Peer Review

Big Dog's Leadership Page

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Sep 25, 2020 by Psychology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Big Dog's Leadership Page is Donald Clark's award-winning resource site for all things leadership. This review points to a page entitled Leadership Training & Development. The provided resources on this page include self-assessments, readings designed for reflecting on important leadership skills and topics, and a wide variety of learning activities that are aimed at skill-building for both students and professionals.

Type of Material:

Reference Material

Recommended Uses:

The leadership development and training activities would be useful as part of a class on leadership and in developing leadership skills. The activities would be effective as homework and also could be discussed in class in teams. However, this resource would be best browsed individually due to the nature of the content it contains, such as self-scoring surveys.

Technical Requirements:

Only a web browser is needed for reviewing content on this site.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

This specific section of the Big Dog's Leadership Page offers a plethora of self-assessments, reflection activities, and readings that are useful for a variety of learners across business, management, psychology, and related academic disciplines, as well as in human resource and professional development areas of interest.
The main goals include understanding your strengths and your opportunities for growth as a leader, and how to develop leadership skills. The materials presented are useful in many situations regardless of industry.

Target Student Population:

This material is suitable for entry level professionals, undergraduate, graduate, and professional learners.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

No core skills or knowledge are needed; however, an academic background in business and/or experience in management would be beneficial.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The Basics of Leadership includes materials on human behavior, leadership models, motivation, appraisals, and leadership styles. Additional sections include Leadership Philosophies, Team Leadership, Advanced Leadership Skills, and Supporting Skills.
This content contains great depth and breadth specific to leadership development, including readings and exercises focused both on the underlying theories as well as practical applications. Further, the site does an excellent job in providing guidance and support for the selection of readings and exercises and tying together learning objectives with activities that are recommended to learners.

Concerns:

None. Very thorough.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The materials, along with the variety of activities, give users the opportunity to reflect on their own skills as well as those that are important for strong leadership.
Many of the individual readings and self-assessments contained on the Big Dog Leadership site may be used for self-assessment purposes, as well as to advance learning of the topics and applications of human behavior and leadership development.
This site provides additional references and support to allower learners to explore and dive deeper into the topic of leadership development should they choose to explore the subject in more detail.

Concerns:

None.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The material is clearly organized and labeled. Aside from a handful of ads, once one has used the site more than once, these are very easy to maneuver around. No special programs are needed.
Overall this site is quite easy to navigate with a standard web browser, and the organizational structure is fairly straightforward.

Concerns:

Some of the structure may look somewhat outdated by today's web standards, and the self-assessments have some image components that may not be fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 standards at this time.

Other Issues and Comments:: Overall this is an excellent resource with great usefulness for academic and professional applications across many disciplines and purposes. It is a great example of an open educational resource and well-deserving of its award status with MERLOT.
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