Some Final Thoughts ...
So today is the last day of the Fall Semester. As this semester draws to a close, here are some final thoughts ...
Advanced Instructional Design - Honestly, I didn't think I would enjoy this class very much. I am not a theory person. But I will have to say I was pleasantly surprised when everything came together for my final project. After a bit of a false start (Blackboard proved to be a bit inflexible for a Cognitive Flexibility Hypertext), I am relatively please with the end result.
Performance Centered Design - At first, I could barely follow what the instructor was talking about in this class (Question posed by instructor in the first class - In 60 seconds, tell me how many seconds are in a year? Response - Well, there are 12 - January second, February second, etc ... ). So, needless to say, I didn't think I would catch on. But, after working with my class partner, I think I had the most fun working on the final project in this class. Okay, our first iteration of the Public Speaking Support Blog needs a little work, but it is a pretty decent first stab from a couple of folks who only recently got into this whole Instructional Design field.
Immersion - I will have to say that I am not quite sure how I feel about my Immersion experience at this point. Last night, we gave our semester end presentation on the analysis phase of the project with the prospect of presenting virtually to our client, who at the last minute decided he couldn't participate. I think that about sums up the Immersion experience this semester for me. While we presented a "realistic" scenario for the team to work on during the design phase, who knows if it is going to fly with the client, or if it will even be realistic enough to work for the audience. On a positive note, we did have an SME attend the presentation last night and she gave us a glowing thumbs up. I just hope that we can deliver.
I am very proud of our team -- we brought the project together and delivered last night. I really felt like we were a cohesive unit, with lots to show for all our hard work. I am extremely happy to be involved with such a talented group of designers. It has made the semester that much easier when the road got bumpy. Great job, guys!
Showing posts with label needs analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label needs analysis. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Immersion -- Week 10
Mid-semester rant, doubts, blues ....
Up until this point, I have kept my posts pretty objective concerning the whole Immersion experience. For this posting I will digress a bit. This week has been a struggle for me. In one class I was included in a group that was on the receiving end of some pretty harsh and unproductive criticism in an activity that was intended to be an open and reasonably positive peer critique of our work.
I have doubted my ability to adequately facilitate the Immersion team and move them forward in the analysis phase of our project. Even though I have tried my best in the role as Project Coordinator to not act as a leader (see post on bioteaming), during client and SME meetings as well as interactions with our instructor I feel that I am responsible for filling that leadership role. I don't mind facilitating - as a matter of fact most of the time I enjoy it. But I'm finding that in this situation I dislike the facilitator role more and more each day. Perhaps it is because I have a vested interest in the outcome of the project and cannot act as an impartial party during this process. Sometimes I feel like I am battling my teammates and imposing my perspective and sense of order on them. I don't want that to happen. So this week I was more passive in my role to see what would happen in the team meeting. A circular, unproductive conversation ensued that had the team stalled on the same topic for about 45 minutes. Not good. I suggested that we all start sharing the role of leading client and SME meetings. They agreed, but didn't jump up and down at the opportunity to take on this task. I was able to convince one team member to handle a portion of the meeting while I stood by as back up.
Then to top it off, we got an interesting perspective from another instructor who filled in briefly for our Immersion advisor this week. From his view, it appears that our whole approach to the needs analysis needs to be completely revamped so we are not considering a virtual collaboration center as an end product. This has been a concern voiced by some team members as we have progressed through analysis. I feel that there are some competing agendas here that have prompted the "do what is wanted" stance where the project is concerned, causing the "do what is actually needed" approach to take a back seat (see my fuchsia post). That doesn't make me very happy.
On a more positive note, I did get to play with Springdoo, a neat Web 2.0 tool that allows you to create quick and easy videos that can be emailed, or posted to websites, blogs, and social networking sites. I posted my quick and dirty first attempt at a Springdoo video. My partner and I hope to use this for our Performance Centered Design project that will support public speaking.
Up until this point, I have kept my posts pretty objective concerning the whole Immersion experience. For this posting I will digress a bit. This week has been a struggle for me. In one class I was included in a group that was on the receiving end of some pretty harsh and unproductive criticism in an activity that was intended to be an open and reasonably positive peer critique of our work.
I have doubted my ability to adequately facilitate the Immersion team and move them forward in the analysis phase of our project. Even though I have tried my best in the role as Project Coordinator to not act as a leader (see post on bioteaming), during client and SME meetings as well as interactions with our instructor I feel that I am responsible for filling that leadership role. I don't mind facilitating - as a matter of fact most of the time I enjoy it. But I'm finding that in this situation I dislike the facilitator role more and more each day. Perhaps it is because I have a vested interest in the outcome of the project and cannot act as an impartial party during this process. Sometimes I feel like I am battling my teammates and imposing my perspective and sense of order on them. I don't want that to happen. So this week I was more passive in my role to see what would happen in the team meeting. A circular, unproductive conversation ensued that had the team stalled on the same topic for about 45 minutes. Not good. I suggested that we all start sharing the role of leading client and SME meetings. They agreed, but didn't jump up and down at the opportunity to take on this task. I was able to convince one team member to handle a portion of the meeting while I stood by as back up.
