One of the best contract jobs I’ve ever worked for was working for very famous space agency (SA). I’ve always been a Sci-Fi geek, grew up on Star Trek and Star Wars and any other science fiction shows I could watch. The first documentaries I watched as a kid were space orientated and I watched as many as I could, so it was no surprise that when I got the opportunity to work for SA I jumped at the chance.

I was brought in as an Art Director for a project that would be a 3D educational space exploration game prototype to see if they could get funding for it. Rarely had I ever been this excited. “I get to work for SA…and get paid?!?” I thought to myself. This is a dream come true, and it was. I got to work with some of the most brilliant minds on the planet who were specializing in nanotechnology, physics, engineering, and chemistry. These guys were literally rocket scientists.

We were brought in to meet with the heads of some of the departments about the concept, timeline and what educational elements were supposed to be in it. The game players would use the periodic table, chemistry, and various other real science to solve problems. The only limitations were that the science could be fictitious or too far in the future and there couldn’t be any aliens (since we can’t prove they exist). Essentially, it had to at least be something that’s being worked on currently and not made up.

Scope Creep popped up during the project in a few ways and the project wound up taking over a year to complete instead of the 3 months that was originally planned. The things that caused scope creep were:

1. Approval of concept – In a digital project, the first thing is to define what the deliverables are and signing off the concept art. This was the first initial hurdle because the design of the ship couldn’t be finalized. Every concept from the team kept getting feedback which got revisions and would add time to get the final design from the concept artists.

   Solution:
   The producer/project manager was the one setting the timelines and daily goals. If I could change how this part went down, I would have gotten the stakeholders (SA) to work a lot closer with the concept artists and myself to lock down the design of the ship in the story. This was one of those things that really slowed production and delayed the whole project from getting off the ground. Locking down a date when it’s due and putting in the contract that revisions beyond this point will cost more and delay the completion date would have cleared a lot of problems.

2. Revolving door – Because people were brought into the team long before they needed to do things, people started losing interest and getting other jobs so we would have to replace them.

   Solution:
   Because of the timeline issue, people were contracted long before they were needed. The project manager didn’t anticipate the pre-production of the project to take as long and got together a team way too early. If I could do it differently, I would have:

   1. locked down a more accurate timeline coding the priorities instead of being so linear (Laureate. n.d., Monitoring Projects)
   2. informed members of the potential team, but not brought them in so early. The team lost interest and excitement from waiting so long
   3. delegated some of the work to other people capable of doing it. Some team members could do more than one thing but were stuck in their particular job for no reason other than that’s what’s on the schedule (Laureate. n.d., Monitoring Projects)
3. Change the rules in the last quarter of the game – In a meeting when we were 2 thirds of the completed project, one of the most brilliant scientists decided it would be a great idea to add a lot of things that weren’t originally planned including an extraterrestrial influence. Not only would this change the entire foundation of plausible near future events, it would also include several weeks of adding content and we were already way over our timeline.

   Solution:
   This one I handled and had jurisdiction on. My team stared at me with a “what do we do?” expression on their faces as we listened to the scientist disclose all of these ideas that we had never heard of. There were now aliens, a love story, and technology that doesn’t exist. It sounded interesting but was totally undoable with the timeline and story we had. I collected myself and addressed the additional information with the scientist. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and shoot everything down and I really loved his enthusiasm but there was no way of making this happen with the restrictions of time and budget. I told him: “Those were great ideas, but maybe we can save it for a sequel if this project gets off the ground. We want to make sure that we can finish this with the new delivery date”. He agreed and we were able to finish. Later than it was originally planned but it looked better than the original concept and they were very happy with the project.

With all its challenges, this was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on and learned so much on so many levels. I thought I would learn a lot of science (I did) but what I really learned was things to do and not do on a big project.

Resources
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Monitoring projects [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

I don’t know about everyone else, but one of the most difficult things for me is trying to get lock down an estimate of the time it could take on some projects. The variables can make this difficult particularly on subject matter that you might not be familiar with, which for an ID could be a considerable amount of the projects you work on.

When I first started doing graphic design (and even occasionally now) it was hard for me to know how to charge and back then I didn’t always have a great idea of how long it would take to do some projects. So, when that would happen, I would call some design agencies or designers and pretend I was the customer. I would ask them how long and how much it would cost for certain jobs and after I had a few estimates it told me the ball park for time and cost so I would know how to charge and how long the project would take (I could also use the information to be competitive).

