Project Closure Report

Project Closure Report - Jericho Barrier Breaks
Project Closure Report

Jericho Barrier Breaks
www.barrierbreaks.co.uk
By Carlo Ropos
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Acknowledgements
The partnership between Jericho Foundation, MyTime Ltd and the University of Central England is acknowledged, for without this joint working, Jericho Barrier Breaks would not have been possible. A special thank you to all users, clients and individuals who participated in the development of this product, from those who gave constructive feedback to those who created graphics to be used on the system. A special thought for all Jericho Foundation Clients, past, present and future for whom this product was originally developed.
By Carlo Ropos
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Contents Page
Acknowledgements Contents page Introduction Background Concept Feasibility Partnership Planning Design Programming Build Engagement Making it Fun Functionality Testing & Research Conclusions Partnership Innovation Equal Opportunities Empowerment Transnational Mainstreaming 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - 12 13 14 15 - 17 18 21 22 - 23
By Carlo Ropos
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Introduction
What is Jericho Barrier Breaks? Jericho Barrier Breaks is a unique, innovative product that allows users to assess their levels of self-esteem, confidence, anxiety and motivation as well as providing additional useful signposting information to help them self develop, and where appropriate*, allows users to make appointments for one to one support to help with any weak areas.
* Accessible only by organisations who have registered on the Barrier Breaks system
Jericho Barrier Breaks is also a very powerful organisational tool, allowing companies to have a greater statistical and reporting capability on their clients, students or even employees with a view to identifying weak areas and delivering related in-house group sessions to tackle some of these areas with their own in house tutors, group session leaders or trainers. Barrier Breaks is an internet based personal development assessment tool. It is accessible to a wide variety of users. Users* can decide themselves which sessions to take part in.
* Users who are linked to organisations who have signed up to Jericho Barrier Breaks
The system is fun and easy to use and is designed to keep users engaged. Functions & Benefits of Jericho Barrier Breaks 1) To produce a Personal Development Assessment Profile Certificate for users. To allow clients to select some solutions for their determined personal development needs. To provide an analysis tool for organisations to pin-point personal development demand of clients. To help retain clients on programmes or training courses by providing solutions to personal barriers while they are on a programme. To provide a talking point to assist with mentoring or the building of rapport.
2)
3)
4)
5)
By Carlo Ropos
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Jericho Background
The Jericho Foundation is a registered charity which exists to help the most disadvantaged overcome social problems and get back into employment. Jericho started in 1993 as a drop-in centre to serve the most disadvantaged people of Balsall Heath, Birmingham and Rochdale, providing advice, guidance, training and support for over 1000 people a year. Jericho runs outreach initiatives in inner-city areas specifically to engage people with disadvantages and provide the necessary support and guidance to link them back into work. As a social enterprise, Jericho is able to provide paid work experience through its own trading arm. Jericho has established 5 businesses, which provide up to 250 clients a year with in-house paid work experience.
By Carlo Ropos
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Concept
Running many different programmes over the years, Jobcentreplus New Deal, City Council ILM, (Intermediate Labour Market), nextstep Skills Coaching, Connexions IAG (Information, Advice & Guidance), SRB & NRF Outreach contracts amongst others, the main focus of many of these contracts involved either employment or training. We at Jericho provide an excellent service to our clients, providing them with supported work options whilst at the same time providing one to one mentoring and jobsearch help. We have learned over the years that it is simply not enough to provide someone with a great CV, a little bit of coaching/training and some work experience and away they go into employment, especially for some of the hardest to help clients we deal with each day! The four elements that we struggled to measure but knew they had such a huge bearing on our client s success or failure were Self-Esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. We found that if we worked on these areas with our clients, in addition to the training, employment and jobsearch skills, we found these clients had a higher rate of success when any barriers to Self-Esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation were removed or addressed. The problem we had was that these 4 areas are difficult to measure and although there are some psychological methodologies, (Rosenthal etc) that could measure individual areas, nothing was available to measure all 4. The other problem was that each psychological assessment for each of the areas would require a minimum of 30 questions to be asked using a tick box paper system that should be administered by a phychologist! Not an ideal option to gauge a measurement in Self-Esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation at Jericho. Due to the nature of many of our clients, many of them feel uncomfortable with the assessments we need to administer as part of our contract delivery, particularly Maths and English assessments and especially as many of our clients have been to numerous other providers experiencing the same heavy induction processes. It was clear I needed to develop an assessment tool that wouldn t feel like being back at school and in fact actually had to be engaging and fun too! We then set out on a mission to develop a system that would measure all 4 areas, whilst at the same time keeping our clients engaged and offering a surprise fun element, to maximise the odds of a client completing the assessment. This is how Jericho Barrier Breaks was born as a concept
