Internship Week Two

Week of May 19.

This week was our first face-to-face meeting. I drove out to Bismarck on Friday the 23rd and spent some time during the week reviewing the instructional material that is on the company website.

Review of materials that have been developed so far. What has been created is Flash based instruction which is sound in its approach, flat though, lacking much a variety in its presentation. In other words, it is completely aligned with the expectation what might have of corporate mandated instruction. Under most conditions, one would certainly not choose to engage with this material unless it was tied to incentives. What it lacks is more dimensions. With the addition of examples, especially multimedia clips demonstrating the application of the principles being taught, interests and retention could definitely be improved. Transfer would also be enhanced if concrete examples were embedded in the media which related in direct and meaningful ways with the experience of the learner. Julie did tell me that they are considering adding some voice to the Flash as it is now.

The meeting in Bismarck was first an overview of what the existing educational Flash material covered, then what the differences between the Flash presentations and older, less updated, (10 years since last reviewed and updated) paper based educational material covers.

We identified the learners:

There are primarily two groups of people who will be using this instruction; technical users who have engineering backgrounds who will use it as a review, and non-technical users who are tasked with learning a new set of job skills.

And the purpose of the instruction:

The purpose of this instruction is the beginning of a comprehensive educational program within the departments for certification. The goal is to have workers from all departments qualified to perform the job functions that have been traditionally limited to only one group.

The initial goal is to design a module that will serve as a template for future modules.

Follow-up will be performed by the SME to determine which problems are most common and the material can address. Once he has identified a few problems that can be addressed Julie and I will decide which we can most readily address with revisions and additions to the existing materials.

Plans at this point are to talk by the end of next week about what the SME has for us to look at, and in the meantime I am going to familiarize myself more fully with the existing Flash documentation and the paper based older material. The goal is to have something decided on by the end of next week or the middle of next.

Reflection

It was a great experience to meet Julie face-to-face as we have taken classes together in the past. It was interesting to see how the direction of the project evolves as our understanding of what it will serve to do is deepened. Knowing a little history of the organization from the perspective of the SME gave us insight into the learners and the approach they are likely to have towards the courses. I am excited to have a few things to examine and to determine which are most readily addressed by the instruction.

Internship Week One

Week of May 12.

This week was a set up and planning week. Major events were finding that there was an opportunity with XXX and working with Julie.

On our first phone call we talked about the scope of the project and the internship. We talked about what the ID problem is and what the desired outcome is. The workers have a gap in performance. New workers have a difficult time applying the formulas and mathematical learning to real world work situations. There is currently an existing paper based handbook that helps with this that is not in compatible with the new flash based instruction that has been and is currently being created. What is desired is finding out what those taking the new training need in work experiences that relates to the formulas and concepts that they are learning in the math courses, and creating connections between this material and how it applies to work situations. It is desired that this new instruction will be integrated with the flash content delivery if possible.

Paperwork was submitted to be approved, it was edited and created and approved to advisors with a short series of emails.

An email invitation to come to Bismark to meet with SMEs came out on Wednesday, I called and left a message for Julie on Thursday.

Friday she called me back and we discussed the purpose of the meeting. We had a preliminary discussion on the learners and what their likely needs. The Primary learners are ND DOT new employees. The secondary learners would be town and county workers. We also talked about some of the potential logistics for the trip to Bismarck, possible lodging and drive reimbursement.

Reflection

This has been a fun experience for me so far. From both a personal and ID perspective, I have had to be proactive in finding opportunity. This has drawn on my communication skills and social networking. The ability to communicate and to work with others in a collaborative way are, I think, critical skills both professionally and as an IDer. The meeting we set up is another real life experience meeting SMEs in a practical situation where an IDer would be expected to interact as part of a team to create a solution. For me, I will be focusing on what the perception is of the problem, what is the desired performance and the current performance, and who is the learner. I think that out of the meeting I will be starting to have a better feel for the content of what is being taught, and how this content may be best presented to the learner. Of course, all of this is within a system I am learning about with its own way of seeing issues and ways of solving problems.

 

Another Website…

I am working on creating a website that has examples of the work that I have done in ID. The URL is http://www.idtspecialists.com/ it's a work in progress. It's fun putting things together in a new way. Well, usually. Have to admit that a few of the embedded files did not act as I thought they should initially. I think the major bugs are worked out, now to make it pretty and design a navigation that I like.

My Blog

I hope to use this space as a place to share my discoveries about learning and things I think are cool. For those interested, I am a graduate student at the University of North Dakota in the Instructional Design and Technology program. The address of the program is http://idt.und.edu. For anyone who is wondering what Instructional Design is, there is a nice brochure in PDF format that gives a decent abbreviated description of what IDT is. I am taking two summer courses this semester, one is my internship, and the other is on the use of technology in the classroom. I love what I've learned in this program and the chance I have to make a difference in how well learning happens. I think this is a very exciting and growing field. More to come later.

 

Mike