Scope creep happens to us all!

I can think of one particular instance where scope creep completely changed the direction and parameters of a project. I was a librarian at the time and was tasked by the director to create a short brochure for faculty to tell them about our library’s budget, resources, and how we had allocated them. I produced the document, the director had a few minor suggestions about representations of graphs and color choices, and proclaimed it a job well done. I thought the project was completed.

The assistant director liked the final result but wanted to expand on the idea. She thought it would be good to triple the content of the document and introduce portions of the brochure that would document faculty services beyond library resources, to include what librarians did to manage the institutional repository, train faculty on submitting academic articles to journals via new software, and how many research workshops and semester-long research courses librarians taught, including enrollment and tuition funds generated.

That was all well and good, and a compliment of sorts regarding how much they liked the initial brochure. But this required harvesting data from many more units of the library in a short time frame. It had taken about a week to create the initial brochure that only dealt with the library budget and resources, which had required talking to one department. Now they wanted this new, much-expanded document in only another week. 

My colleagues and I dealt with this as a fire-drill kind of operation, dropping some tasks and pushing them off to later in the month to deal with this new, quick-turnaround project. It ended up working out just fine– we produced a new document that faculty found useful and reflected well on the library. However, we were a smidgen irritated that this wasn’t the initial task set out from the get-go. If our director and assistant director had initially requested all of the extra data and work with a two-week turnaround it still would have been arduous, but at least we would have been given more time to plan, divvy up work, and delegate. It worked out that time because it was the summer, many students were not on campus, and we were able to rearrange our schedules to accommodate a vastly expanded project. But in the future, if I had to do this project revampment and scope expansion during the middle of the year, I may have tried to negotiate an extension, or asked if we could create a new, later-due date project to accommodate the new request. It is important to have a process in place for asking for and agreeing to a change in process (Starr, 2010). Going forward, it would have been good to spell out what would happen if a project was going to rapidly expand in scope, to acknowledge that this would have a hand-in-hand increase in workload and maybe an extension in the time needed to do the project as well. The scope of the project definitely tripled. It worked out, but adjusting the timeframe for the new scope definitely would have made the process better. 

Reference:

Starr, J. (2010). California Digital Library. Taking the Creep out of Scope Creep. Retrieved from https://cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2010/03/22/taking-the-creep-out-of-scope-creep/

Estimating cost, effort, and activities for ID Projects

This week I found two awesome resources to help estimate costs for ID projects. I focused on eLearning because that’s what I am interested in. The resources are linked below, the first focused more on costs, the second on duration of a project:

• How Much Does it Cost to Develop an Online Course in 2023?, by Lachezar Arabadzhiev
• Time estimates for eLearning Development, by Christy Tucker

The Arabadzhiev resource is helpful because it provides thoughtful, detailed steps to calculate the cost of creating an online training class. I appreciate how the author suggests you reflect on the needs and purpose for a training before diving straight into cost analysis. Thinking about what you want to offer and what goals you want to achieve for an online training can help you determine what level of intricacy a course will entail, which then can influence how you develop a cost analysis. For instance, the author points out that more personalized, immersive learning will end up costing more to develop than a course that requires more passive learning (Arabadzhiev, 2023). 

The author also breaks down anticipated and possible labor costs in a thorough way. He includes rates for anticipated team members such as instructional designers, subject matter experts, audio editors, LMS specialists, etc. (Arabadzhiev, 2023). Next he explains how to consider LMS costs to deliver a course after it is developed. I appreciate that this resource is updated and current for 2023. Many of our resources are older and still provide useful information, but I know with this resource that I am getting hyper-current advice on the topic. 

The next resource focuses on estimating the duration of a project, which does have implications for costs. Christy Tucker’s post is an excellent roadmap on how to estimate time commitments for eLearning projects, mostly via linking other helpful resources. I appreciate her opening salvo that good estimates are important, so that you don’t lose money yourself in creating too low of an estimate, or lose out on a bid for a project by estimating too high (Tucker, 2021). She links to the Chapman Alliance’s thorough slide resource that breaks down step-by-step how many hours to estimate to create one hour of polished eLearning product (Chapman Alliance, 2020). She also links to and contextualizes Icologic’s blog post on estimating time parameters for creating eLearning (Iconlogic, 2019). This resource considers what eLearning tool you’re using, such as Camtasia or Storyline, developing a script, recording, using templates, and working in an LMS (Iconlogic, 2019). 