Then to top it off, we got an interesting perspective from another instructor who filled in briefly for our Immersion advisor this week. From his view, it appears that our whole approach to the needs analysis needs to be completely revamped so we are not considering a virtual collaboration center as an end product. This has been a concern voiced by some team members as we have progressed through analysis. I feel that there are some competing agendas here that have prompted the "do what is wanted" stance where the project is concerned, causing the "do what is actually needed" approach to take a back seat (see my fuchsia post). That doesn't make me very happy.
On a more positive note, I did get to play with Springdoo, a neat Web 2.0 tool that allows you to create quick and easy videos that can be emailed, or posted to websites, blogs, and social networking sites. I posted my quick and dirty first attempt at a Springdoo video. My partner and I hope to use this for our Performance Centered Design project that will support public speaking.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Immersion -- Week 8
I love fuchsia -- can we get more fuchsia in this?
So the Immersion team recently spent some time talking to the "tools" experts within T/TAC - these are the folks that use some of the collaborative tolls I spoke of in a previous post. They use Adobe Connect, Polycom, and sometimes very sophisticated video conferencing equipment to communicate across the state. We also met with the client again to discuss his high level vision of the virtual collaboration/conferencing center. And while this ambitious goal is very attractive to those (like me) who want to explore the capabilities of such technologies, when pressed to determine who else we could talk to (a.k.a. the audience), the client told us to follow up with T/TAC staff in the client's region - when this virtual collaboration center is supposed to be designed with all T/TAC staff in mind - that is T/TAC staff across the entire state of Virginia. Anecdotal evidence indicate that audience members in other T/TAC regions do not have access to these nifty communication tools as do the folks in Region 4, nor do they have the support to operate these tools.
So what are we doing here? The client likes the color fuchsia, so we are going to give him more fuchsia? There is this nagging thought that our focus did not truly match the needs of our audience. As we struggled with determining the scope of our audience, we met with another stakeholder outside of Region 4. While this stakeholder probably would have preferred that we tackle another priority from our Performance Analysis, she warmed to the idea of developing and piloting the virtual collaboration center. Why? She reminded us that the initial concept of T/TAC Online was only embraced by a few people - and it has taken six years to become established as the main resource for public school staff on issues related to students with special needs. She believes that using a key group of opinion leaders to diffuse the idea of the virtual collaboration center to other T/TAC staff would work. We discussed asking one of the T/TAC Priority Project teams that embraces technology to be our "guinea pigs" during the design process. And besides - let's get real here - we only have until mid-May to work on this project. This is where we need to make a realistic decision and move forward knowing that we thoroughly considered all of our options.
So the Immersion team recently spent some time talking to the "tools" experts within T/TAC - these are the folks that use some of the collaborative tolls I spoke of in a previous post. They use Adobe Connect, Polycom, and sometimes very sophisticated video conferencing equipment to communicate across the state. We also met with the client again to discuss his high level vision of the virtual collaboration/conferencing center. And while this ambitious goal is very attractive to those (like me) who want to explore the capabilities of such technologies, when pressed to determine who else we could talk to (a.k.a. the audience), the client told us to follow up with T/TAC staff in the client's region - when this virtual collaboration center is supposed to be designed with all T/TAC staff in mind - that is T/TAC staff across the entire state of Virginia. Anecdotal evidence indicate that audience members in other T/TAC regions do not have access to these nifty communication tools as do the folks in Region 4, nor do they have the support to operate these tools.
So what are we doing here? The client likes the color fuchsia, so we are going to give him more fuchsia? There is this nagging thought that our focus did not truly match the needs of our audience. As we struggled with determining the scope of our audience, we met with another stakeholder outside of Region 4. While this stakeholder probably would have preferred that we tackle another priority from our Performance Analysis, she warmed to the idea of developing and piloting the virtual collaboration center. Why? She reminded us that the initial concept of T/TAC Online was only embraced by a few people - and it has taken six years to become established as the main resource for public school staff on issues related to students with special needs. She believes that using a key group of opinion leaders to diffuse the idea of the virtual collaboration center to other T/TAC staff would work. We discussed asking one of the T/TAC Priority Project teams that embraces technology to be our "guinea pigs" during the design process. And besides - let's get real here - we only have until mid-May to work on this project. This is where we need to make a realistic decision and move forward knowing that we thoroughly considered all of our options.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Immersion -- Week 1
Teamwork
Okay, so classes started Monday and we had a kick-off for the Immersion project on Tuesday. We have a relatively small team (group of 5) of students with very diverse experiences. Our project is to bring Web 2.0 and/or mobile Web 2.0 to the users of T/TAC Online in some fashion. T/TAC Online is an online resource for Virginia teachers who work with special needs students. We will be meeting with the SMEs and other people involved in T/TAC on September 10th. Many Immersion teams have tackled T/TAC projects in the past. The current focus is a very different take from the projects that other teams have worked on in the past. As we delve into the Needs Analysis phase, it will be interesting to see exactly who is using the T/TAC site the most, how they are using it, and if these same users are currently using Web 2.0 professionally or personally.