By Carlo Ropos
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Feasibility
The first item to address was whether this concept could actually be realised into a fully working product as envisaged by Carlo Ropos. A feasibility report was carried out. APPENDIX 1 The conclusion of the feasibility report stated that although there were other systems out in the market such as Cascaid, Skillscheck and other interest/assessment programs available, these were mainly career matching and skills diagnosing software. Jericho Barrier Breaks is not any of these. There are also as previously mentioned psychological methodologies which could measure individual elements, but not all 4 and again these were only paperbased led by a psychologist. From this feasibility report it was concluded that there was no identification of a product like Jericho Barrier breaks in the market, making it a unique proposal. The second element of the feasibility was to determine whether there were partners/organisations in Birmingham capable and prepared to take on this challenge and actually develop the concept into a real working product. Two additional key partners were identified. The third key element that came out of the feasibility study was that looking at other market products like Cascaid and Skillscheck, it was discovered that these needed to be operated from a PC that had the software uploaded to it. Carlo Ropos wanted the Jericho Barrier Breaks product to be fully accessible worldwide and not rely on software disks to run the program but instead to have the software run from one central secure server by anybody in the world via the internet without the need for loading or down loading software onto a PC.
By Carlo Ropos
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Partnership
A three way partnership, with Jericho Foundation being the lead organisation was formed. Carlo Ropos (Deputy Chief Executive) of Jericho Foundation. Project Management & Development, System Design & Graphical User Interfaces,.
Joseph Jabbar (Main Programmer) TIC Technology Innovation Centre of University of Central England. Dr Cham Athwal and Illyas Khan. (ICT support) Programming and ICT server hosting
Michael Lilley (Director) of MyTime Ltd Psychological research, question development and profile creation.
By Carlo Ropos
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Planning
To start off the project it was important to clarify what the concept was, who it was aimed at and agree the outputs of the system. It was agreed there would be 3 types of users for the system 1. Individuals wanting to measure their levels of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. 2. Individuals affiliated to Jericho-like organisations who may also wish to take part in group sessions at their organisations designed to address and tackle Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. 3. Organisations that would require some analysis of beneficiary needs, to be able to customise support programmes for these people in group environments, within their own organisations with their own staff.
Outputs
The system is designed to provide 4 main outputs. 1. A personal results profile for a client in the form of a certificate. 2. An analysis function for organisations to respond to any demands from particular classes or groups. 3. A selection of modules/tutor packs that can be downloaded ready to deliver in their own organisations addressing Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. A further output was added later as it was deemed appropriate to offer additional support and Information. Apart from the outputs there are many other features on the product that are best explored by visiting and using the product. www.barrierbreaks.co.uk 4. A signposting resource that can offer independent general advice and guidance on Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation was the 4th output.
By Carlo Ropos
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Design
Careful thought was given to the look and feel of the system. We wanted it to look professional but also simple and functional to use with a friendly feel as well. Early on we agreed that we were not able to produce the system that would be accessible by all types of clients. Audio Speech Function We agreed at an early stage that clients using the program may have reading difficulties so we embarked on a system where possible, that it would talk to you and ask you questions through the speakers as well as being displayed in text representation. We also did this fir the profile results, so these were spoken out to the client as well appearing on the screen and as well as having the ability to print out a certificate. If more funding could be secured at a later date we would also introduce audio functions for the selected answers on the assessment. Transnationality and Mainstreaming It was key that the programming was written in such a way that allowed the software to easily be developed in other languages at a later date, eliminating the need to start all over again with each new language. Graphics and colours The look and feel of the product was very important and we wanted to portray a friendly yet professional image to the user, and opted for certain images and colours that would achieve this. All of the question graphics were thought up and created by disadvantaged clients at Jericho Foundation.
The question colour scheme was also changed from a blue gradient to the existing solid green colour (above right) to enable some clients with dyslexia to read the questions easier.