The post from Christy Tucker does an excellent job describing how she applies the lessons from her two linked sources, which she calls Benchmarks, to create an example for 3 hours of eLearning. She shows how she applies the benchmarks to divvy up the breakdown of tasks and assign each a percentage (Tucker, 2021). She analyzes and explains how she reached each number, including her estimates. I love how she takes the technical steps from the two sources she links to and shows how she would really apply them in her own project, step-by-step, detailed example. Some sources just give you steps, but she shows how she would really apply them.

References

Arabadzhiev, L. (2023). How Much Does it Cost to Develop an Online Course in 2023? https://skildlabs.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-an-online-course-in-2021/

Chapman Alliance (2020). How Long Does it Take to Create Learning? http://www.chapmanalliance.com/howlong/

Iconlogic. (2019). Elearning Development: How much time does it take to Create eLearning? https://blog.iconlogic.com/weblog/2019/02/elearning-development-how-much-time-does-it-take-to-create-elearning.html

Tucker, C. (2021). Time estimates for eLearning Development. https://www.christytuckerlearning.com/time-estimates-for-e-learning-development/

Web Resources to Help Plan an ID Project’s Schedule

This week I located two web resources that would be helpful when planning a project. I chose to peruse sources dedicated to eLearning, a professional interest of mine, that also addressed project scheduling. The two sources are linked here:

How to Estimate eLearning Development Time in 5 Easy Steps

and

Creating an Instructional Design Project Schedule: tasks, milestones, and dependencies.

Site One Evaluation:

The first website article, How to Estimate eLearning Development Time in 5 Easy Steps, is from a blog created by an experienced instructional designer. The author’s step-by step considerations would be helpful to plan a project’s schedule, as she breaks down time and project commitment considerations into easily understood and easy to conceptualize parts. She begins by breaking down scheduling concerns by posing a rhetorical question that grounds scheduling in practical terms: “How long will this eLearning project take?” (Arshavskiy, 2023). Addressing scheduling from a practical standpoint would help project managers demystify scheduling and make it a logical exercise instead of an overwhelming one. 

The author leads the reader through several sections of considerations, including:

• A “Factors to consider” section highlighting staffing numbers, tech tools, staff experience, content, SMEs, and a savvy question about whether the actual “elapsed time” for a project matches/ can accommodate the actual effort the project will need (Arshavskiy, 2023).
• An “Estimating eLearning Development Time” section that includes step-by-step instructions for a needs assessment, planning, and prototyping
• A section on “Nailing Down your Time Estimates” that suggests planners create three timelines: “pessimistic… optimistic… [and] most likely” (Arshavskiy, 2023). Her practical approach to creating plans that allow for exceptions and roadblocks is easy to understand and conceptualize.  

I could see using this site to create a broad, overarching checklist for a project. I am new to formal project management, and the series of questions the author leads the reader through would help me to consider time and scheduling issues and parameters that I might not have considered. Although the advice is somewhat general, and would not serve as a complete checklist for scheduling a project, the questions and concerns the author lists comprise a sound overview and framework for the process needed to create a project schedule, especially in an eLearning environment.

Site Two Evaluation:

The second article is similarly helpful. This source also tackles the issue of scheduling for instructional design projects. The author takes a practical approach and conceptualizes good scheduling in ID projects as a way to create a road map but also make adjustments (Evanick, 2023). The article is concise but also comprehensive as it leads the reader through nine sections that form nine considerations to attend to when creating a schedule. The author leads the reader through these steps in the same sequence one would want to use when creating a schedule. He attends first to “the project scope” and next “identifying and sequencing tasks” (Evanick, 2023). There are also sections on “milestones and deliverables… dependencies and critical tasks… resources and effort estimation… contingency plans…” a section on tech tools and a final section on updating a schedule. The article is very comprehensive in summarizing how to consider many points in making a project schedule.

