15/5s - Week of March 14 through March 21, 2016

Content Analysis is the heart of the instructional design. It helps the instructional designer to look at the big picture of the learning goal and then detail it out into smaller achievable segment of the instructional goals. I worked with Tameka to develop our curriculum map to visually depict our learning and instructional goals. I created the curriculum map using Microsoft Visio software. In the curriculum map we created a hierarchical structure to distinguish among the prior skill, sub-skill, and main skills. We also developed a detailed task analysis table to identify and describe task, instructional objective, related Bloom's level & domain of learning, and assessment methods. 

            This process helped me to understand different relevant pieces of instructional contents to piece together a comprehensive curriculum map. To ensure learning took place, first we need to know what is the main learning goal. Then we need to break down the learning goal into instructional goals. Then we need to identity which learning domain this kind of learning belongs to. According to the appropriate learning domain, we need to choose right instructional materials, and appropriate assessment method. 

           Content analysis is a great technique which can be utilized in any task or project at hand. On a day to day basis, we look at the bigger goal for a project, break it down into smaller task and deliverable, identify the resources and means to achieve or accomplish that task, and finally install a quality control or assessment piece to ensure that we reach the target with predetermined quality. One of my observation is - team approach much more productive and rich in quality than individual endeavor. As a part of team approach, client's feedback is a great help along with Dr. Weaver's able guidance.

             Moving forward, Content Analysis is going to provide us the foundation to build our instructional strategy and delivery mechanism. I think we did a great job as a team to detail out our content analysis. It is a great pleasure to work with Jennifer and Tameka. Working in a team environment saves time but not always at the same level. Some of the tasks have dependencies; Tameka had to finish her instructional objectives before I worked on the assessment components. While it is possible to coordinate among the team members through Google hangout and other online tools; we found that a face to face interaction is much more educational and efficient in accomplish jointly developed task.

            Asking questions and learning from the peers and Dr. Weaver is a unique and enlightening experience. Laerning a lot of different prespectives by watching the screencasts from my peers. These resources are continuously helping me to think hard and understand new dimentions of any task at hand. Finally, watching Dr. Weaver’s screencast provides a clear guideline on how to deal with so many moving parts without getting overwhelmed. I would like to apply the techniques I am learning from Dr. Weaver and my teammates to utilize in my future teaching profession.

           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 of these ends slowly but steadily! Finally, learning is a continuous journey, not the destination! 

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%	1.5
Develop Content Analysis Report	100%	20
Discussion and feedback on Analysis Report	100%	2
Asana to add and update project tasks/sub-tasks	100%	.5
Keep up with Dr. Weaver's post and screencasts, taking surveys	100%	.5
Discussion on Content Map using MS Visio	100%	1
Reading on Content Analysis	100%	1
Posted 15/5s for my blog	100%	.5
Other reading related to SCORM	100%	1.0

15/5s - Week of February 22 through February 28, 2016

Project plan is the approved blue print for project execution and and project control. During project planning, the project scope is defined and described with greater specificity as more information about the project is know. Existing risks, assumptions, and constrains are analyzed for completeness and added or updated as necessary. The define scope process is highly iterative, as we are learning more and more about the project, things are getting more clear to us. We utilized expert analysis approach to understand the scope of the project and created work breakdown structure to identify all the tasks associated with this project. We are utilizing a online hosted tool "Asana" to record and maintain our project plan.
  
I primarily worked on scope, budget, and procurement sections of the project plan. Scope is always evolving with our deeper understanding of the project. Change management plan is helping us to record any approved changes. Budget part is calculated more for educational and learning experience. Client has all the software and hardware resources, and our project team is a virtual team with personal software and hardware resources. Finally, this project hardly requires any procurement plan due to in-house development of instructional application. We worked as a team to develop project plan, this helped us to learn and apply our knowledge in virtual team work environment. Our Project manager provided valuable insight and guidance through fruitful discussions and meaningful suggestions. At the end of the day, this was  a great collaborative effort in which our client also played a vital role by providing reliable documentation and by engaging meaningful discussion through conference call and electronic communications.

Moving forward, project plan is helping us to stay on track and within budget. It is also helping us to allocate our time and resources according to the plan to achieve our deliverable on time along with specified quality. This process also helped me to learn and excel in collaborative working environment to construct collaborative new knowledge through inquiry of learning. This is always fascinating to learn the internal prospective of the client and its interpretation based on the organizational culture and context.   

Our project manager did a great job in presenting our project plan using a screencast. Though we all worked on the project plan development process, Jennifer had a sound understanding of the whole project plan. This a great approach to learn about whole by working on a part. Sharing ideas through discussion enhances confidence in the process of constructing new knowledge. I plan to apply this approach in any opportunity I can avail.

