Literature Review
The
face of Title IX was changed in the year 2011. There were laws and acts passed
saying that different things needed to be done for the athletes and students of
our colleges and universities. Once these changes were made, the number of
Title IX cases reported grew drastically. These reports are for the better of
the universities because it shows that because students understand the
necessary steps it takes to report to someone at the university, they are
taking those steps and getting the help to either themselves or to a friend. I
was first interested in the topic of Title IX when I became a student leader at
Texas Lutheran University. With that position, it meant that part of our
general training included one full day of Title IX-related training. This
sparked interest has caused me to do more research inside the walls of this
university and see what exactly is working with the students and what is not.
Through my literature review, I discovered the more effective ways of trainings
methods and what different division schools are doing for their Title IX
trainings. To go into my method section, I will look at the PowerPoint
presentation that was used for student leader Title IX training, and then look
at a demo of what the online training for first year students was like. With my
analysis, I will go deeper into what I think all of this means for the future
and what I think TLU has contributed to it.
In 1972, the National Collegiate Athletic
Association (NCAA), came out with a new law called the Title IX of the
Education Amendments Act of 1972. Since then, sexual violence and
discrimination on college campuses seen changed drastically. To get right to
the point (and I don’t think this is proper format for a literature review but it’s
fine I’ll change it later), this literature review will go over my “why’s” on
my topic and its importance to the future our generation and other generations
to come. I will be analyzing Title IX training’s that occur on college campuses
all over the United States and will determine if those trainings are effective
and doing what the NCAA and the Department of Education want. To support my
claims on this subject, I will analyze the differences and similarities of
those Title IX trainings on a select few college campuses that are considered
Division 1, 2, and 3. To top off this section, I will also dive into the
third-party trainings that universities use to conduct training to the students
or employees. Another important factor in my “why” of importance is the overall
effectiveness of different training methods. Whether it be online training,
in-person, interactive, or presentational, different people will get more out
of certain methods than others. It’s important to distinguish these methods
from each other because universities and college campuses typically gravitate
towards certain ones, which will prove to be an important piece of my analysis
when the time comes for it.
The National Collegiate Athletic
Association came out with regulations and laws regarding Title IX and sexual
misconduct about 45 years ago. The Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of
1972 specifically states that "No person in the United States shall, on
the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of,
or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity
receiving Federal financial assistance” (NCAA.org). Although Title IX started
off as being catered more towards college athletes and the programs that go
along with it, Title IX has slowly and effectively made its way into the rest
of the college campuses. From the NCAA publications, it states many different
compliance standards for athletics participation, that often times spreads out
to other organizations on campuses. Institutions were reminded by a document by
the OCR* called “Dear Colleagues” that Title IX regulations require schools to
“designate a Title IX coordinator, adopt and disseminate a nondiscrimination
policy, and put grievance procedures in place to address complaints of
discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs and activities”
(NCAA Publications).
For my research for this project, I want
to make sure I cover all of my bases when it comes to figuring out what is
required of universities and what they are doing. I think it’s important to
know whether they are doing everything they are supposed to be doing, because
if they aren’t, then that may affect the number of Title IX cases that occur on
their campus. Title IX also makes sure that there is no “sex-based
discrimination in educational programs, including athletics, and requires that
each institution designate at least one Title IX coordinator to oversee
compliance” (NCAA Publications). This requirement may seem as though it’s an
obvious one and has no meaning, but I feel as though the Title IX coordinator
is one of the most integral parts in the effectiveness of the trainings that
may or may not go on at colleges or universities.