I could see using this site to guide me to stay on track as a project manager developing a schedule as it pertains to creating several, smaller checklists. For instance, the author’s section on “Monitoring and Updating the Project Schedule” includes recommendations to find variances, continue communicating, collaborate with teams and institute corrective measures as needed” (Evanick, 2023). Although these points are general, they are applicable to most projects and would serve as a Rosetta Stone of things that I would definitely need to monitor as a project progressed.

References

Arshavskiy, M. (2023). How to estimate elearning development time in 5 easy steps. Your eLearning World. https://yourelearningworld.com/how-to-estimate-elearning-development-time-in-5-easy-steps/

Evanick, J. (2023, July 7). Creating an instructional design project schedule: tasks, milestones, and dependencies. ELearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/creating-an-instructional-design-project-schedule-tasks-milestones-and-dependencies

Reflection on communication via three different modalities:

I viewed the multimedia program “The Art of Effective Communication” and considered how communication comes across through three different modalities. The same kind of communication delivered over different modalities can bring out different results, feelings, and observations between communicators, such as college students having similar conversations via the different modalities of a phone call, text, or social media (Keshishian et al., 2016, p. 476). Likewise I took away different impressions by viewing the program in a written modality, audio, and video. My thoughts about how I interpreted the content are below:

Written text observations:

Jane’s email to Mark is clear and to the point, yet polite and projects understanding. She begins with a polite salutation and tries to get across that she is understanding that he has yet to get her the data she needs, perhaps because he’s been stuck in a meeting (Walden University LLC., n.d.). She uses words such as “please” and contains an explanation that is reasonable about why it is important that she get the data soon. She ends with a line that she “Really appreciates [Mark’s] help” (Walden University LLC., n.d.). This communication is effective, to the point, clear, and considerate.

Audio observations:

Although the content is largely the same, the voicemail seems more urgent somehow than the email. The voice of the speakers, Jane, is just as polite and does not contain rudeness or any tone of chastisement. What is interesting to me, however, is my own perception that I bring to the table. If I were in a professional situation and received a voicemail, I would automatically ratchet up the “seriousness” or assume Jane needed the information even more quickly as compared to a simple email. I think in the modern workplace that emails can be perceived as a bit more casual, and allowing more “wiggle room” to respond than the perceived seriousness of a voicemail, which demands either a call-back even sooner than an email would merit, or a quicker delivery of what is being asked.  

Video observations:

As for the video of the face-to-face encounter, my reaction is somewhere in between the email and the voicemail based on perceived need and possibly whether Jane is expressing any annoyance regarding the data delivery. Jane is polite and professional in her face-to-face interaction, and her tone is softened somewhat by beginning with a smile and also by her choosing to casually rest her arms on top of Mark’s cube. Her message is clear, professional, and polite. Somehow choosing to deliver it in person denotes more of an urgency in needing the information than just sending an email, but is somewhat less urgent than the voicemail

How did your interpretation of the message change from one modality to the next?

• Although the content was extremely similar and in some cases identical, the delivery method itself connoted degrees of seriousness or ratcheted-up need for information (with voicemail being the most serious, an in-person visit in the middle, and the email the most casual or lenient).

What factors influenced how you perceived the message?

• Factors that indicated openness or friendliness (like Jane’s initial smile when she spoke to Mark in person), and professional politeness (Jane’s email sign-off thanking Mark in advance) did influence how I perceived each message. But unsaid factors such as my own views on expected timeframes for returning communication (like believing that voicemails usually entail getting back to a person faster than an email) did influence how I viewed each message.

Which form of communication best conveyed the true meaning and intent of the message?

• I believe each communication did a good job of conveying the true meaning. I think the email, which can be read over again, provides perhaps the best opportunity to closely look at the details of the message and Jane’s request.

What are the implications of what you learned from this exercise for communicating effectively with members of a project team?

