About Us
Background
Chesapeake Consulting Services has been a national and international leader in providing clients performance solutions since 1994. Our instructional designers pride themselves in customizing solutions to match your industry, organizational culture, and specific requirements to meet your unique needs. Our instructors and facilitators bring to life the learning in the classroom. Through their extensive knowledge and engaging approach they ensure you have lots of fun while you learn complex skills that are easily transfered to the job. The educational approach designed into each course not only ensures learning, but encourages team building. We listen to your needs and customize solutions for you.
Our Approach in the Classroom
Despite our country’s shift to e-learning, much leadership and professional development is best attained through classroom training... But that doesn’t mean traditional lecture and discussion style classroom learning... and our clasroom training is ANYTHING but traditional! Adults learn when they are engaged and participating and our classroom learning engages all the senses. To us, blended learning certainly includes web-based training, but it invloves much more. In the classroom, we limit lectures to 15 minutes or less and call them lecturettes. The remainder of the class is for large and small group discussion, enriching case studies that are so true to life they arouse emotion, role plays that help participants understand how they naturally behave in certain situations, and simulations and video vignettes that demonstrate typical workplace issues and bring learning to life. The use of the World Café is a highly successful learning format that draws in high-level executives, and our Action Learning component allows the participant to complete work while they are learning. We incorporate state-of-the-art videos and incorporate games and other energizing exercises. We occasionally use non-traditional learning techniques such as use of music, puzzles, TV clips, and drawing, and we ensure a great deal of practice of all new skills and tools. Net Gens (or Millennials) have unique learning styles that differ greatly from Baby Boomers. Our learning approach caters to all learning styles - Net Gen, Gen X, and Baby Boomers.
Our Customization Commitment
We use the ADDIE model of Instructional Systems Design (ISD) and adult learning principles to design our courses, so our programs are based on sound training approaches. Our courses are not like off-the-shelf courses or public seminars that offer the same 8 steps for managing stress or the five proven principles for handling projects. Before we develop objectives and outlines for your request, we review your goals, your industry, your learner’s level of knowledge and commitment, and then we determine the best methods for transferring new skills to their jobs. Prior to this, we can provide you with course overviews we have offered other clients, but you can feel secure in knowing that your program will be specifically customized for your organization. In almost every situation, we can do this free of charge to you!
Evalution Methodologies
We recognize the cost and value of training and know that many clients now want to determine the value of the training, ensuring the training supports organizational goals and makes an impact, i.e. Return on Investment (ROI). We support the use of Donald Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation: 1. Did they like it? 2. Did they learn it? 3. Can they apply it to their job? 4. Will this change the organization’s bottom line?
For programs that promote culture change, leadership development programs, and other skill-based courses, some form of level three evaluation should be used to be sure that the program is effective. This measures how well the learning is being transformed into job performance.
When the mission of the program is not only to ready individuals to be better employees or leaders, but also to move the organization and its culture forward, to grow and increase profitability, a level three evaluation can be used to determine the organizational effectiveness.
Depending on the client’s need for measurement, we can develop level three learning in the following ways:
- the individual’s level (how well they have integrated the learning into their performance);
- the process level (has their work area changed as a result of the participant’s learning); and
- the organizational level (has the organization improved as a result of this program occuring).