By Carlo Ropos
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Programming
NOTE: For those of you who aren t technically minded please feel free to miss this section! The first stage of the Barrier Breaks project was an investigation of development platforms. The requirement was for an engaging user interface that could efficiently capture user responses and then allow sophisticated analysis of these responses based on individual characteristics but also allowing analysis of group characteristics. A number of options were considered including development of a bespoke system, a totally Flash based system, Authorware and a range of eLearning systems. The current conclusion is to create a software system depending on different databases and coded procedures. The next stage of the project was the development of a proof of concept for the Jericho Barrier Breaks Project by elaborating the drafted concept. The aim was to create a system what would aim to measure self-esteem, confidence, motivation & anxiety. Overview: The questions are bespoke Code Identification for the questions (QI) Questions are stored in a series of files (possibly Flash). One file for each question Multiple selection of questions is possible The following data is then held in a number of tables within a database management system. The tables and a preliminary consideration of their connections are illustrated in the attached diagram. Table 1: Person table In this table are person id, contact details, password, gender, age, ethnics and the background (ex offender, mental illness, ex prostitute, etc.) stored. Table 2: Bank of questions table The questions are stored in this table and supplied with a question id, an associated answer weighting and the place where the question is stored
By Carlo Ropos
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Table 3: Question set table In this question set table the questions (question id) are provided in a question set and connected with a related value. Dummy questions could have the value 0 Table 4: Results table In this table are Result ID, Question set ID, scores for questions, date and time stored and linked with the person ID (from table 1). Table 5: Overall classification table The overall classification table contains the classification id, lower and upper bounds Table 6: Area classification table The area classification table contains the area classification id, lower and upper bounds for each area. Table 7: Recommendation table The 6th table is the recommendation table. This table contains the recommendation ID and a recommendation string. Results of the software system Following results can be provided by the software system: Per person o Score per test; Calculate overall classification; Classification overall, traffic lights o Score per test; traffic lights o Score per area; Calculate classification by each area; Traffic lights o Classification per area Group Analysis o Choose background and get average + standard deviation for each area E.g. prostitutes area 1 / area 2 / area 3 / area 4 Recommendations against results o Recommendation ID, recommendation (string)
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Getting the recommendations: The results and recommendations are coded using lookup multi-dimensional table (array) with number of dimensions equal to number of areas.
By Carlo Ropos
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Build
The crux of the whole product and being able to build it revolved around the ability to measure the 4 areas of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety, Motivation in one new unique and totally innovative psychological methodology. As mentioned previously, usual methodologies require a minimum of 30 questions to be asked for each of the measurement areas. Michael Lilley (Director of MyTime Ltd and Chair of the British Regional Psychological Society) was faced with a challenge to develop a unique brand new methodology that would measure ALL 4 areas of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation in just 24 questions and convert the results into a tangible mathematical scoring system that could then easily be programmed into code. Quite a challenge and not something that has been attempted by psychologists in the past. Michael Lilley developed a unique paper-based system that worked manually and developed an innovative mathematical cross referencing system that would also measure the separate elements! A small focus group was set up to test the paper based method and once we were happy with this new methodology this was then handed to Joseph Jabbar at UCE to convert into a working code and build.
By Carlo Ropos
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Engagement - Making it Fun We agreed 30 questions for all 4 elements of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation would be the maximum acceptable limit to ensure users would finish the questions. However, as mentioned previously, typical Jericho clients often dislike assessments and answering boring questions so 2 innovative solutions was put forward by Carlo Ropos to overcome this potential issue. Firstly, Michael Lilley had to develop the assessment procedure using just 24 questions. This left 6 questions free. These 6 questions were designed to be totally random and fun with a view of breaking up some of the serious content of some of the psychological questions whilst maintaining interest with the user.
Secondly we introduced a surprise/bonus element to the program to ensure clients would finish the assessment in anticipation of their surprise at the end. This in fact is a simple embedded bowling game that introduces a little fun element to the product.
By Carlo Ropos
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Functionality - Users
As mentioned at the beginning of this report there are 3 types of user for the Jericho Barrier Breaks system.
1 Individuals wanting to measure their levels of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. 2 Individuals affiliated to Jericho-like organisations who may also wish to take part in group sessions at their organisations designed to address and tackle Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. 3 Organisations that would require some analysis of beneficiary needs, to be able to customise support programmes for these people in group environments, within their own organisations with their own staff.
