2	4	4

The measure consequence is shown as the following table.

LEVEL OF SCORE	LEVEL DESIGNATION	TECHNICAL INTERPRETATION
5	Major	Courses are to be stopped completely with no corrections
4	Significant	Courses must be stopped immediately and resumed only after the detailed correction
3	Moderate	Course must be stopped and resumed after correction
2	Minor	Course can be continued with immediate changes in it
1	Marginal	Small corrections are to be made, while designing future courses

Measures are to be taken as the following.

SCORE LEVEL	SCORE DESCRIPTOR	PROBABILITY	DETAIL AND DESCRIPTION
5	High probability	>0.99	Variation to occurs frequently and most possibly
4	Probable	0.49 – 0.99	Variation occurs frequently some times
3	Likely	0.05 – 0.49	Variation is possible to be occurred sometimes
2	Possible	0.02 – 0.05	Variation occurs only a few times
1	Unlikely	<0.01	The variation occurs only at certain circumstances

The teaching sessions are influenced by packages and resource material. So, major resource material are…

1. Air Conditioner
2. Audio system with microphone
3. Computers
4. Dias
5. Furniture
6. LCD Screen
7. Projector
8. Website
9. White board and markers
10. White cloth for screen

So, supplier needs the above 10 important resource material.

1. Capability of production
2. Company Reputation
3. Customer service
4. Environmental Sustainability
5. Location Closer to the institute
6. Procedures for quality assurance
7. Product price
8. Reliable Service
9. Service History
10. Timely supply

First search the suppliers, select three of them according to required standard, after seeking quotations. Select with three parameters.

1. Evaluation is done according to supplier weightage, with rating from 1 (least value) to 10 (highest value).
2. List the supplier according to the rating.
3. Multiply score with respective score of parameter to find overall rating. 

		SUPPLIER
SELECTION CRITERIA	SCORE WEIGHTAGE	S 1	2	S 3
Score	Weighted score	Score	Weighted score	Score	Weighted score
Capability of production	7	9	63	7	49	7	49
Company Reputation	9	7	63	8	72	8	72
Customer service	8	6	48	8	64	9	72
Environment sustainability	8	8	64	7	56	8	64
Location close to institute	7	8	56	7	49	6	42
Procedure for quality assurance	8	8	64	9	72	7	56
Product price	7	7	49	6	42	8	56
Reliable Service	9	7	63	9	81	5	45
Service history	9	7	63	7	63	5	45
Timely Supply	7	8	56	9	63	6	42
TOTAL	75	589	77	611	69	543

S2 with score of 611 is the selected supplier.

Process Identification

Course design takes 10 processes and phases.

1. Requirement Collection

Requirements collected from students are evaluated according to attributes.

1. Course Development

Course is developed according to the needs and requirements.

1. Logical Sequencing

Sessions are then prioritized, from beginning to advanced.

1. Activities Defining

From the data collected, practical oriented classes are preferred.

1. Potential Supplier Selection

Supplier is selected on the basis of the mentioned qualitative parameter above.

1. Classroom Arrangement

Classroom arrangement is considered as a crucial factor for imparting skill and knowledge.

1. Setting QualityStandards

Quality standards are to be set for both trainers and students, to ensure learning practise is done by the students.

1. Mock Training

Mock training is to be conducted after ready of intangible and tangible resources. These sessions help to correct the sessions, prior to jumping into newer sessions.

1. Marketing and Advertisement

A public call is offered for the services of training to learn English, after everything is ready.

1. Conduct the Sessions

After all the resources are made ready, finally, the sessions are conducted.   

The statistical anomalies can be visualized and identified with Statistical Process Control chart.

SPC has the features, as the following.

CL – Centre line that indicates the specific characteristics mean value

LCL – Lower Control Limit, for acceptable process variation range

UCL – Upper Control Limit, for acceptable process variation range

Development of SPC chart is done after categorization on the basis of variable and attributable data and some are as follows.