As an ID, I believe that estimating the activity duration and creating a good project schedule will be a great time to use the SMEs and if at all possible, not just the one that might be working with you. External SMEs from outside the company can be great resources to have a basis of comparison (provided you make sure to adhere to any NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements). I personally keep collecting resources that I can call (people I’ve worked with before that are experts in many fields and can give me advice and estimates for things). This has been extremely useful.

Other great resources come in the form of project orientated software and tips from other IDs. Here are a few that I found.

Software:

Project Manager.com
https://www.projectmanager.com/software

This is a great resource that’s accessible by all on the team. It got great reviews and scored a 4.5 out of 5 on softwareadvice.com. The features that I would use are:

1. Dashboard: a real-time dashboard that allows you to monitor, adjust, track and create tasks of the project
2. Tasks– create, collaborate, edit, review and approve tasks on the project
3. Reports– Generate reports that can be given to C-Suites and also as a tool to have in meetings with the team
4. Timesheets– Track who is doing what, when.
5. Gnatt Chart– Drag and Drop UI to create interactive Gnatt Charts.
6. Scheduling– everything from team schedules per activity and tasks to individual schedules to the hour.

Looks like a great tool and the pricing is scalable to the size of the project. I can easily see developing the scope, schedule and cost baselines as data into this manager not to mention, tracking the deadlines and status to maintain quality (Larson, E., 2012).

Dapulse
https://dapulse.com/features/

One of the things that make this tool so impressive is its integration with mobile hardware with apps. It has many of the same functions as ProjectManager along with the app accessibility to get updates and make changes could be a great factor from some projects. These notifications could be a great reminder of when whether something is missing or goes wrong, the PM could immediately address it remotely. When sharing docs, it easily integrates with Google Drive, Dropbox, and Google calendar. This tool would be well utilized for consulting with team members, communicating any changes, and seeing all the activities associated with the task and who is responsible for them (Laureate. n.d., Creating a Project Schedule)

Peer Articles:

We are not alone. I don’t mean that in an E.T. go home kinda way.  I mean that there are a wealth of people who are more than willing to share knowledge and offer guidance. Some of the best resources are other ID’s articles, papers and general

Estimating Time Accurately-Calculating Realistic Project Timelines
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_01.htm

Mindtools.com is a site dedicated to “Essential skills for an excellent career”. In the toolkit, it has articles on Leadership skills, team management, strategy tools, etc. The one that got my attention was an article in the Project Management section. It has several great tips on managing a realistic timeline and staying on schedule but what struck me most was the Methods of Estimating Time.

It gives great details and tips of:

• Bottom-Up Estimating
• Top-Down Estimating
• Comparative Estimating
• Parametric Estimating
• Three-Point Estimating

Sometimes it not easy to remember to look at things from many different perspectives and I’m going to find this extremely useful! I look forward to using these tools in my projects to come.

4 Ways to Estimate How Long a Task Will Take
by Melissa Gratias, Ph.D. – Productivity Psychologist
http://melissagratias.com/estimating-time/

This is a great article from Melissa Gratias who specializes in Productivity, Time Management, Email Management and Goals/Planning. She talks about 4 basics that could apply to any project but what I like the most is something that I actually use, and just need to use more. A simple math equation to help you calculate time by creating estimates based off an:

• Optimistic turnaround time
• Most likely turnaround time
• Pessimistic turnaround.

She encourages people to call her if they have questions first for free (45min) then she charges as a consultant. I would use her equation. I’ve already used something similar.

Software tools

https://www.projectmanager.com/

https://dapulse.com/features/

Peer Articles

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_01.htm

http://melissagratias.com/estimating-time/

Resources

Larson, E., & Larson R. (2012). 10 Steps to Creating a Project Plan. Retrieved from: https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/10-steps-to-creating-a-project-plan.html

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Creating a project schedule [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Communication is a necessity in all aspects of life. Bad communication can start wars, effective communication makes peace and strengthens relationships personal and professional. As an ID or Project manager, communication with the stakeholders is always paramount.

Dr. Stolovitch states that effective communication isn’t just words. It’s spirit and attitude, tonality and body language, timing, and the personality of the recipient.

In the Laureate example of the same message given through Email, Voicemail and Face-to-Face, it becomes evident that it can be perceived in different ways, not only how it’s worded but, how it’s delivered, the timing and the personalities and relationship of individuals communicating both the person sending the message and the recipient. It can also be affected by the importance of the information. Does it need to be in someone’s hands immediately? Is it as simple as yes or no or is it very detailed data?