Now that I’ve gone into more of what NCAA
is wanting Title IX to look like on college campuses, let’s look at what Title
IX actually looks like on college campuses. I looked at four different Division
1 schools all over the United States and wanted to see the kinds of
requirements that they have for the students and faculty/staff. The first D1
university I looked at was Texas A&M College Station. Their website is very
easy to navigate and shows all the resources for Title IX, who the Title IX
coordinator is, and the fact that there is a mandatory Title IX training for
all students that attend the university. They must complete this every year,
and they have a hold on their account until they complete it. Then I looked at
Stanford University, and saw that they offer a mandatory training for all
graduate and professional students, but not current students. This came off as
interesting to me because it makes more sense to do the trainings for the
younger students as well as the older students. The next D1 university I looked
at was the University of California Los Angeles and discovered that they have a
mandatory online training for Title IX. On top of this, they also have the
option for in-person trainings that are more exclusive and seem to be less
popular. I also looked at the University of Oregon and saw that all of their
incoming students had to complete an online prevention program and attend a
presentation that they created called the IntroDUCKtion. Here, they will also
learn more about Title IX prevention and sexual misconduct prevention.
Now looking at the Division 2 schools,
West Texas A&M University doesn’t have much in terms of a training program,
but they have numerous resources and videos on their Title IX homepage that
discuss the same topics that would be in a training session. The University of
Central Oklahoma was an interesting one, because although freshman and
transfers and required to do an online training course, they get entered to win
a large prize in return. I had never heard of a university using incentives
like that to get their students to complete a training course that most
students across the country have to complete. Angelo State University requires
all of their students to do an online training both before they come to the
university, and in the following years as well.
The Division 3 schools didn’t have as many
required training sessions for students as I thought. Hendrix College requires
all of their employees to participate in the Campus SaVE Act Training, but not
their students. St. Olaf College also has a mandatory employee training, but
not for the students. They do, however, partake in the ‘It’s On Us’ national
campaign, which is still a way for students to get involved. The University of
Mary Hardin-Baylor requires that all of their new students and employees
complete an online Title IX trainings.
Looking at the differences and
similarities on some of these colleges and universities, I notice how most of
the D1 and D2 schools do more for their trainings than the D3 schools do. It’s
hard to say if this is a valid assumption we really don’t have a way of proving
this just yet, since there are still so many schools that I haven’t even looked
at. I think it’s very important to see these differences though because when I
do my analysis of these schools, I will be able to find out if these trainings
programs are working or not and try to debunk the problem that may be arising
with it.
Mentioned several times, online trainings
have become very popular in our generation. And since most people won’t want to
take the time to lean all of the information that goes along with the Title IX,
they connect with a third party to do the training for them. The first website
that comes up, and seems to be the most popular so far, is called SafeColleges.
When you first go to the home page of the website, they immediately offer you a
free trial. Scroll down the page a bit, and you can see their “Commitment to
Safety” claim, as well as success stories, and their hot topics, which includes
Title IX information. Their home page also lists universities and colleges that
use the website for their online training. Those schools are as follows:
Northwestern University, University of North Dakota, St. Louis Community
College, Greenville Technical College, and Regent University. Although these
are only a few of the schools using this platform, through the next few weeks
of research, I plan to find a complete list of schools.
The next most popular one I found was
called EverFi. Their website home page talks more about everything that they
have to offer. They don’t only have Title IX related training, but they have
trainings on harassment and discrimination, and prescription drug safety. When
you navigate to the Title IX course, it gives a brief overview of what to
expect in the course and the key points that will be discussed. EverFi doesn’t
give a list of schools that use them, but that is something that can be
discovered through contact of the company. EverFi also has a subsection of
their training platforms called Campus Clarity. This platform has the program
called “Think About It”. The creation of this program is to “reduce risky
student behavior and prevent sexual assault on your campus” (CampusClarity,
2016). There are multiple clusters of videos for students to watch, as well as
workshops that fall under different categories of Title IX related topics. The
idea of these online training courses is very important to my overall analysis
because knowing the successes of the online training courses will allow me to
break down the overall successes and failures of the trainings as a whole,
whether it’s the online courses’ delivery, or the university’s.