Individuals wanting to measure their levels of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. Users that simply just want to measure their levels of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation can simply use the system as a guest. This allows a basic functionality of the program as shown with the buttons below on the right.
As a guest you can still print off a certificate, it just won t be personalised with their own name. There is also full access to the signposting.
By Carlo Ropos
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Individuals affiliated to Jericho-like organisations who may also wish to take part in group sessions at their organisations designed to address and tackle Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation. Users affiliated to an organisation will have been issued a username and password allowing them to log into the program and this allows them some extra functionality. This in addition to the other features allows an individual to VOTE for a preferred group session they want to take part in, allowing the organisation too react to a client needs or wants by putting on that particular session. Also there is an additional function whereby any danger scores would be picked up and the user can discreetly email a designated contact or mentor at the organisation to request help or a one to one mentoring session.
By Carlo Ropos
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Organisations that would require some analysis of beneficiary needs, to be able to customise support programmes for these people in group environments, within their own organisations with their own staff. Organisations will have the highest functionality, allowing them to administer usernames and passwords for their own clients, students or employees. There is a statistical button proving instant stats on there client groups and this can be sorted against ethnicity, age, group classes or sex to enable organisations to accurately deliver support to the relevant groups or people. There is also a Market Place function allowing the different types of organisations to have free advertising with a view to trying to encourage partnership and cross company trading, particularly for social enterprises. Organisations can also download tutor packs for delivery of group sessions by their own staff in their own organisations.
APPENDIX 2 contains one of the downloadable tutor packs for Bridge Building
By Carlo Ropos
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Testing & Results

Over 50 paper-based questionnaires were completed by clients, users, members of the public and organisation representatives during the testing phase of the operational system. In the phase 2 refined version of Jericho Barrier Breaks there is an online feedback function allowing data to be collected electronically on an on-going basis. 76% were aged 18 24 22% were aged 25 40 2% were aged 41 50 56% participants thought the system was good 30% of participants thought the system was very good 12% weren t sure about the system 2% thought the system was poor 72% liked the design of the system 24% were not sure 4% did not like the design of the system 72% of participants found their results interesting/useful 18% did not know whether they found their results interesting/useful 10% did not find their results interesting/useful. Sample comments from the results: Easy to use and rather informative It confirmed the areas I need to work on in my life It showed where I need to improve Was surprised at the high % age of self-esteem, and how truthful and accurate it was about my low confidence! It lets you express your feelings (even if not to a person) but lets you admit to things you tend to push at the back of your mind. Gives you a target point to improve on also The part I liked was the surprise bowling game! The bowling game was fun but need more time to master! Even though it asks you simple questions and realistic questions, it s detailed on the aspects (answers) which can be encouraging and it depicts your strengths too
By Carlo Ropos
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There is no doubt that Jericho Barrier Breaks is a popular concept application. In the past 3 months Nov, Dec and Jan there have been: 9309 hits for the system 3064 page views 594 visitors (176 from North America, 100 from Europe, 4 from Oceania, 10 from Asia and 302 from unspecified) The following are reports from Jan 2008:
Visits
(Mar 07 Feb 08)
By Carlo Ropos
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Date
Total Visits
Average Visits Historically
Change
Percent of Total Visits
Tue Jan 1st, 2008
4.94 +7
3.37%
Wed Jan 2nd, 2008
7.06 +4
1.92%
Thu Jan 3rd, 2008
6.68 +4
1.92%
Fri Jan 4th, 2008
12
5.18 +12
5.77%
Sat Jan 5th, 2008
2.44 +5
2.40%
Sun Jan 6th, 2008
3.22 -1
1.44%
Mon Jan 7th, 2008
4.52 +7
3.37%
Tue Jan 8th, 2008
4.94 -5
0.96%
Wed Jan 9th, 2008
7.06 +5
4.33%
Thu Jan 10th, 2008
6.68 +5
4.33%
Fri Jan 11th, 2008
12
5.18 0
5.77%
Sat Jan 12th, 2008
2.44 0
2.40%
Sun Jan 13th, 2008
3.22 -2
0.48%
Mon Jan 14th, 2008
4.52 +2
4.33%
Tue Jan 15th, 2008
14
4.94 +12
6.73%
Wed Jan 16th, 2008
7.06 -6
1.44%
Thu Jan 17th, 2008
6.68 -4
2.40%
Fri Jan 18th, 2008
10
5.18 -2
4.81%
Sat Jan 19th, 2008
2.44 0
2.40%
Sun Jan 20th, 2008
3.22 +5
2.89%
Mon Jan 21st, 2008
4.52 -6
1.44%
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Tue Jan 22nd, 2008
4.94 -9
2.40%
Wed Jan 23rd, 2008
19
7.06 +16
9.14%
Thu Jan 24th, 2008
6.68 +3
3.85%
Fri Jan 25th, 2008
13
5.18 +3
6.25%
Sat Jan 26th, 2008
2.44 -1
1.92%
Sun Jan 27th, 2008
3.22 0
2.89%
Mon Jan 28th, 2008
4.52 0
1.44%
Tue Jan 29th, 2008
4.94 +1
2.89%
Wed Jan 30th, 2008
7.06 -17
0.96%
Thu Jan 31st, 2008
6.68 -1
3.37%
208
48 +3
Hits
(Mar 07 Feb 08)
By Carlo Ropos
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Global Visits
Flag
Country
Total Visits
Average Visits Historically
Change
Percent of Visits
1.