• .I would definitely take into account how a message could be perceived after watching this exercise. If I needed to diplomatically and politely request something that has a bit of leeway when it comes to a deadline, I would choose an email or in person delivery to soften the request and cloak it in polite professionalism. Conversely, if something needed to be done right away, I might choose a voicemail to convey urgency. 

References:

Keshishian, A., Watkins, M., & Otto, M. (2016). Clicking away at co-rumination: co-rumination correlates across different modalities of communication. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 45(6), 473–478. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2016.1201848

Walden University, LLC. (n.d.). The Art of Effective Media COmmunication. [Multimedia file]. Retrieved from http://cdn-media.waldenu.edu/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6145/03/mm/aoc/index.html

Future of Distance Education:

The current and future perceptions of distance learning in society reflect both its successes and potential issues. Distance education is here to stay, with more and more students each year being afforded the opportunity to attend a training, class, or program in an online environment. While many students and training attendees find distance learning a flexible and useful endeavor, some are skeptical and perceive distance learning to be somewhat of a substitute for face-to-face learning experiences. In the near and distant future, distance learning will most likely grow and continue to improve. Instructional designers can play a part in creating useful online learning experiences, as well as serve as ambassadors for distance learning.  

In five to ten years’ time, more and more participants will have attended some kind of distance learning class or training. Perceptions of distance learning in the future will probably be more accepting of this kind of modality for teaching and training as it will not be as “new” and novel for many people. Dr. George Siemens stated that society’s exposure to communication technology online, even outside of educational experiences, has helped to demystify communicating online and provides people with a sense of comfort (Walden University, LLC, n.d.). It isn’t such a leap to attend an educational experience online since many people are now used to communicating with family, friends, and colleagues in a distance environment. Improvements with educational technology like video chats and video conferencing have also helped people to get used to the idea of online learning. 

As an instructional designer, I can be a positive force for improving society’s views on distance learning by creating useful, professional, and enriching online educational experiences. Many people’s first perceptions about online learning will be formed by taking a class or webinar or training themselves. It helps to provide an exemplary experience, and one that will hold up to their scrutiny and also comparison to earlier learning experiences they’ve had. Finally, I can be a positive force for improving people’s views of distance learning by creating a welcoming atmosphere in my distance learning classes or trainings. This can include anticipating what students have the most issues with regarding online education, considering what may make them uncomfortable, and striving to change the atmosphere to make a learning experience easier to acclimate to and participate, such as acknowledging and alleviating students’ nervousness about videoconferencing (McMillan, et al, 2022).  

I will be a positive force for improvement in the field of distance education by advocating for and being aware of access issues. Distance education can be amazing and thorough, but this won’t matter if a prospective student or attendee does not have true and easy access to a course or training. Internet access is necessary for successful distance learning and is considered to be an essential service (Simonson, Zvacek, and Smaldino, 2019, p. 97). Yet despite this, many students have spotty access to high-speed, effortless internet access. These students experience interruptions and may have to travel to inconvenient places to upload assignments or access digital materials. Large-scale policy suggestions have included creating national broadband standards, and studies of upload speeds (Soanes-White, 2022). Until there is equal internet access for all, I will be mindful of designing learning experiences for users who may not have access to reliable internet. 

Distance learning is here to stay, and luckily most students and attendees value and benefit from their online learning experiences. Instructional designers will play an important part in continuing to educate themselves and working toward delivering quality, useful, and enriching distance learning experiences. In addition to planning and designing excellent online educational content, instructional designers can also help to explain the usefulness and benefits of distance education.  

References 

David G. McMillan, Olivia R. Kalloo, Roberto A. Lara, Mariana Pavlova, & Donna Kritz- 

Silverstein. (2022). Factors Affecting Dental Students’ Comfort with Online Synchronous Learning. Dentistry Journal, 10(26), 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/dj10020026 

Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance:  

Foundations of distance education (7th ed.) Information Age Publishing. 

Soanes-White, T. (2022). Defining and Exploring Broadband Connections and Education  

Solutions in Canada’s North. Canadian Journal of Learning & Technology, 48, 1–18. 