Another important factor in supporting my
analysis of these Title IX trainings, is the overall effectiveness on different
methods of training that are used on people nowadays. I will be discussing
online training versus in person training, and interactive training versus just
presentational training. There was a study done by NAVEX Global in 2014, where
they looked at the ethics of compliance training and discovered that “71 % of
compliance training programs use online tools” (Kroll, 2014). Based on this
statistic, executives are asking themselves whether the training is even
working, or if people are just completing it to complete it and get the credit
they need. This scholarly article, by Karen Knoll, is focused on ‘Gauging the
Effectiveness of Online Training’. Joan Meyer, the chair of the North American
compliance and investigations practice at Baker McKenzie, says “Just as
organizations monitor business operations and make adjustments to boost
performance, they need to monitor and adjust their compliance training
programs” (Knoll, 2014). This is an important piece of information, because
even though the majority of people are using online training to complete
requirements for students and employees, whether those trainings are working is
important to figure out. Especially when it comes to Title IX and there are
multiple online courses out there that colleges and universities use. Yes, it
might be easier to do instead of taking the time to assign a person to do the
training, but whether people are getting use out of those trainings can really
make or break a company and its success.
In a doctoral study done by Sascha Rixon,
that looked at the Conversational Analysis of two different types of workshops
conducted. The article of Rixon’s findings included the analysis of
talk-in-interactions during these two types of workshops that were done. The
facilitation workshop was done in a day and a half, and the training workshop
was done in one day. Throughout this article, Rixon describes her literature
review of what went on, her method section and how she and her colleagues
conducted their research, and then her findings and results. The study
concluded the asymmetry of workshop leaders and workshop participants,
“specifically focusing on how the leader managed the transition into and out of
activities that the participants performed in sub group participant
configurations as a means of accomplishing the workshop objectives” (Rixon,
2013). This source in particular sticks a lot over the others because of the
degree to which the research is conducted. It is set up in a very organized
manner and leads almost directly into my own analysis of the different types of
trainings that happen for Title IX.
There was another academic journal that I
found that really backs up the different kinds of training methods that can
occur in the workplace. Although a college campus isn’t a workplace, and
trainings are done differently, I think that this source hits some important
points that will highlight what training and development is, what it means, and
the different methods of doing training for employees. This journal was written
by Wajdi Milhem, Khalil Abushamsieh, and Maria Nieves Perez Arostegui. In their
journal, called “Training Strategies, Theories, and Types”, they define
training and development as referring “to the obtaining or transferring of
knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to carry out a specific activity or
functions; so, the benefits of training and development both for organization
and individual are strategic in nature and hence much wider” (Milhem et al,
2014). This journal is important because it points out what training should
look like and the different strategies that make training most effective. Like
I mentioned before, even though this journal focuses on human resources
training, I think it is still relevant since I am focusing on training among
students and student workers. In their study of what makes an effective
training for workers, the authors talk about a six-step strategy “that can
enhance training program’s overall effectiveness during the front-end planning
stage” (Milhem et al, 2014). The second step in their strategy process is to
“Improve Employee’s Performance”. They say that “training transferring
ultimately aims at employee’s performance improvements through learning and
taking action on that learning”, which is relevant to the Title IX trainings I
am looking at because the whole point is to give students information on who to
report to and how to report (Milhem et al. 2014). Therefore, the goal is to get
students to take action on what they learn through the training. That is why I
decided to determine what appears to be effective, online versus in-person. If
students feel like they don’t know all of the resources or know who to report
to, then the training hasn’t been effective and will therefore not know how to
take action.
The journal goes on to discuss the types
of training that they go through with human resources departments. The two
types of trainings they go over are on-the-job and off-the-job training.
On-the-job are trainings that happen in the work environment during a work day,
and off-the-job occurs off-site and even off-line. According the authors of the
journal, off-the-job training is the most common form used throughout
businesses. It involves “group discussions, one-to-one tutorials, lectures,
reading, training courses and workshops” (Milhem et al, 2014). With these types
of training, there are also different training methods to help get the
information across to the employees. The different delivery methods are team
training, mentoring, simulation, seminars, field trips and tours, and
e-learning. The one that I want to focus on for this thesis is e-learning. The
act of e-learning in this sense is employees using information technology to
increase the education and learning processes. And since 21st
century, e-learning “has encouraged HR departments to provide specific learning
that effectively and directly benefits learners” (Milhem, et al, 2014).
