Prototype Evaluation Presentation

We were given the option of recording our final class presentation for our prototype evaluation. Because of the time difference and prior commitments I am not able to attend the synchronous session on Wednesday so i will be recording. My first try at the recording is HERE.

Prototype Complete

Well my prototype is finally finished.

The first round of testing went well and i was able to get some very constructive feedback from the teachers that used it. Namely I put text boxes into the flash tutorial to aid the visual learners we have out there. These along with the narration that plays during the tutorial will ensure that multiple intelligences are recognized and accommodated for. A screen capture from the first slide looked like this...
After hearing from teachers I includedtext boxes in the final prototype. I think these add a lot to the quality of the prototype and will make it that much more user friendly for teachers. I also love the fact that anyone viewing the tutorial is able to start and pause it anywhere during the duration of it while it is playing. This is key for teachers who want to play and pause and try out their new skills while they watch. It also allows for users who may for some reason be unable to watch the whole tutorial at one sitting to pick up where they left off.


All in all, i am happy to be more or less done with this project. I have finished my protype handout for the final 3 minute presentation. You can view it HERE.

Wink

For being a piece of freeware, I was initially a little sketchy about using Wink to do my prototype. However, after messing aound with wink and doing some test recordings I feel that this tool is amazing. I have already used it to produce two other tutorials for teachers in my building. One was for adding a network printer, the other for working in our online grading systems. The teachers liked them both and I had good feedback from them. Here is a short sample I developed for inserting an image from my Design concept. you'll need Flash Player to view it.

Inserting Image Tutorial

Design Concept Complete

Finally!!!!!....

Well my Design Concept is complete. After a couple weeks of working and reworking it I think I have finished my Design Concept. This one was a lot of work but I am pleased with my effort. Now I have the prototype left which will be a biggie too but with the framework i have set up for myself I think I should be in good shape.

Design Concept Ideas

I have been messing around in Wiispaces andI think I have an idea of how my slides will work. i am posting some of my "sketches" here.

Design Concept-Some Ideas

The Design Concept will be a large document that specifically outlines the rationale for our training product (in my case-using Wikis to Create teacher Web Pages). It will also spell out what the instructional product will look like, how it will function, how it is intended to meet learner goals, and the methods that will be used to produce it. As I mentioned in my previous post, we are expected to develop some rough mock-ups of what the instructional product might look like to the learner. Right now I am looking at using Wink, an open source screen capture and voice recording piece of software, for my presentation. Since essentially Using Wikis will be an instructional product used to teach processes an how to use different features of a wiki, it should work nicely. Also, doing it in wink will allow me to render the final product as a flash movie that can easily be uploaded to my web server and then I can publish a link to it. this will allow for the anytime/anywhere type of training product that i see as being most beneficial to teachers considering their unusually busy schedules. Here are some rough some rough ideas i have come up with. I used wikispaces.com to develop my tutorial as this is what we outlined as the wiki space of choice in our System Specification presentation. Wikispaces was a good choice because it is probably the most recognized wiki space on the web today and I find its features to be very intuitive and user friendly. These attributes will suit it nicely since most teachers do not have experience using wikis and it can be intimidating for them.

System Specification Presentation and the Design Concept

This morning we presented our systems specification to Joe. We all met using Adobe Breeze. Joe had uploaded our PowerPoint presentation before hand and we were all given presenter "rights' for our presentation so we could click to progress the slides as we worked through our respective topics within the System Specification. All in all the presentation went well, although I think I talked a bit too long during the presentation. However, we did do a lot of work as a group and I was anxious to show it off during our meeting. Ann and Melissa both did a great job and spoke effectively during the presentation.

From here we are moving to the Design Concept which is described as:

Submitted in the form of a 1,500-2000 word memo, the Design Concept will use crisp narratives, concise lists and outlines, and other textual and graphics devices to help readers envision the design of a small instructional product or portion of a product that is consistent with the Design Team's System Specifications. The Design Concept must be sufficiently developed to allow readers to understand the purpose and justification for design.

This part of the project has me a little intimidated as it is probably going to be the largest assignment that we have to individually develop for the class this semester. There are some case studies from past projects that are very useful in guiding us as to the different aspects that are to be included. Also, I will need to brush up on my reading of Ruth Clark's "Developing Technical Training", as I have fallen behind in my reading and I need to catch up. Much of the foundation that she lays here, specifically the chapter(s) dealing with instructing processes, will be used in my Design Concept (DC). As part of the DC we are also expected to include some screen captures of what our instructional product might look like to the learner. I have some ideas on this, but I need to get them down on paper and i should be posting those mock-ups/sketches in the next week or so. it looks like a lot of writing, but this is the part of the project where the "rubber meets the road" so to speak.