The message was as follows:

(Multimedia Program: “The Art of Effective Communication” link in resources below)

The message (in all its deliveries) does several things correctly:

1. It acknowledges that Mark is busy
2. It lets him know that if she doesn’t get the information that she’s waiting on, she could get in trouble too
3. It “asks” him instead of demanding or telling him to get the information to her
4. It gives him an alternative to where if he can at least just send the data, then she would be in the clear and presumably would bother him
5. It thanks him for his help before he has had time to act

Email version- I’ve found out the hard way that even if I communicate with someone via voicemail or face-to-face, it’s a good idea to send an email to whomever you talked to and confirm the information you gave or received to cover yourself. I had a boss that hated emails because when he said something to you that was incorrect or against policy, there was no documentation to support your claim. Emails can be misinterpreted by people so and ID or PM have to be very careful with proper language, words, and analogies (Laureate, n.d., Project Management Concerns). The email is clear, puts importance on the data she needs and lets Mark know that she could be in trouble if she doesn’t get his information.  One major benefit of sending an email of this nature is that it does back Jane up if she’s late for her deadline. She can tell her supervisor that there was no way of completing her project because she didn’t have access to the resources. The email is pretty straight forward, compliments and asks while stating the repercussions of if the information is not obtained.

The VoiceMail version- Clearly the individuals involved are dealing with stressful deadlines that are approaching fast and in an emotionally heightened environment, leaving messages and putting more pressure on the recipient (though effective) might have some negative results.  If the recipient is feeling overwhelmed tensions could rise and the email could be taken in a negative way regardless of how accurate it is. This could motivate Mark to seek help on his side to make sure that deadlines are met or it could get a backlash of “I’m working as fast as I can”. This would depend on the personality of Mark and the history he has with Jane. This version has the strongest impression of the urgency of the 3 versions. The speed at with the person is speaking is quick and denotes that they are in a hurry. Though not as easy as just printing out an email message, most companies do track phone calls and even if the message got erased, there would still be a log of when Mark was called and how long the call was. Hearing the persons voice personalizes the message. Whereas emails, because we get so many can at times be overlooked or even wind up in a spam folder, can get lost in translation unless they are extremely clear and concise.

The Face-to-Face version- I believe this version was better in that the recipient could hear and see the attitude and tonality of the person leaving the message and observe their body language that they are not being adversarial. Her voice was polite and concerned and there was no condescending tones or anger in the delivery of the information request. This also personalizes the information request. “If I don’t get this done, Mary will be in trouble”, so there should be more of an attachment to getting it done. It still had a tone of importance but less aggressive than the VoiceMail version.

Which version is the correct one?

I don’t think it’s that simple. What’s Marks personality, what’s the relationship of Mark and Jane? “Tailor your communication strategy to fit the specific needs of each stakeholder” (Laureate. n.d., Practitioner Voices). Does Mark respond better to someone putting pressure on him? Some people do like that. I worked with a man from New York who wouldn’t respond unless you were more aggressive with him. It’s up to the ID/PM to decide the most effective way of communicating with the individual. In either case, I would still make a confirmation email and send it to Mark whether I left a message on his voicemail or spoke with him face to face to create a virtual paper trail. It will also make sure that it didn’t slip his mind.

Resources

Multimedia Program: “The Art of Effective Communication”
http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6145/03/mm/aoc/index.html

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Communicating with stakeholders [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Practitioner voices: Strategies for working with stakeholders [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Project management concerns: Communication strategies and organizational culture [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

A few years back, one of the colleges I worked for decided to expand by opening a satellite school. To the board of directors, this was the only way to make a school more equitable and more successful. They adopted the age-old mentality of “if you build it, they will come”. They were wrong.

If I had a week, I couldn’t list all the things wrong with this decision but I’ll summarize and stay focused on the planning and execution of launching this endeavor. The Satellite School (SS) was pitched with the premise that it would fulfill a few expectations of the Board of Directors (BOD) which were:

• Satisfy the needs of interested potential students in a city that wasn’t easily accessible to the parent school and didn’t have much competition from similar schools
• Be self-sustaining and not require substantial resources or money from the parent school (PS)
• Add opportunities for existing employees who could grow with the new SS where growth was more difficult at the PS.
• Be profitable / cost less to run

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. The school had a rough start, didn’t have enough support, and caused a moral slide of faculty and staff. So, what went wrong?

