Reflection

The Journey — Transformation of attitude, ideas, and career path

Attitudinal Adjustment

It’s hard to believe the time has finally come to finish this part of my educational technology journey. Five years ago, I enrolled in my initial EDTEC classes having not yet graduated with my first Master’s degree in business. Was I crazy? Maybe so. But the real story is that from the beginning I felt like I was “forced” to get this degree. As a new instructional designer at my place of work, there was an unspoken expectation that this degree was a requirement for success. And so, my start in the program was not under the best of circumstances as I struggled to cope with my bad attitude and a sometimes-debilitating condition called “senior-itis” even before I began my first assignment.

I’m proud to say my attitude has changed over time. The transformation came slowly through positive experiences while taking classes, working with classmates, and growing to love the theories, practices, and ideas that have become an integral part of my professional career in educational technology.

Transforming Ideas

With time, experience, and opportunities to apply them in a challenging work environment, three ideas set the stage for my career development as a performance technology professional. Over the last five years, the application of these ideas has helped me succeed in the three roles I’ve performed as a member of a successful instructional design and development group.

1. Component Display Theory (CDT)/Bloom’s Taxonomy/Content-Performance Matrix (CPM) – Applying these theories guided my first steps as an instructional designer.
2. Data Analysis and Evaluation – Analyzing and collecting metrics about processes helped me improve ways of conducting business in the workplace.
3. Management of Educational Technology – Learning about the management of resources in instructional technology is helping me in my new role as a project manager.

CDT/Bloom/CPM

Early on in my new career as an instructional designer, I had the opportunity to use a systematic design process when designing web-based courseware. We used a tool called a Verb-Interaction (VIA) Matrix (SYS Technologies, 2008) to select instructional strategies and web-based learning interactions. This design tool was built around an amalgam of three learning theories: Clark’s CDT, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Merrill’s CPM.

Starting with the verb from the enabling learning objective (EO), I determined the information type of the instruction: fact, concept, process, procedure, or principle (Clark, 1999). After knowing the content type, I used the learning objective to determine the general level of learning, whether the learner is going to remember or apply the content (Clark, 1999; Merrill, 1983). Guided by Bloom’s taxonomy (1956), I classified the EO according to the depth of learning: knowledge, understanding, application, or analysis. Analogous to the CPM, the VIA matrix provided me with options for the possible learning interactions that our programmers can build into the lesson for the level of learning of that particular learning objective (Merrill, 1983).

Even though I had 11 years of teaching experience, the VIA Matrix helped turn my intuition from classroom teaching into a framework that could be passed on to other instructional designers. The ability to select the correct learning interaction based on the verb used in the EO made this tool powerful, yet simple to use. Because I’m passionate about being organized, the way this matrix beautifully arranges verbs, learning levels, and instructional strategies appealed to my keen sense of order.

Data Analysis and Evaluation

As I gained more experience as an instructional designer, not only did our workgroup acquire new curriculum development projects, but also I was given additional responsibilities as a production manager. As the production manager I managed the daily workflow of our instructional designers and coordinated efforts with the production team who built the courseware.

When our workload grew, we needed to streamline our design, quality assurance, and writing processes. Collecting metrics about our processes was a good starting point to evaluate the workflow to determine areas for improvement.

Examining simple metrics about our schedule, resources, quality controls, and scope revealed areas in our design process that we could improve (Lever, 2009). Because I was involved in creating the processes for conducting business, being involved with the informal evaluation of our workflow was satisfying. I was able to provide recommendations for changes that not only made our group more efficient, but also increased our profitability. Collecting metrics helped provide management with a more realistic picture of how resources’ time is spent on design tasks, which then informed how we bid on proposals and prospective contracts. Using metrics to understand our real costs helped our group net larger margins on subsequent projects.

When I started in the program I was not thrilled about collecting data. Today, I greatly appreciate the value of metrics analysis. I learned that in this situation, collection of metrics was not that bad. Because our design process is standardized with repetitive tasks, the conclusions we made from the metrics analysis could be applied to our other business processes. Collecting and analyzing metrics made a huge impact on my professional experience early on and has provided me with a new direction in my career path.

Management of Educational Technology

Because I love to arrange, classify, categorize, and put things in order, I also have a natural affinity for organizing content into manageable learning chunks. I found this skill to be very useful when writing web-based lessons as an instructional designer. Experience with collecting and analyzing data helped me become a better problem-solver as a production manager when I juggled the numerous moving parts and tasks in the daily workflow of our instructional design team. But the one passion I really enjoyed was putting everything together while managing a project.