System Specifications

Our meeting on Sunday October 28th was very productive. Melissa, with the edits to slides from Ann and me, combined her slide edits and then put all 18 slides together for our presentation next week. You can view our final Presentation of our slides HERE or look below to see what a sample of our presentation will look like.


Being that our group is spread all over the globe (Midwest unites States, Germany, and the Dominican Republic) we are going to ask Joe Williams, our instructor, to meet with us at 6:00am Pacific Time. I don't think will be too happy to wake up at this time, however, being that we are dealing with unique geographical situations, we hope he will be understanding and allow us to present then. The last part of today's meeting was spent tweaking our learning objectives and the learner goals so we can all have a clear vision as we move into the Design Concept phase of the QED project.

An Intitiating Analysis Selected

As I wrote in my last post, I was kind of hoping that m,y project-designing an instructional product to train teachers how to use and edit a wiki page-was not going to be the project selected for our group project. Well 2 nights ago while meeting with my team, mine was selected as the project to develop further. My other group members thought that my objectives were the most clear and easy to design the project around so I guess I should be somewhat flattered that my peers like my work.

Our meeting took place in Adobe Breeze the other night. I have one partner who lives in the Midwest of the U.S. and another living in Germany. Obviously, these differences in time make meetings a bit more difficult but it was agreed to hold another meeting on Sunday to catch up with our progress

The outcomes of this meeting were as follows.
1) We first narrowed down the learning objectives from my IA from 5 objectives to 3. In doing so we have a bit more clear cut vision of what the aim of our project will be and it also gave us some freedom to choose and discuss which of the 5 objectives were the best and offered solid, measurable learning objectives.
2) We decided to use a wiki to re-write the 3 chosen objectives. We all agreed to look at the three objectives and re-write them ourselves and then on Sunday we will do a final collaborative re-write of the three to finalize this. During our conference I created the 544 Wiki. You can view the standards and the rest of our group collaboration there.
3) It was decided that by our meeting time on Sunday we would also modify the slides for our PowerPoint. We split the 18 slides up evenly and we will all be adding content to them in the next couple days. Screen captures of our slides will be posted here once I have them

All in all I feel like we have a pretty good grasp on our project and each of our roles. It is still a bit overwhelming but I think in the end we will be able to pull it off nicely.

Just thinking and waiting

So I have been assigned two group members for this project. One is in Germany and the other partner is in the U.S. in the Central Time Zone. Since I am in the Dominican Republic, collaborating on this project will be substantially more challenging for my group than it will be for the other two groups whose members are all in the U.S. My Prof. assures us that he will take this into consideration and I hope he does as this will put us at a disadvantage in terms of the amount of collaboration we will have heading into the Systems Specifications portion of this project. Our first group meeting is on Wed. at 9pm EST in an Adobe Breeze space our Prof. has set up for us. I am hoping to kind of not use the proposal I submitted as our groups project as it is largely fictitious and I think it might be a little small in scope for a project like this. our first order of business on Wednesday will be to vote on the three IA's and decide which one we will develop further.

QED Inititial Analysis

Here is the Inititial Analysis I sent to QED after they wrote me to tell me of their interest in my educational product

QED Initiating Memo

Here is my Initiating Memo that I sent to QED explaining my idea for an instructional product.

QED Invitation

For our 544 Design project we were sent a fictional email from a fictional company QED. This was the request for us to submit an Initiating Memo to QED, outlining our rationale why they could benefit from an instructional product. Here is the invitation from QED:

Graduate Student in Educational Technology
Department of Educational Technology
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-1182

Dear Graduate Student,

You have been recommended by the Department of Educational Technology as a potential QED sub-contractor. As leaders in the analysis, design, and evaluation of instructional products, QED is constantly seeking new ideas and we invite you to submit a letter (an initiating memo) by the date indicated in the QED Project Plan. This memo should identify an educational or training problem suitable for our SITE Series. You may address training or educational problems for any age group, but we are particularly interested in addressing the needs of California's culturally diverse school and work populations. We therefore encourage, but do not require, you to consider target populations that have been traditionally underserved by the educational and training establishment such as immigrants, minorities, and the marginally literate.

