Interpersonal

Interact effectively with others as peers, subordinates and leaders to accomplish goals

Context

For this project, my partner, Steve Corbett, and I created an instructional board game. We designed our game to teach the process organizations use to monitor their effectiveness and efficiency of operations, reliability of financial reporting, and compliance with laws and regulations. The process is called an Internal Control system or COSO Internal Controls, named after the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission.

Because Steve was the subject matter expert (SME) on all things COSO, we needed to extract the technical information from his brain and transfer it to an instructionally sound design. Then afterwards, we cooperated not only to design the rules of play, but also physically build the game.

Linkage

Working with Steve as a SME was challenging. Because Steve knew the topic intimately, I had difficulty understanding the information he attempted to communicate. To facilitate this communication, Steve and I interacted effectively to design a technically accurate and instructionally sound board game.

Challenges & Opportunities

Through our interactions Steve and I discovered four things that enabled us to work effectively together to transform the COSO technical information into a board game.

Complementary Strengths and Skills
Early on in our partnership we leveraged our unique strengths. Steve’s creative abilities were well suited to create professional looking game pieces and the game board while my writing skills ensured that the game aligned closely to learning research. The fantastic game board Steve created and the well-defined learning objectives I wrote to describe the player-learner goals exemplifies this.

Powerful Collaboration
To conduct our remote synchronous interactions, Steve and I used the instant messaging conferencing software tool, Skype. With Skype we worked in multiple modes: text chat, voice chat, and web conferencing.

We also used Google Docs to collaborate synchronously. This web-based tool allowed us to not only share a common document, but also work on it simultaneously. We edited our work in real time, and then exported our document into Microsoft Word to finalize it.

Preferred Communication Style
We both collaborated effectively when we talked things out. So as we shared a document in Google Docs, we also shared out loud our various ideas and inputs via Skype. We then decided together which inputs would go into our final work products.

Similar Availability
Traditional collaboration would have been extremely difficult given that Steve lives in Arizona while I live in California. Additionally, we both work full-time and have families. Because we both prefer to do our schoolwork in the evenings, we were able to collaborate unhindered at night.

Results

Using what we knew about ourselves, Steve and I successfully collaborated to produce a great looking, instructionally well-designed game.

Personal & Professional Development

Ever since our first collaboration in this class, Steve and I have worked together in several other classes, continuing to capitalize on our strengths to do top-notch work.

Professionally, when I work in a group I am cognizant of my preferred working style of participating in group discussions. With respect to the instructional design field, I still prefer writing and designing. I have no desire to build courseware, create graphics, or program learning interactions.