15/5s - Week of February 08 through February 14, 2016

Analysis report is the corner stone for any successful instructional development. Knowing the project goal and instructional goals are instrumental in designing any instructional system. Finally, we had the meeting with the client and all project team members. This helped us to understand the scope of the project in a much better way. 

Project charter is completed and reviewed by the project sponsor ; final signoff  will come from the client. Project team agreed to utilize Asana, one of the best cloud-based project management tool, to capture our detail tasks and scheduling. The idea of work breakdown structure is making sense as we are trying to get a complete list of deliverables and associated tasks. Reading chapter 2, chapter 5, and chapter 3 provided pedagogical framework to think about goal statement and context analysis. Finally, group discussions are essential in forming a single path to move forward with the project. Working on communication plan is forcing us to think and identify all communication channels, stakeholders, and means and frequency of communication with different involved parties.

Asking questions and learning from the peers and Dr. Weaver is a unique and enlightening experience. Every one was very involved in finalizing the project charter. Conference call with the client was also very instrumental for ensuring every one is on the same page. Finally, watching Dr. Weaver’s screencast provided a clear guideline on how to deal with so many moving parts without getting overwhelmed.

I am working as the lead developer and lead evaluator for this project. Currently, we are primarily focusing on project planning, and analysis report. This process is helping me to be a better communicator and flexible team member. This is also helping us to work under extreme time constrain and within thin resources. Our clients are well trained in designing and delivering training materials for diverse group of their employees. They shared some of their organizational documents through share point file server. I plan to master some of their documentation and delivery techniques to utilize in future e-course development projects at my current job. Besides that I would like to apply the techniques I am learning from Dr. Weaver to utilize in my future teaching profession and professional presentations.

In team format, continuous communication is essential to avoid misunderstanding and duplication of effort. Asking right and timely question is another top priority. My group is doing a wonderful job through Google community to always stay ahead of assigned tasks. Though I am active in the community, due to time constrain, I failed to visit the Google community more frequently. I would love to post and initiate more discussion if I can manage more time!

Learning project management process, instructional development process, client interactions and expectations management besides learning how to work successfully in team set up are some of the essential skill sets for any profession. To master these skill set one needs both pedagogical backbone and practical experiences. I am seeing progress from both these ends slowly but steadily! 

My task list for week three:

 

Task	Percent Complete	Time Spent in hrs
Weekly Group Meeting with the client	100%	1
Weekly Group Meeting with team members	100%	1.5
Contribute to the discussion in G+	100%	.5
Worked on project charter	100%	1
Identify a cloud-based project management tool for the group: Asana, Tom planner, etc.	100%	2
Keep up with Dr. Weaver's post and screencasts	100%	1
Read chapters 4, 6, & 7 in Dick, Carey, and Carey Textbook.	100%	2
Watching content analysis presentation and Objective and Assessment review	100%	1
Read Project Management eLearning chapters 3,4,5 and 7,8	100%	2
Started looking into Analysis report	40%	1.0
Posted 15/5s for my blog	100%	.5
Worked on a shared Google doc, with the team members, to capture all our questions for Terminix related to Project Charter and Goal Analysis.	100%	1.0

15/5s - Week of February 01 through February 7, 2016

Risk is an essential element in any project, our project team encountered a big surprise as our lead developer had to quit our team due to conflict of interest. My project manager requested me to fill in the role of lead developer at the top of my previously assigned lead evaluator role. We had a team meeting to discuss about the proposed change, and we approved this change following our change management protocols.

Project charter is taking shape and we are looking into identifying the best cloud-based project management tool to capture our detail tasks and scheduling. The idea of work breakdown structure is making sense as we are trying to get a complete list of deliverables and associated tasks. Reading chapter 2, chapter 5, and chapter 3 provided pedagogical framework to think about goal statement and context analysis. Finally, group discussions are essential in forming a single path to move forward with the project.

Asking questions and learning from the peers and Dr. Weaver is a unique and enlightening experience. This process helped me to think hard and understand WBS concepts with much deeper understanding. Finally, watching Dr. Weaver’s screencast provided a clear guideline on how to deal with so many moving parts without getting overwhelmed.

I am working as the lead developer and lead evaluator for this project. Currently, we are primarily focusing on project charter, project planning, and analysis report. This process is helping me to be a better communicator and flexible team member. This is also helping us to work under extreme time constrain and within thin resources I plan to master these skills to utilize in future e-course development project at my current job. Besides that I would like to apply the techniques I am learning from Dr. Weaver to utilize in my future teaching profession.

In team format, continuous communication is essential to avoid misunderstanding and duplication of effort. Asking right and timely question is another top priority. My group is doing a wonderful job through Google community to always stay ahead of assigned tasks. Though I am active in the community, due to time constrain, I failed to visit the Google community more frequently.

Learning project management process and learning how to work successfully in team set up are two of the essential skill sets for any profession. To master these skill set one needs both pedagogical backbone and practical experiences. I am seeing progress from both these ends slowly but steadily! 

My task list for week three:

Task	Percent Complete	Time Spent in hrs
Weekly Group Meeting	100%	1
Contribute to the discussion in G+	100%	2
Transition to take over the role of Lead Developer	80%	3.5
Worked on project charter	100%	2.5
Identify a cloud-based project management tool for the group: Asana, Tom planner, etc.	10%	1
Keep up with Dr. Weaver's post and screencasts	100%	1.5
Read chapters 2, 3, & 5 in Dick, Carey, and Carey Textbook.	100%	3
Started looking into Analysis report	10%	1.0
Posted 15/5s for my blog	100%	.5
Worked on a shared Google doc, with the team members, to capture all our questions for Terminix related to Project Charter and Goal Analysis.	75%	1.0

15/5s - Week of January 25 through January 31, 2016

Continuous communication is one of the key success factors for achieving triumph in any kind of group project. Google community, a free tool, is making group communication fluid and affordable for all of us. We are always staying ahead of our assigned tasks thanks to our capable project manager along with other active and energetic team members. Weekly team meeting using Google hangout session is both educating and enthusiastic thanks to active participation of all the team members. Great to have our project (Catch & Release) page (https://sites.google.com/site/catchandreleaseidtproject/home) up and running. ‘About Us’ section of our site empowered us to write and edit a short bio about each of us. Reading the first three chapter of Project Managing E-learning helped me to understand the connections between ADDIE and IPECC models. ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) model describe the instructional design tasks that usually occur in each of the step of e-learning project management. While there are many project management models, the book “Project Managing E-learning” strongly promotes the use of IPECC (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling, and Closing) model. Asking questions and learning from the Old Timers is a unique and enlightening experience. Asking questions and answering others’ questions among the peers on initiating project phase helped me to think hard and understand project management concepts with much deeper understanding. Finally, taking ‘learning team survey’ helped me to reflect on my past performance and future commitment to deliver at the best possible way in this team project.

I am working as the lead evaluator for this project. We are primarily focusing on formative evaluation for this project. I am reading and learning the conceptual theoretical knowledge on formative evaluation in the context of e-learning development project. I plan to master this skill to utilize in future e-course development project at my current job.

In team format, continuous communication is essential to avoid misunderstanding and duplication of effort. Asking right and timely question is another top priority. My group is doing a wonderful job through Google community to always stay ahead of assigned tasks. Though I am active in the community, I think, I can and should visit the Google community more frequently.

Learning project management process and learning how to work successfully in team set up are two of the essential skill sets for any profession. To master these skill set one needs both pedagogical backbone and practical experiences. I am optimistic that this course will help me to master both of these skill set while I am certain that these skill set will make me a better professional!