E-learning is also the cheaper route compared to other trainings, is done at
the employee’s pace, has consistent content, and can be used at any time and
anywhere. From what this journal says, it appears that e-learning, which is the
equivalent of online courses for the sake of my thesis, is the most productive
way to go and seems to give off the appropriate amount of information. As of
2014, it still seems as though “the majority of training continues to be instructor-led
and based in the classroom”, even though some companies “plan to increase the
amount of training delivered via virtual classrooms, self-paced e-learning,
simulations and new collaborative training systems” (Milhem et al, 2014). This
all ties in to my own thesis about Title IX because I am looking at the
differences between online training courses and in-person training. Given what
this academic journal says, it seems as though the online courses (e-learning)
is the way to go for most companies. Even though TLU is not a workplace
environment, they still have student workers who need to go through certain
training of Title IX so that they can become knowledgeable in the subject
matter and feel comfortable enough to take action one day.
To conclude, the NCAA has certain
standards and requirements of each institution in terms of Title IX and what
they require of their students and employees. Looking at the similarities and
differences of the trainings that occur at Division 1, 2, and 3 schools will allow
me to look more in depth on what exactly those trainings look like at each
school and draw a conclusion on how it affects their students. To add on to
this, looking at the effectiveness of various kinds of training methods will
also allow me to make a cleaner argument on what is working on college campuses
and what is not and what needs to be done to make sure that all of the right
information is getting portrayed in the right ways when it comes to Title IX.
Method Section
To
start off this method section, I plan to do a rhetorical analysis of the student leader presentation
training that is from Texas Lutheran University, the online training that is
required of first year students, and surveys from groups of those students
giving their feedback on the training. Overall, this will be a rhetorical
analysis with a hint of ethnography when I do the surveys. The student leader
presentation allowed me to see the types of information that was involved and
exactly how much interaction was done off the screen. There are lots of key
components to the pieces of information that are given during the presentation
as well that will be analyzed later on.
With
the online training course, I plan to go in and also rhetorically analyze and see what information
is being portrayed through this website and see the different way that they go
about doing things, whether it be videos or just pieces of information here and
there. I think that this information will be really important for me because online
courses are what the majority of schools are doing because it’s easier when
there are thousands of students in attendance of the university. My hope is
that I will be able to make conclusions on what is in the online course and if
there are certain things that stick out.
The
last pieces of data that I plan on collecting so far are the surveys from the
students about their experience with the training sessions. I will be sending
out the same survey to first year students and to student leaders on the different
trainings that they did. With this survey I hope to gain a better insight on
students’ thoughts on the Title IX trainings that we put them through at Texas
Lutheran University. Because even though I have my own ideas on what I think is
working and what isn’t, the surveys may tell me something and may even say
something significant if I think one thing, but the survey says another. I
think it will also be beneficial to use the survey method because it will allow
me to show students’ responses to the trainings that I will be analyzing in my
data analysis section.
Data Analysis
Going
into my analysis of my data, looking at the PowerPoint training that was given
to student leaders, one thing that I noticed was the number of times that outside
resources were mentioned. Our Title IX coordinator made sure that we were aware
of who on campus was confidential and who was not. This information is crucial,
because there may be victims who do not want to come forward to everyone just
yet and they may want to keep things between them and the school counselor. It
was also made clear than any faculty members are non-confidential. Knowing this
information can really make or break someone’s decision to report or not, or
who to report to. During the training, students were also made aware of past
Title IX cases that have happened in our news and social media outlets and
other universities. Through this process, the coordinator wanted the student
leaders to know that this does happen all the time, at even bigger universities
than our very own. I think that it helps make students feel more comfortable
knowing that whatever happens here, although should not be normalized, should
be known that people are not alone.
