PROJECT 1 REFLECTION

Why did you select that (main) concept?

“Efficiency Mindset” is a skill that every team member at Kasasa will need to use at some point. As the company continues to grow, scalability, supportability and level of effort become more important. More clients coming in, means more work to launch and support new products. Every team member needs to work as efficiently as possible in order to fulfill client requests, in a timely manner, without sacrificing any quality. This gets especially challenging for teams like creative, who are tasked with constantly raising the bar. Creating a presentation to train the team will assure that all members understand efficiency and constantly strive to be more efficient. 

What's the rationale for your design?

The easiest way to train a large group in my office is to hold an interactive presentation. THis presentation can be recorded and shared remotely in order to verify that everyone gets to view the training. I will also be able to send out a copy of the presentation for the team to refer back to later. 

What challenges did you face during the design process?

The biggest challenge is to create a training that will work for everyone. The project management teams are very detail oriented, the development teams are mostly introverted, and the design teams are more free-thinking. The training has to be understood by each of these different types of learners.

What changes did you feel like you need to make after receiving feedback? Why?

The question of what challenges I faced actually answers this question as well. The feedback asking who my audience was, forced me to really take into consideration how many different types of learners I would be presenting to. 

PROJECT 1 TOPIC SELECTION

PROJECT 1 TOPIC SELECTION

Main concept

Efficient mindset: Finding the shortest path between point A and point B, even if that means a little extra work sometimes. Helping improve processes, finding solutions, time management, multitasking.

Sub-concepts (5~7 sub-concepts): May help constructing a hierarchical tree to see if you get enough/appropriate sub-concepts.

• Efficient mindset
• Finding the shortest path between point A and point B
• Helping improve process
• Finding solutions
• Time management
• Multitasking
• Progress over perfection

Bullet points for your target audience/context.

• Efficient mindset
• Finding the shortest path between point A and point B
• Working smarter rather than harder
• Getting results, but doing things the right way
• Helping improve process
• If there is something in the process that prevents you from efficiently getting your work done, work with your team to improve the process
• Find ways to complete tasks faster and more efficiently
• Finding solutions
• Help find solutions to problems that are preventing efficient work
• Don’t let yourself get stuck on something for too long by accepting help from other team members
• Time management
• The best use of time
• Prioritization
• Using time effectively and efficiently
• Multitasking
• Limiting downtime
• Handling multiple tasks simultaneously
• Progress over perfection
• Get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) live
• Improve using user feedback

Approximate time of instruction (no more than an hour).

The presentation will be 30 minutes, however, there will be crowd participation during the presentation, with opportunities to ask questions at the end.

Bullet points for what strategies, methods, and techniques may be used to teach this concept and sub-concepts.  

• Define Efficiency Mindset
• Define objectives and concepts that will be learned
• Use three ways to learn a concept
• RECALL: Memorize name, definition, and particular instance
• Recall information periodically, and ask audience to recall concepts during presentation
• UNDERSTAND: Explain relationships to other concepts
• Provide solid examples of efficiency mindsets being used in work
• Use similar concepts to illustrate success
• APPLY: Apply a concept in new situations
• Discuss examples of when efficiency mindset could come up at work, and how to deal with the situation

READING CHECK #2: What is a concept?

What is a concept?

A concept is a category that can be applied to things that are similar, like a group of objects, or a group of theories. The same concept can be used with all of the items in the group.

Think about your experience as a teacher/trainer or even a learner. How have you taught or learned a concept? Give an example.

In my line of work, I often will be involved in projects that rely on developers with different skill sets, and different programming languages of expertise. Some of the developers may work with the underlying infrastructure that all of our websites are built on, while others may be the ones programming the websites on said infrastructure.

However, when working with different types of developers, there are some concepts that apply to code, regardless of the language. Some of the common concepts we may use are “scalability”, “supportability”, and “level of effort”. Our code must always be “scalable”, meaning if we do it for one client, we need to be able to do it for hundreds of clients. This means it needs to be easy to implement for each of the clients. The code also must be “supportable”. With programming, there will almost always be a necessity to update or upgrade the code. An example would be if a browser changes the way it handles a Javascript function, or drops support for this function. Users could experience a broken website. Another concept of coding is “level of effort”. How many hours will it take to complete the project? When does the project have to be completed? This will determine how many developers will need to work on it. I also like to look at the “value” that will be achieved, once the project is completed in order to make sure that the “level of effort” doesn’t outweigh the “value” - that the “juice is worth the squeeze”.

How would you use your knowledge of concept learning in developing instruction?

When developing instruction, I look at who the audience will be. Once I’ve determined all of the audiences, I will look at the concepts that will be taught, and determine how they relate to each team. I will keep all of the concept definitions generic enough that they can apply to each team, but will show some examples of the concept being applied to each. An example of this would be the presentation on persuasive communication that I completed last semester and presented to our department. As a department, we have established a set of soft skills that each team member should develop in order to help them in their jobs. Persuasive communication is one of those soft skills. I had to teach a variety of different teams what meant to use persuasive communications, and how they could apply it to their work. The team included copywriters, designers, developers and project managers, so the concept had to be broad enough to include each team, but detailed enough to help them understand the concept and how to apply it to their day-to-day work. I was able to explain what persuasive communication is, and then allow the team to discuss how it would be used in different scenarios by different teams.

READING CHECK #1: What is Instructional Design?

As a manager in the technology industry, I will use a combination of the theories. When training my individual team, I will need to use the Learning Theory to train my individual team members as they each learn differently. Some of my team prefers to read books and blog posts, while others prefer to watch a video. Still, others prefer to learn by actually writing code and experimenting.

Instructional Design is the creation of instructional programs used for the purpose of intentional learning. While learning is a process that occurs naturally, Instructional Design can be used to facilitate the learning, making it easier to reach bigger audiences, or learners with different needs.

In order for me to grow as an Instructional Designer, the biggest thing for me will be to learn and study the different theories. I have become familiar with some of the theories, but I need to get them more ingrained in my memory so that I can begin to develop my own style. I also need to continue studying the different learning styles of those who I am teaching.