Phase 1 of the Road to Thesis: The 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 21^st 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.

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.