Your initiating memo must succinctly address the following issues in less than 500 words total.

---

1. Describe the social, informational, and technical sub-contexts.

Select an instructional problem or opportunity that might reasonably be addressed with about 7 hours of instruction. Our project timelines will not allow for extensive research on subject matter content. Therefore, you should select a super-context with which you are familiar or you have easy access to a SME.

You should briefly describe the SITE in terms of three sub-contexts: the technical or operational context (e. g. fax machine, cell phone, word processor); the social-cultural context of learner performance (e. g., needs of some organization or community); and the informational context related to this instructional opportunity.

---

2. What is the population of learners or prospective users that will be addressed by your proposed product?

Briefly describe the prior knowledge and acculturation of the prospective learners as these relate to acquisition of SITE-related skills and knowledge. Describe factors such as age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and education in terms of how they might help us to make future instructional decisions about content, instructional strategies, delivery systems, and the like. Other relevant issues include the literacy level of the target population and the approximate size of the population. Please provide a Rough Order of Magnitude estimate (ROM) for the numbers of people who might actually use the product within, respectively, the San Diego region and continental US. Very rough estimates are all we need at this point (e. g., hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people).

---

3. What are the current performance problems and opportunities of the target population?

Describe the current or likely performance problems of the population within the SITE. Consider performance problems in all three sub-domains: technical/operational, sociocultural, and informational. We are also interested in performance opportunities as well as problems. In other words, would better knowledge of the SITE help people to do something in the social sub-context that is new, useful, and even unanticipated. How could an instructional product empower members of the target population to realize their goals and interests?

---

4. What is the justification for using a product to address the problems and opportunities?

We want to know why you think the problems and opportunities you have identified are amenable to product-based solutions. Why would a product-based approach be better than simply hiring teachers, trainers, or coaches to implement the instruction? In this context, you may want to address the possibilities for recovering our potential product development costs. What are the chances that we could recoup our development costs and make a profit given the potential size of the market (target population) identified in your ROM and the potential cost of product development?

---

5. What is the justification for using instruction to address the problems and opportunities of the target population?

Our niche in the training and education industry is design of instruction, not manuals, job aids, or performance support systems, and the like, although we do design products that integrate with such informational resources. For example, some of our products include components that teach people to make better use of manuals and on-line support systems. We also embed in our instructional products components such as job aids where appropriate. However, QED attempts to ensure that people will develop specific skills and knowledge that can be measured. All of our products provide opportunities for guided practice and evaluation of learner performance.

---

Level of Effort for Initiating Memo

We recognize that it will not be possible to respond to the five issues listed above in great detail in such a brief pre-proposal, but you should respond in some way to each of the five points. In any case, we will not entertain pre-proposals that exceed the 500-word limit.

---

Submittal of Preproposals (Initiating Memos)

Submit Preproposals to QED in the form of e-mail letter or memo. You will receive within a few days, by e-mail, notification of any contract awarded and further details about requirements for the next phase of the project, the Initial Analysis of Problems and Opportunities.

Please make sure that your pre-proposal includes your e-mail address and home and work numbers.

---

Possible Award of a Follow-on Contract for Initial Analysis

Our technical and marketing experts will review your pre-proposal, and subject to their approval, we will contract with you for Task 2, an Initial Analysis of Problems and Opportunities (IA), which will be due no later than indicated on the QED Project Plan. Should it be awarded, the contract for the IA will be a fixed price contract for a total of $720. This includes 23 hours for your labor as a design-analyst @ $25 per hour and an additional 25% for incidental costs and your overhead. For tax purposes, you will be considered an independent contractor. However, once submitted to QED, the IA will be considered the result of "work for hire" under applicable copyright statutes and QED will become the exclusive property of QED. You may, however, use the IA in your professional portfolio as an example of a work product.

Your initial analysis will be reviewed by our staff and you will then be invited to team with other QED contractors on further product development efforts which may or may not carry forward elements of your pre-proposal and/or Initial Analysis.

QED looks forward to reading your pre-proposal and to a creative and productive prototype development effort. Welcome aboard!

Cordially,

Gabriel Ozgood
President and Chief Creative Officer
Quality Educational Design, Inc.

Welcome to my 544 Instructional Design Blog

This is the first entry for my Instructional Design course at SDSU. As part of our QED project where we have been asked to conceptualize and then design and instructional product, I have created this blog to keep track of my progress throughout the design of this project. More to come...