There
was a lot of nitty-gritty information that was relayed to the students to
ensure that they knew they topic that they were learning about. I think this is
a key factor is giving the students the information they need to successful
report or informing someone how to report. In the presentation, student leaders
were also given information on “Responsible Employee Training”. This was so
that students would be aware of exactly what they are expected to learn during
the training session. Everything is laid out on the table and I think that that
is also a key component in the success of a training session. Speaking of
things being laid out on the table of the presentation, the coordinator zoomed
in on the places where students can anonymously report cases on the TLU portal.
And since everyone in the room was a student leader, it was very imperative to
mention that if any student confides in a student leader, they must report to
their supervisor no matter what.
At
the end of the training session, there was an activity that was done, often called
“The Drawbridge Exercise”. It was a story about a Baroness and five other
characters, in which students had to rank who was to blame for the Baroness’s
death. There are many factors that come into play, and different scenarios with
each of the other characters that the students needed to analyze to come up
with a conclusion. Since I went through this myself, it’s still something that
has stuck with me since we did this back in August. The group probably spent
about thirty minutes or so talking with each other trying to figure out who was
the most to blame for the death, given the circumstances of the story. There
was very healthy conversation and the Title IX coordinator facilitated it
professionally and asked all of the correct questions to turn our conversations
in different and productive directions. When the group was flying around ideas,
most people wanted to put blame on the person who had died, saying that she had
“done it to herself”, and “could have avoided it”. This was a real eye-opener
for some people in the group, me included. Because even though this was just a
story, when we first read over it, we immediately went to the Baroness being
responsible for her own death, which wasn’t true in this case. Our society is
so quick to blame the victim in various situations and don’t even take into
consideration the other characters or factors involved. The idea of this
exercise was to show how we treat society and it isn’t always the right way to
do things. I also think that is something that can stick with students for
months or years after they are done, which is what makes the interactive-ness
of the activity so successful. Being able to have a conversation about how our
society views things and relate it back to life at a university is very
beneficial for not only student leaders, but anyone who may come across the
situation.
My
next phase of what I will be analyzing is the online training course required
of first year students. I will be specifically looking at the type of
information that is relayed to students going through the course and the way
that they put out the information. One thing that I noticed from the online
training course, Think About It, is that they ask very personal, but anonymous
questions about the student’s sex life, how often they drink, and how often
they do drugs. Starting off with questions like these show that this is a
serious session, but is done in a way to make sure the students are engaged and
learning. I think that this aspect of the training course is good and
beneficial and seems like it is something that students will take away after
the course is done. There are many scenarios throughout the entire course that
allows students to determine what the characters should say next or what
actions they would take in a similar situation. This seems like an effective
way to give students he resources they need to take action for the future
should they every be in a situation where action is needed. I took many
screenshots of the course to look at for further analysis, but what I’ve gotten
so far has given me the opportunity to go back and see what the first-year
students saw before college and during their first semester.
I
think that my survey responses will also shed some light on what they students
actually took away from the course a couple of months after completing it. I
have looked for certain patterns in the survey responses to see if there are
topics that are remembered more than others, and then compare that to the
information that is displayed in the training course and the emphasis on that
topic. I do, however, still think that there are some aspects to the online
training course that is not effective, since most students will just click
through to the next section until they are done and not actually pay attention
to what is being said. I’m still thinking of different ways that that could
potentially be combatted for the future, but I will also discuss that more when
I talk about the results to the survey that I sent out within the next couple
of paragraphs.
The
surveys that I sent out to first-year students and student leaders will help me
to understand my own analysis of Think About It and the student leader
presentation. The purpose of these surveys is to match the training courses
with student’s responses to their respective course. My goal is to figure out
which training method seems to work on our students based off of their answers
to the questions that I provided. The survey entailed two open-ended questions.