• The CEO ignored all warnings and request to reevaluate the location, scope, and timing of such a project.
• The school wound up having an abysmal number of students in the first several cohorts.
• The school was a beautiful facility, that was away from downtown and wasn’t easily accessible by public transit. It was in an industrial part of the city that you needed a car to get to or to get food for lunch. Students had a problem going to the school in the city they lived in.
• It wasn’t self-sustaining. It required staff, equipment, resources and management from the PS that wasn’t anticipated and there for, not budgeted. Staff who worked there had to drive an extra hour from the PS with little to no compensation.
• The budget wasn’t very accurate. Not enough research with the cost of hardware, faculty, and staffing compared to the number of students that would be required to make it sustainable.

Every project requires the management of 5 variables and this project didn’t successfully do any of them (Laureate, E., n.d.).

1. Time– The time was miscalculated for the project. The CEO acted as Project Manager (PM) and didn’t have enough research. In his defense, he was answering to the BODs which were bankers who knew nothing about education. The time to build out the facility was wrong and more expensive than originally thought. Classes were delayed and hiring was difficult.
2. Resources– the school took more resources from the PS than was ever anticipated. Faculty who had to teach at the SS had to have their classes at the PS covered. Hardware from the PS for one of the programs had to go to the satellite school and staff had to be shared. Because of its location, it was difficult to get to, making it less desirable for faculty and students.
3. Expertise– There was plenty of expertise in the seasoned faculty and staff, several who had opened schools before, but it went completely ignored. Communication was more of a need to know basis and was often not soon enough.
4. Quality– Quality suffered because of the lack of resources and planning. Experienced people were involved but improperly utilized. Shortcuts were made and in the end, the project wasn’t executed as it was envisioned.
5. Scope– Scope Creep was a major factor. There was a constant run of unexpected problems due largely to shortcutting and not sticking to the original plan.

This project was difficult because of the amount of restrictions and variables that were a constant influence such as the BODs, budget reductions, reworking miscalculations. The two biggest problems the PM had was a lack of research and communication. Had I been in his position, I would have had a much more thorough use of the ADDIE method and did research starting with an Analysis of:

Location– Instead of just a financial decision I would have looked much closer at transportation accessibility and nearby food accessible by walking in relation to the amount of time between classes.

Student Needs– A more complete study of students in that region who are more than just interested in this type of school and based the percentage of interest with comparable statistics of other schools that have been successful.

Communication– We had a huge number of seasoned SMEs that weren’t properly utilized. Most of the Scope Creep could have been prevented with communication and listen to the SME’s. Almost all of the SME’s warnings of what could happen did happen. What’s the point of having SME’s if you’re not going to listen to them? More surveys, and discussions with the SME’s who knew more about cost, hardware and even location of where the school should have been.

The Scope of the project– I would have defined a much more realistic scope of the project and suggested a more reasonable build out of fewer programs starting with the limited amount of resources.

Even with the restrictions that were somewhat unrealistic, I think the execution of the school could have gone much better. As it stands the school is still there but had to scale back from the original square footage and is still way under the number of students it should have to be successful.

Resources

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Practitioner voices: Barriers to project success [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Starting my Project Management Class!

It’s going to be a challenging but exciting journey!
Project Posts Coming Soon…

I really enjoyed the Distance learning course. I know this because I’ve already started to rewrite courses that I teach because of it. Distance learning has been around for a long time in many forms such as correspondence courses by mail long before there were cars but it’s only been recently that it’s been acknowledged and become so mainstream in all facets of training and learning. It’s also become more widely excepted though it’s not as far along as it could be. There are still hurdles for it to overcome.

At the turn of the last century, there were around 900,000 students enrolled in International Correspondence Schools by 1906 and by 2010 there were nearly 3 million students enrolled in online programs in America alone (Craig, 2015). Distance learning has grown and become far more accessible. The perceptions have been varied from skepticism to beliefs that it’s the future of all education and everything in between. Technology has been hugely a part of its recent growth in acceptance. George Seimans gave 4 reasons as to why that is (Laureate n.d.):

1. The increase of online communication
2. Practical experiences with new tools available
3. The current populations growing comfort with online discourse
4. And the ability to communicate with diverse and global groups.

I believe that similar to Moore’s Law, we’re going to see a continued growth and positive perception of distance learning provided that we adapt the structure of learning and not continue to look at and practice distance learning with the restriction of how it’s been taught in traditional brick and mortar schools. It’s been stated that teaching strategies in online environments tend to be locked in traditional approaches with technology being used mostly for convenience and flexibility (Wang, 2015). I’ve witnessed this personally at one of the schools I worked at were the driving force for online was the belief it was going to save money and not much thought was put into the design. It failed.

