Beware: It’s not a miracle cure….

This entry is addressed more to the course champions and project managers of the world.

Imagine the football team that in the last 2 minutes of a tied game sees its big name quarterback come onto the field and…the team’s other 10 players just lay down on the grass and say, “Thank goodness you’re here. You take it from here and win this game for us.”

Believe it or not, this can happen in effect when a credentialed, seasoned instructional designer (ID) effort gets brought into a project. So, a word to the wise here, course champions and others – be it an individual or outsourcing to a whole team of IDs – is not, contrary to what you might think, the miracle cure for a project.

That’s right. Doing so won’t end hunger or bring about world peace either.

I know; it’s disappointing to hear this.

But, I think it’s necessary for everyone amongst The Powers That Be in a courseware initiative to understand this. Just because you bring in folks with courseware development credentials etc – while we can and often do some outstanding educational product development – we are only as smart or dumb as productive or not as your system keeps us.

By this I mean bringing in credentialed ID help doesn’t exonerate the other members of the process from contributing their fair share to the goals of the project. The course champion will still need to procure project funding, subject matter experts (SMEs) will still have to contribute both input and expertise and so on.

Remember; your design team, be they one or a hundred strong, is only is only as effective as the supply of content resources, SME expertise and availability etc keeps them.

If the data or expertise from which content will be built is not made available then you can’t expect a miracle from the ID portion of the team when it’s kept deaf, dumb and blind in the process. One option would be providing the ID portion the opportunity to do independent research – within limits. Just realize research hours go against the timetable and budget.

If the SMEs aren’t made available to contribute basic materials and expertise for content to be developed, then don’t be surprised if the ID portion of the team doesn’t create much basic (alpha draft) content and the schedule begins to fall behind.

Similarly, if SMEs don’t conduct effective alpha, beta and final draft reviews using their professional expertise and give timely feedback to the ID portion, how does it know whether and how to make what changes and improvements to the draft so it is satisfactory?

Adding credentialed and seasoned instructional design professionals to your project can really help it go from just an idea to a very high-quality reality. (The sooner in the project’s lifespan they’re brought in the better.) Just realize that bringing them in doesn’t mean the rest of the entire project team can just abandon any involvement in it. They’re just as critical with an ID on board as before.

Remember, a project team is called a team for a reason. If your project manager doesn't watch out for this "laying down" possibility, your project could be doomed.

Scope creep. It's not just for projects. Part One.

Have you ever been in a class or training session with a list of objectives or modules that the instructor never gets to because time runs out before they do? Or...have you ever been that same instructor that always has more teaching points to get to and accomplish than you have class time left?

If so, may I make a couple of suggestions?

First, take a look at the instructional design of the training. Ask yourself, is all of what you see necessary to accomplish the course objectives as they're stated? If the answer is no, then you know what to do - trim it.

Now, before you form the thought that "It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools" in questioning the design of the training, let me point out that oftentimes experts tend to cram a course full of way more stuff than is needed to meet the course objectives. So, if you need to cut stuff out, by all means do so.

But, if an objective comparison of the course objectives to the content reveal that the content quantity is appropriate, then can the training schedule be expanded to add more time? If so, then add what's needed.

Or maybe the course needs to be broken into more than one course.

If you can't do any of that, then read the next entry for some further discussion....

Scope creep. It's not just for project management. Part Deux

In the previous entry, we discussed running out of training time before you as the course instructor have accomplished all the teaching objectives you need to.

And it was established that the material reveals that all the existing course content is absolutely necessary to accomplish the course objectives. And there's no way to add to the allotted class time either.

So, what to do? In such case, may I suggest that you look in the mirror?

That's right; give yourself and how you conduct yourself in the class an objective analysis. Specifically, how do you deal with questions from the class audience?

For example - and a very simplistic one at that (just to quickly make the point); you have just completed presenting the portion of the class session related to the enabling objective that the learner should be able to perform simple addition of whole numbers. You demonstrated this by performing the calculation of 2 apples + 2 apples = 4 apples and that adding 2 more apples would = 6 apples.

A learner speaks up and says, "Excuse me, but this math stuff is pretty cool the way it works! Who thought this science up and how did they discover it?"

Now you have a choice; you could "go down a rabbit trail" with the class and explain the history of mathematics discovery. And... after the class is over... you'll still be wondering why you ran out of class times before you'd accomplished all the teaching objectives.

Or, you could simply respond to the question by responding with, "That's a VERY good question. But, it's beyond the scope of this class/today's lesson [or whatever]. So, why don't we talk after class is over today and I'd be happy to tell you who discovered how math works."

Sounds simple enough, but how often do we as instructors do that? Sadly, not often enough. Be it due to an eagerness to answer every student's every question, show off how much more we know about the subject or other motivations, the cold hard truth is all too often instructors go down those rabbit trails and, consequently, run out of class time before running out of teaching points.

Moral to this story? Let the scope of the course objectives dictate how you respond to out-of-scope questions that might come up during class. If the question is within the scope of the class, by all means answer it right then. If it's outside scope, defer it to an after class discussion.