It is no coincidence that we are focusing on Web 2.0 issues as most of the Immersion students are in the Multimedia/Hypermedia Design class. And it helps that both classes have the same instructor. She asked us to start a blog and post weekly reflections for Immersion. Lucky that I started this blog when I did! I will be posting my weekly reflections here along with other interesting tidbits as I see fit.
But until we have some in depth discussions with the SMEs, we will first focus on teamwork. We ran through some exercises from Teamwork from the Inside Out focusing on temperament characteristics using animal metaphors. We discovered that we are a team of dolphins and beavers. No lie. We are of the Idealist temperament (dolphins - driven by the need to have a purpose; relationship focused and empathetic, and the Guardian temperament (beavers - driven by the need to be responsible; builds results and needs to be part of the group). I am firmly a cross between a beaver and dolphin. Visually, that would be an interesting mash-up. But when pressed to fix on one "animal" versus another I just couldn't based on the characteristics prescribed by the author.
In addition, we had some reading on Virtual Team Productivity. In the article, the author focuses on bioteams, an area of research that identifies the characteristics of nature's most successful teams (ants, bees, etc.) and how these characteristics can be applied to our daily team interactions. It is an interesting article (there are no team leaders, orders are not issued, timely information is provided by everyone) but I am curious about how this bioteaming works if you think from a constructivist viewpoint -- looking at the notion of "Vital signs". If the team identifies their Vital Signs so that everyone knows when to respond and how to respond, wouldn't the response depend on how the individual constructs their meaning of a given situation? You can define your vital signs in black and white, but the individual's interpretation of using that vital sign in a situation where they deem it appropriate is the key. I think it may be a bit more complex than what leads up to a bee's waggle dance.
Okay, so classes started Monday and we had a kick-off for the Immersion project on Tuesday. We have a relatively small team (group of 5) of students with very diverse experiences. Our project is to bring Web 2.0 and/or mobile Web 2.0 to the users of T/TAC Online in some fashion. T/TAC Online is an online resource for Virginia teachers who work with special needs students. We will be meeting with the SMEs and other people involved in T/TAC on September 10th. Many Immersion teams have tackled T/TAC projects in the past. The current focus is a very different take from the projects that other teams have worked on in the past. As we delve into the Needs Analysis phase, it will be interesting to see exactly who is using the T/TAC site the most, how they are using it, and if these same users are currently using Web 2.0 professionally or personally.
It is no coincidence that we are focusing on Web 2.0 issues as most of the Immersion students are in the Multimedia/Hypermedia Design class. And it helps that both classes have the same instructor. She asked us to start a blog and post weekly reflections for Immersion. Lucky that I started this blog when I did! I will be posting my weekly reflections here along with other interesting tidbits as I see fit.
But until we have some in depth discussions with the SMEs, we will first focus on teamwork. We ran through some exercises from Teamwork from the Inside Out focusing on temperament characteristics using animal metaphors. We discovered that we are a team of dolphins and beavers. No lie. We are of the Idealist temperament (dolphins - driven by the need to have a purpose; relationship focused and empathetic, and the Guardian temperament (beavers - driven by the need to be responsible; builds results and needs to be part of the group). I am firmly a cross between a beaver and dolphin. Visually, that would be an interesting mash-up. But when pressed to fix on one "animal" versus another I just couldn't based on the characteristics prescribed by the author.
In addition, we had some reading on Virtual Team Productivity. In the article, the author focuses on bioteams, an area of research that identifies the characteristics of nature's most successful teams (ants, bees, etc.) and how these characteristics can be applied to our daily team interactions. It is an interesting article (there are no team leaders, orders are not issued, timely information is provided by everyone) but I am curious about how this bioteaming works if you think from a constructivist viewpoint -- looking at the notion of "Vital signs". If the team identifies their Vital Signs so that everyone knows when to respond and how to respond, wouldn't the response depend on how the individual constructs their meaning of a given situation? You can define your vital signs in black and white, but the individual's interpretation of using that vital sign in a situation where they deem it appropriate is the key. I think it may be a bit more complex than what leads up to a bee's waggle dance.
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