Needs Assessment Toolkit

The Contract Education Needs Assessment Toolkit is for seasoned and beginning contract education staff desiring to better understand what needs assessment is and how to utilize needs assessment best practices and resources to better serve present and potential clients.

The Toolkit covers:

  • the definition of needs assessment
  • types of needs assessments
  • needs assessments best practices
  • the costing of needs assessment
  • change initiative project management
  • change management in needs assessment
  • examples, and additional resources

It is critical to understand that the Contract Education Needs Assessment Toolkit includes two levels of needs assessment:

  • 8-Phase Needs Assessment Model to support more complex and sophisticated situations.
  • Organizational, Occupational and Individual Needs Assessment to specifically support training needs assessment.

This toolkit was prepared by the Learning Resources Network (LERN) team of Greg Marsello, LERN’s co-founder and Senior Vice President; Rodney Holt, Associate Dean of the School of Continuing Education at Red Deer College in Red Deer, Alberta; and Julia King Tamang, LERN’s Senior Consultant for contract education. All three are foremost contract education subject matter experts. Additional input was provided by a group of seasoned and freshmen California Community College Contract Education practitioners.