The first one question is asks them to describe their experience with TLU’s
Title IX training. And the second question asks them to list the important
points that they remember from the training. My hope is that these results will
give me an idea of if the trainings are successful and if the students are
getting valuable information from them. Also, with this information, I am
hoping to discover that doing training sessions in person and in a
conversational manner will give students the ability to ask the necessary
questions and talk through things so that they can understand the information
given to them.
When
I first began sending out the survey to first-year students and student leaders
on campus I discovered that I had a flaw in my survey. For this semester, it
was not specified enough to where I could figure out exactly which type of
student answered which questions. I had to go in and figure out which responses
were clearly about Think About It and which ones were clearly from the student
leader training. For next semester, I think that I will need to send out
separate surveys to those groups of students and have more specific questions
about the training itself. But when I was able to go through the answers and
sort of categorize them to the best of my abilities, I found patterns from the
students’ answers for the Think About It course. The majority of students said
that they remembered how important consent was and who to go to if they need to
report something and who is confidential. This is a really important piece of
information, because it shows that the topics that were discussed the most and
emphasized where absorbed by the students for them to hopefully take into
action if necessary. Although I have not gone through the entire training
course yet, the set-up is the same all throughout, and only the topics changed.
I think that with the different scenarios and the repetitive nature of the
course, as far as consent goes, the message seemed to get across clearly to the
students.
For
the student leaders on campus, I only had eight total students who completed
the survey, and from those students I could pinpoint three of them that clearly
took the student leader training course. The commonality between those students
was knowing who to go to when it comes to reporting. The main difference in
reporting information between the first-year students and student leaders is that
student leaders have to report to their supervisors if they are given any
information. This was something that was emphasized during the training, and it
shows in the survey responses that they remembered that, even though the
training took place in August of 2018. Another thing that students took away
from the student leader training was to not blame the victim. This comes from
the activity that was played that is mentioned above in the paragraph on the
student leader training. The point of the activity was to not blame the victim,
even though it seemed easiest. A girl had died who left the castle after being
told not to. There were a lot of people involved throughout the story that the
group seemed to put the blame on as well. But the majority of students wanted
to blame the girl who was killed. There is a lot of power to this activity
because in our society, everyone mostly goes straight towards blaming the
victim, when that is not the first-place people should go. I think it is very
important that the students remembered that piece of information, because it
shows that the activity had an impact and did what it was supposed to do in the
end.
Conclusion
Through my literature review, method section, and brief analysis of
the data that I have so far, I have been able to look at many different
variables relating to Title IX and the university. In my literature review, I
focused on the different methods of training sessions and what would work best,
as well as the similarities and differences of Title IX trainings at different
division schools. In my method section, I go more into detail about how I plan
on getting my information for the data that I will be analyzing. For my data
analysis, based on the presentation training session and the online course, Think
About It, and the survey that I sent to first-year students and student leaders
on campus, I believe that I’ve been able to discover what makes for a lasting
impression training session and can understand the bits and pieces of
information that students took away from each training. I still have a lot of
information that I plan on getting of the future, but I think that what I have
now gives me the ability to make a conclusion so far. It is clear that both
training sessions have been effective in getting the point across to a smaller number
of students. But when I get more specific survey information next semester, I
will hopefully be able to draw more concise conclusions on the techniques and
methods of the trainings and if they are working correctly or not.
Works Cited
Rixon,
Sascha. (2013). Talk-in-interaction in
Facilitated and Training Workshops in Organizations: A Summary of Findings from
Conversational Analysis. Retrieved from
Kroll,
Karen. (October 2014). Gauging the
Effectiveness of Online Training. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/Miranda/Downloads/Gauging_the_effectiveness_of_o.PDF.
CampusClarity. (2016).
Retrieved from https://home.campusclarity.com/.
Milhem,
Wajdi, Abushamsieh, Kahlil, and Arostegui, Maria. (2014). Journal of Accounting – Business & Management vol. 21 no. 1. “Training
Strategies, Theories, and Types”. December 11, 2018.