Walden University, LLC. (Producer). George Siemens, The Future of Distance Education (n.d.). 

Distance learning: Mind map

Distance Learning Definition

Distance learning can fill the gaps in an institution or organization’s training or educational catalog, and can also provide students with the opportunity to learn away from brick-and-mortar classrooms when they otherwise would not have that chance. Distance learning has evolved from a platform to create access and accommodate economies of scale to a format used by many as their preferred way of taking classes and learning. 

My own understanding and definition of distance learning has changed quite a bit over the last decade. I began teaching in a distance learning format in 2012 teaching semester long research courses at a university. I created online “lectures” to be delivered asynchronously in weekly modules, with mid-term and final exams placed in the course. I used voice-over Powerpoints using Microsoft and embedded them in my class in Blackboard. Back in 2012, this was innovative stuff! I strived to make my online, distance-formatted class as informative and thorough as the in-person version I also taught. Although my distance classes were engaging and used a multi-media approach, I was more concerned about content replication than anything else. I imagine that back then I would have defined distance education mainly in terms of convenience, as a way to allow students to attend class and learn in an alternate environment to replicate the goals of in-person instruction. 

My teaching style and aims evolved with time and practice. At different institutions I sought to make my distance classes more engaging by being an embedded librarian and requiring students to contact me virtually or have a virtual reference session to increase engagement. I also found ways to streamline my courses so that I could easily edit a course to be used for a different purpose. My distance learning definition at this time would be updated to reflect the flexibility, options, and cost-saving benefits that I took advantage of at that stage of my career with distance learning.

Covid created an upheaval in how I taught in a distance learning environment, and also changed my definition of distance learning. I had to pivot and change all of my face-to-face workshops to synchronous Zoom sessions, or asynchronous modules. I feel like I earned a decade’s worth of real-time distance learning lessons in three semesters, since I was forced to come up with tweaks and plans and alternative lesson delivery in a short amount of time. I discovered that there are hidden advantages to distance learning (such as increased participation and completion from students who had to “attend” my asynchronous lessons for credit, or who were less reticent to participate via a Zoom chat), but also some pitfalls such as wonky tech that didn’t quite work in a synchronous environment, and students who sometimes checked out. A proliferation of short case studies and articles cropped up as a result of the pandemic that have given me ideas about how to enhance my distance education delivery, such as teaching as an “embedded” librarian by integrating librarian information literacy classes into students’ regular semester-long classes, scaffolding lessons into parts instead of one workshop, and requiring students to have a virtual contact beyond the confines of the class to enrich communication and allow for more learning opportunities (Miyaoka, et al, 2023). I would have adapted my definition at this time to describe how distance education can try to replicate the goals and aims of face-to-face education, but achieve these goals by different means. I also would include part of the definition from our text, in that distance education needs to connect “learners, resources, and instructors” and that “allows content to become instruction” (Simonson, et aj, p. 33). This is important in my own evolution of my definition of distance learning since I started off a while ago worrying most about content rather than delivery.

Finally as I reflect on my own personal and evolving definition of distance education for the future, it comes with some caveats. I firmly believe that distance education is a viable, accessible, useful, and innovative way of educating and training people. But, there are concerns with relying on distance education as a means to teach people without addressing concerns about equity and access to distance education by having reliable broadband and by creating learning spaces that are truly collaborative. Distance education cannot be truly inclusive until it is available to students everywhere, not just the privileged few with access to technology  (Digital Inclusion in Education, 2021). I would caution against a definition of distance education as being truly accessible to all without addressing disparities in accessing that distance education.  

References

Digital Inclusion in Education. (2021). Salem Press Encyclopedia. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=ers&AN=148527000&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Miyaoka, M., Toolsidass, R., & Magee, M. (2023). Embedded Librarians and Scaffolding for Remote Learning. Portal: Libraries & the Academy, 23(1), 169–195. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2023.0010

Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (7th ed.) Information Age Publishing.

Distance learning mind map

Evolution of my ideas on distance learning

Distance learning has evolved from a way to make education generally more accessible to learners who needed to augment face-to-face experiences, to now becoming a standard, expected, and anticipated way of learning that has become part of “most learning environments” (Walden University, LLC, n.d.). 