Throughout my adventures in EDTEC I have had many opportunities to work collaboratively with others. Inevitably, leaders will rise and take charge of the group; more often than not, I have had the opportunity to lead and facilitate the groups of which I’ve been a part. Even in situations when I wanted to lay low and let someone else lead for a change, I found that our group would be stagnant and unproductive for several days. Ultimately, I stopped ignoring what came naturally for me, and helped my group:

• Organize work
• Assign tasks and action items
• Set deadlines

I confirmed my passion for project management recently during my ED 795A Seminar/Practicum course. My partner and I got off to a one-month late start on our project because of a previous project that did not work out for us. To help mitigate the risk of not completing the project on time, I designed a work flowchart with milestone dates to help us stay on track.

My experiences in the EDTEC program have played a key part in helping me adjust to my new role as a project lead. For the first time, I’m doing what I really love in the workplace. It’s a challenging position with new responsibilities of managing personnel and external communications with clients.

Transformation of Learning

Obviously, things change over time. I am evidence of that. I have grown from the reluctant student embarking on an uncertain path to a post-graduate educational technology professional. While my professional path has taken a different direction towards management of educational technology, I still find myself continuously learning or instructing, even as a manager.

While change is inevitable, I don’t foresee any change in the basic tenets of what makes me tick. I am certain I will always:

• Prefer order and organization
• Enjoy problem-solving with empirical data to support my conclusions
• Be a natural leader

Mentoring Ideas

However, the passions ignited by those tenets may manifest themselves differently. While I may not be down in the trenches writing storyboards, I can use my experience and knowledge of instructional theories entrusted to us from Masters like Bloom, Clark, and Merrill to train the next generation of educational technologists. At the workplace I have had the pleasure of mentoring instructional designers in our design processes and best practices. While Bloom, Clark, and Merrill no longer flow out of my pen, their ideas live on in the writing of the co-workers I train and coach. Yes, they, too, will become experts in using the VIA Matrix.

The New Empirical Data Collection

For as long as I can remember I have always been good at metacognition. Because of that, I’ve become adept at looking at the way I do things, and then trying to do them better or be more efficient. For several years running, my performance evaluations in the workplace have noted my ability to invent processes and improve them. I’ll admit I tend to rely on instinct more than I should. However, I plan to continue using data to help provide sound rationale for change.

Assembling data and presenting them in a coherent manner can be time consuming. But recently, I have been excited about learning something new that will help fuel the fire for collecting useful metrics in my workplace. My manager has been teaching me how to use a database to interface with our web-based collaboration portal and project scheduling software. With the database, I can generate reports that display relevant metrics as to the execution of our curriculum development projects. I’m excited because these tools will provide me with real time data that can inform me as I make decisions. The best thing about them is that they make data collection easy.

Leadership and Management Challenge

As I wrap up my EDTEC adventures, I also embark in my new role, leading two curriculum development projects and their respective instructional designers. It’s a role I’ve dreamed about for a long time; this is new ground for me.

I plan to leverage my strengths, especially in managing processes and process improvement. Ensuring that my teams follow our group’s best practices and empowering them to improve those practices will enhance performance because the processes will be perceived as a value-add to the workplace. Good processes will speed up the workflow and highlight important steps that lead to good products for our customers (Berkun, 2005, pp. 189-190).

From my limited experience I can already tell that dealing with politics and managing external communications will be my toughest challenges. It will require that I consciously think before speaking (or acting) and consider how my communications and actions are perceived across multiple levels. As I start this newest professional adventure, I plan to:

• Learn from a good coach
• Receive constructive feedback
• Learn and apply management principles

According to Berkun, this will be the “new problem solving” (2005, p. 322). I won’t pretend to have something witty or useful to contribute right now since I’m back to square one. That’s right. I’m the learner once again.

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References:
Berkun, Scott. (2005). The art of project management. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. (pp. 201-207). Susan Fauer Company, Inc.

Clark, R. C. (1999). Developing technical training: A structured approach for developing classroom and computer-based instructional materials (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Lever, Roger. (2009, January 27). Project evaluation and selecting project metrics: Project management metrics a tool for project process improvement. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from http://business-project-management.suite101.com/article.com/project_evaluation_and_selecting_project_metrics.

Merrill, M.D. (1983). Component display theory. In C.N. Reigeluth (ed.) Instructional design theories and models: An overview of their current status. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

SYS Technologies/Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (2008). Verb-interaction matrix [Data file]. Retrieved from https://portal.systechnologies.com/DSG/webcentric/LearningSolutions/ISD/WBT/WBT-VIA-MATRIX.xls.