Asking questions and learning from the peers and Dr. Weaver is a unique and enlightening experience. This process is continuously helping me to think hard and understand new project management and instructional design concepts with much deeper understanding with a new and different prospective. Finally, watching Dr. Weaver’s screencast provides a clear guideline on how to deal with so many moving parts without getting overwhelmed. I would like to apply the techniques I am learning from Dr. Weaver to utilize in my future teaching profession.

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 of these ends slowly but steadily! Finally, learning is a continuous journey, not the destination! 

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
Develop Project Plan	100%	3
Discussion and feedback on project plan	100%	1
Asana to add and update project tasks/sub-tasks	100%	1
Keep up with Dr. Weaver's post and screencasts, taking surveys	100%	.5
Discussion on Content Analysis Report	100%	1
Reading on Develop Project plan	100%	2
Posted 15/5s for my blog	100%	.5
Other reading related to Treatment Report	25%	1.0

15/5s - Week of February 15 through February 21, 2016

Analysis report is the heart of the instructional design. It helps the organization to identify either the performance gap or opportunities to improvement through context analysis. Once the performance gap is identified, potential alternate solutions are considered to address the performance gap; best possible solution is identified, and finally decide on "if instruction is the best solution?". If instruction is the best solution, we would like to know about the learners and their learning preferences and learners' performance gaps before defining learning goals to address the performance gaps through instructions. Finally, we would like to identify the learning context and its restrictions or limitations besides available resources and media of instructional delivery. Identifying the differences between learning and performance context is essential for devising a path to transfer the newly constructed knowledge through instructions into performance environment for on-job application by utilizing job aid.  
As the lead evaluator  of the project, I worked closely with the lead instructional developer to finalize our analysis report. Our Project manager provided valuable insight and guidance through fruitful discussions and meaningful suggestions. At the end of the day, this was  a great collaborative effort in which our client also played a vital role by providing reliable documentation and by engaging meaningful discussion through conference call and electronic communications.

Analysis report helped us to link the pieces to see the bigger picture of instructional needs, learners profile, and instructional goals. This is a great structured critical thinking process to identify a problem or opportunity for improvement, and to explore and propose a viable solution in almost any working scenario. This process also helped me to learn and excel in collaborative working environment to construct collaborative new knowledge through inquiry of learning. This is always fascinating to learn the internal prospective of the client and its interpretation based on the organizational culture and context.   

Presenting analysis report as a team was a great and enjoyable learning experience. First, we though we would do it over a Google hangout session and I will capture my screen through Camtasia studio, a screen cast tool. Eventually, my lead instructional designer and I met at the main campus to record our presentation. This provided an opportunity to meet my peer face to face and learn about my peer who is great motivating character. Sharing ideas through discussion enhances confidence in the process of constructing new knowledge. I plan to apply this approach in any opportunity I can avail.
Peer evaluation helped me think about self evaluation before judging my peers. I am blessed and grateful to be a part of this dynamic and proactive project team. Learning team survey is a great reminder of group behaviors and identify the room for improvement. These are great feedback and improvement tools and I intend to utilize these tools in my future projects for capturing feedback to just, modify, and improve during and after the end of each project.

Asking questions and learning from the peers and Dr. Weaver is a unique and enlightening experience. This process is continuously helping me to think hard and understand new project management and instructional design concepts with much deeper understanding with a new and different prospective. Finally, watching Dr. Weaver’s screencast provides a clear guideline on how to deal with so many moving parts without getting overwhelmed. I would like to apply the techniques I am learning from Dr. Weaver to utilize in my future teaching profession.

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 of these ends slowly but steadily! Finally, learning is a continuous journey, not the destination! 

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	100%	.5
Discussion and feedback on project charter	100%	1
Learning the basic functions of Asana tool for project planning and WBS	100%	1
Keep up with Dr. Weaver's post and screencasts, taking surveys	100%	2
Writing Analysis Report	100%	3
Presenting  Analysis Report	100%	4
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 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!

Reza's weekly 15/5s post

Reza’s IDT 7095 blog will post all the activities related to the “Catch and Release” project throughout the semester. This individual 15/5s post will be dated with two distinct sections. First section will describe assigned team-tasks for the week, percent completed, amount of time spent on those tasks, and special mention on the task which are primary assigned to Reza. This is help evaluate and compare between budgeted and actuals resources assignments and utilization.  Second section will focus on reflection. This section will follow Peter Pappas' taxonomy for the reflective student. Each reflection post will strive to build on the six levels of Bloom's taxonomy to promote higher level of thinking. Primary goal of each of the reflection post is to document the lesson learned and to identify the opportunities of improvement and learning.