Before I began a formal study of instructional design and consideration of distance learning, I also would have categorized it as a paradigm of convenience. I used to teach legal research courses online and in person. I would have defined my online classes as a way to replicate and offer the same learning goals in a distance format as my face-to-face classes. My online offerings focused on making the class experience accessible to students who might otherwise not be able to take the course – for instance, most of my learners in the distance-learning format were away from the physical university and were taking the class online during the summer when they were completing internships elsewhere. I conceptualized my classes offered in the distance learning format as a way to reach as many people as possible (my in-person classes were capped at 20, whereas my distance learning classes were capped at 40 students), and as a way to give students flexibility, as they were able to “attend” classes (pre-recorded modules) at there leisure over weekly units (Moller, Foshay and Hewitt, 2008). 

My introduction to distance learning also occurred about a decade ago, at a time when many universities were eager to expand upon this “newer” way of delivering education. I admit that I dived into this way of delivering instruction without always considering the implications of teaching in a distance format. 

Reflecting on distance education this week, I would revise my definition of the term by conceptualizing it as a bringing together of teacher, learner, and learning community in an online space. This definition is influenced by the Naidu article from this week, which stated that media connects learners and teachers, with strong connections between teachers, learners, and their content creating successful distance learning experiences (Naidu, 2014).

Over the years I have pivoted to concerns about whether distance education can replicate or meet the same educational goals as traditional instruction. My vision for the future of distance education is a continued focus on accessibility (including reliable access to the internet in order to engage in distance education), broadened to be inclusive and focused on attaining measurable educational and learning goals, and a focus on learning effectiveness, rather than just increasing access.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 1: Training and development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70-75. 

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 2: Higher education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66–70.

Naidu, S. (2014). Looking back, looking forward: the invention and reinvention of distance education Distance Education, 35(3), 263-270

Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (n.d.).  Distance education: The next generation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Reflection

The past eight weeks have been informative and illuminating as I reflect on what I discovered about learning processes. The course has influenced how I will approach my own learning goals in future classes and as a lifelong learner, as well as how I will consider different learning techniques and apply them in the field of instructional design.  

Several discoveries were surprising to me about how people learn, including learning about the cognitive learning theory. I began my journey in education working as a librarian with graduate students and college students, and now work with elementary students. I was cheered to be introduced to the cognitive learning theory, as it addressed consideration of what is going on in someone’s head as they are learning a concept and encouraged designing learning experiences with this knowledge in mind (Walden University, LLC, n.d.). Before I took this class my approach to teaching focused more on motivation and content mastery and delivery of said content, rather than considering how learners conceptualize lessons in their minds. As an elementary school educator, I need to align my planning and designing with the cognitive learning theory in mind. 

This course has furthered my understanding of my own learning process by enlightening me about motivation. The last unit was eye-opening as I considered the ARCS framework and reflected on online classes I enjoyed and ones which I was easily motivated to take and engage in, and ones that were more of a struggle. In particular, learning about the confidence and relevance facets of ARCS gave me insight into the two most important factors for me when taking an online class (Keller, 1999, p. 39). Classes that are clearly relevant to me, and that build skills in a manner that increased difficulty slowly have interested me the most, and I was able to reflect on why this is. Motivation can be considered, planned, and adjusted throughout a course, and the next opportunity I have to contribute to and plan an online class, I will keep the ARCS framework in mind.  

I learned about the intertwined nature of learning theories, learning styles, educational technology and motivation as several factors that need to be considered and addressed when designing an effective and interesting online course. The online classes I delivered that were the most cohesive and successful inadvertently addressed each of these factors, but now I have a roadmap to try to create the same success in each class or module I design, rather than making it occur via happenstance. What I learned in this course will help me as I continue the path to become an instructional designer by equipping me with a toolkit of considerations and ideas to help students learn.   

References 

Keller, J. M. (1999). Using the ARCS motivational process in computer-based instruction and distance education. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, (78). 

Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (n.d.). An introduction to learning [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.