1. P-Chart – to plot defective items proportion fraction, by taking constant or variable sample size as reference  
2. C-Chart – to detect the constant sample size and total defects
3. NP Chart – to monitor the process, by defective items tracking in a single day
4. X-Chart – to consider only 2 randomly at any instance from data taken from sample size
5. X-bar & R-Chart – to provide better analysis, when combined and X bar is to plot the average of measurements, in a given time within special subgroups and R chart is to plot the range of measurements, taken from subgroups and finding respective centreline, through the averages of the range 

BC scrutinizes the packages of course by correction through varied respective sample size. A single batch is considered from 20% course packages. P-chart is used here for analysis.

Among tens of courses during classroom sessions in a month, the parameters are specified as the following.

n = from number of sessions, sample size

x = session’s defective elements

p = defective parameters

= x / n

Then, P bar or centre line,

P bar or centreline = ∑p / k

here, k = total umber of days 

	CLASSES	x	N	p	p bar	UCL	LCL
WEEK 1	1	6	55	0.109091	0.141	0.281923	0.000277
2	6	58	0.103448	0.141	0.220868	-0.01397
3	3	57	0.052632	0.141	0.141361	-0.0361
4	8	57	0.140351	0.141	0.278374	0.002328
5	8	53	0.150943	0.141	0.298466	0.003421
WEEK 2	6	2	58	0.034483	0.141	0.106359	-0.03739
7	6	55	0.109091	0.141	0.235201	-0.01702
8	7	57	0.122807	0.141	0.253227	-0.00761
9	9	52	0.173077	0.141	0.330465	0.015689
10	6	54	0.111111	0.141	0.239411	-0.01719
WEEK 3	11	3	55	0.054545	0.141	0.146408	-0.03732
12	8	59	0.135593	0.141	0.269306	0.00188
13	8	57	0.140351	0.141	0.278374	0.002328
14	5	54	0.092593	0.141	0.210928	-0.02574
15	6	51	0.117647	0.141	0.252994	-0.0177
WEEK 4	16	9	56	0.160714	0.141	0.307949	0.01348
17	8	54	0.148148	0.141	0.293177	0.003119
18	7	58	0.12069	0.141	0.249015	-0.00764
19	6	54	0.111111	0.141	0.239411	-0.01719
20	8	55	0.145455	0.141	0.288071	0.002838
			∑P	2.43972673

According to above statistics as above, course design and development is shown as technically in control.

Every task has different issues in terms of course design processes and phases as the following.

1. Class sessions not in control
2. Diversified students background
3. Events unexpected
4. Inadequate student aptitude
5. No involvement
6. Stud be passive
7. Trainer inexperienced
8. Trainer passive
9. Unavailable resources
10. Unmotivated students

Some problem solving techniques are employed to solve the above problems.

1. Why-why diagram
2. Process flow chart
3. Pareto diagram
4. Gantt Chart
5. Check sheet
6. Cause and effect diagram
7. Brainstorming

The problem considered is ‘Lack of involvement by trainer and student’. Let us apply the following techniques.

1. Why-why diagram
2. Pareto diagram
3. Check sheet
4. Brainstorming 

A group of experienced trainers is taken and their responses are taken to find the problem’s causes, for the specified problem.

Problem: Lack of involvement by trainer and student

• Lack of interest by the trainer
• Lack of interest by the students
• Trainer’s serious personal issues
• Classroom environment as dull
• Trainer’s constraints of skill
• Students’ constraints of skill 

It helps to root causes discovery of the problems. All are asked Why question and links are progressed.

Check sheet implemented after brainstorming and why-why. It helps to assess and analyse possible matching causes of the problem. 

ROOT CAUSES	OCCURRENCE	ABSOLUTE PERCENTAGE	ACCUMULATIVE PERCENTAGE
Dull classroom environment	10	20	20
Human Error	6	12	32
No interest	5	10	42
Serious personal issues of trainer	10	20	62
Skill constraints of student	11	22	84
Skill constraints of trainer	8	16	100
TOTAL	50

Root cause detailed analysis for specified problem can be obtained by the problem solving techniques. So, necessary measures can be taken for improvement of the quality of the sessions. 

References

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