North America
71
52.50 +15
68.93%
2.
Europe
25
37.50 -31
24.27%
3.
Oceania
+4
3.88%
4.
Asia
3.50 -1
2.91%
103
94 -13
By Carlo Ropos
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Conclusions
Jericho Barrier Breaks is potentially a very useful and unique application tool with worldwide mainstreaming opportunities and has fully addressed the Partnership, Innovation, Equal Opportunities, Empowerment and Transnationalilty elements of Equal Engage project. Partnership It was formed from a strong local Birmingham partnership between Jericho Foundation, University of Central England and MyTime Ltd. The product itself encourages further partnerships through its Market Place function as well as promoting further international partnerships through the opportunity of future joint development. Innovation As illustrated, the whole concept of Jericho Barrier Breaks is innovative from how its conception was developed, how it approached the task to measure 4 difficult areas of psychology, how it created its own unique methodology, how it engages clients using fun and interesting methods tack, how it addresses both client and organisational needs to assist individuals measure their levels of Self-esteem, Confidence, Anxiety and Motivation with a view to providing further information and guidance through the signpost function as well as offering the opportunity to individuals to take on additional one to one help where necessary. Equal Opportunities The whole system was designed to be as transparent and accessible as possible. Extra thought was given at the design stage to consider clients/users with reading difficulties and dyslexia and where appropriate audio clips can be played through speakers. Users do not need to be PC literate as the system is operated solely by pointing and clicking the mouse. The system is also designed in such a way that it would be relatively easy to develop the program in further languages. We accept that the system could be improved further to allow blind users to benefit, however this was beyond the scope of the funds available and could be pursued in the future subject to additional funding / need. Empowerment The Jericho Barrier Breaks facilitates user empowerment. Having completed the assessment a user can be empowered to read further on certain topics via the Signpost facility, they can take up and use the existing resources some of which are on-line courses designed to help the user self-develop. Jericho Foundation clients were very much involved in the development and production of this product. From assisting with the research to actually producing graphics that appear on the product. Client opinions and comments also led to a series of changes and improvements to the mark 2 version of Jericho Barrier Breaks product.
By Carlo Ropos
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Transnationality There has already been interest from organisations in Germany, Hungary and Holland to develop the Jericho Barrier Breaks system in those languages. In anticipation of this the welcome page has been designed to allow users to select their language. Further funding opportunities will be sought to realise the product in Dutch, German and Hungarian.
Mainstreaming The Mark 2 version of Jericho Barrier Breaks will be launched in early 2008 with a view to getting the system used in different types of organisations across the UK. Numerous colleges, Social Enterprises and Voluntary Sector organisations have expressed an interest in using the product. An innovative demo button has been added to the application to act as a mini advert promoting the product. A mousemat campaign will also be undertaken to promote the product and encourage its use by individuals and organisations alike.
Iain Duncan Smith is presented with the Jericho Barrier Breaks Prototype
Iain Duncan Smith is presented with the Jericho Jobopoly Prototype, one of the potential options for Jericho Barrier Breaks in the future
By Carlo Ropos
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Project Closure Report - Jericho Barrier Breaks