I believe that in the next decade, we will see this adaptation of design broader in distance learning courses and as it grows, so with the positive perception of distance learning. Though it’s stated time and time again that technology doesn’t drive education, it does help it and make it more accessible to learners along with more tools that can be used to solve problems. It wouldn’t have been possible to teach as many learners effectively in correspondence courses as we can now, and that’s due to technological advancements which allow at times instantaneous exchanges of information rather than weeks. Seimans did state that the factors that will and have impacted Distance Education are:

1. New communication technologies
2. Contributions by experts around the world (once again more accessible through new communication technologies)
3. Increased use of multimedia, games, and simulations

I believe this is the catalyst to have educators think out of the box if they are given the resources and time to take advantage of it. As new techniques are created and shared it will become far easier to have activities and projects in distance education and it will be perceived as a creative and effective alternative to traditional face to face courses as opposed to the skepticism of it replacing traditional courses while not always offering the same amount of quality (or so it’s perceived by some now).

As an Instructional Designer, I believe it’s our jobs to be creative in how to not make online learning different for the sake of it being different but to make it different to make it effective for distance education and the learner’s sake. We don’t need to be tied to the way it’s been done in the past but we do need to acknowledge what has worked and see how it can be reimagined instead of regurgitated.

I personally plan on being a positive force for this change by studying the back door of how to make distance education work. An example is that one of the schools I work for and teach online gives a certain amount of freedom with the content and tools you use as an instructor in the class but is restricted by how the classes are organized in due dates and the time given to create the activities for the course. I want to create specialized templates for the courses I teach and similar ones that are more suited for digital art where teachers new to teaching online would have an easier time to prep for their classes and have better ideas of what they can do to teach certain information. Creating some of this content and broadening this to other areas would help out several departments. I guess I’ll know after my capstone how effective it will be. I’m really excited to find out.

Resources

Craig, R., (2015). A Brief History (And Future) of Online Degrees. Forbes Article
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2015/06/23/a-brief-history-and-future-of-online-degrees/#ea21cf848d9a

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). The future of distance education [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Wang, V. C., & Torrisi‐Steele, G. (2015). Online teaching, change, and critical theory. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 27(3), 18–26.

A Best Practices Guide

Taking a face to face course and changing it to a blended learning course is a task that requires a lot of prep and thought. To simply put the content that was taught face to face online isn’t enough and will not have much of a success rate even though the methods used to facilitate online and traditional courses are the same (Laureate, n.d.).
This will give you some guidance and some tips on how to Convert a Conventional Course to a Distance Learning Format.

Converting to a Distance Learning Format – A Best Practices Guide

Resources

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Facilitating online learning [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

WK1 Distance Education

Ty Carriere

Walden University

Dr. Celeste Fenton

Distance Learning   EDUC – 6135

My Past Experience

My experience with distance learning is as both a teacher and as a student. I’ve been teaching face to face on campus classes for almost 20 years and only recently in the last couple of years started teaching both hybrid and online courses. As a traditional teacher, it was a challenge initially and I originally was somewhat resistant to teaching online. In retrospect, it was due mostly to the structure and reasoning of the school I taught at that tried to initiate it. Moller’s statement was correct that some institutions reasoning is solely to save money and they disguise it by saying they are being cutting edge and evolving when in fact they are thinking of assumed economic gains (Moller, 2008 pt.1). This made me very apprehensive as well as several other teachers I worked with at the time and so it met with a lot of resistance. My initial definition of distance learning was very general and always pertained to online courses through a college or grade school.

My Experience Update

So far during this week, I’ve learned a lot of things, or more accurately, I’m thinking differently. I never really thought of all the types of distance learning there are or all the different things that are considered distance learning, much less all of the seemingly interchangeable terminology. Simonson categorizes the terms describing distance learning as E-learning, virtual education, online learning, and distance education (Simonson 2015). I’ve personally used all of these terms but never realized their differences until now. Imagining doing courses by mail correspondence in the 1800s is incredible, not to mention time-consuming. Today’s options of email, live lesson feeds, recorded videos and instantaneous communication dwarfs the technology of yesterday.

Dr. Michael Simonson (n.d.) states that one of the characteristics of distance education is that it’s institutionally based, not self-studied. This is something that now that it’s stated seems obvious, but something I wouldn’t have thought of initially to define. Now that I’m an online student and as well an online teacher, I’ve drastically changed my mind and realized that it’s the delivery, quality and intent that makes a good online program. If it weren’t for the online courses, many students such as myself wouldn’t have the opportunity to continue their education. That being said, I think there is always room for improvement and that appears to be where the IDs come in.

My Vision of Distance Learnings Future

In my opinion from what I’ve learned as a student and what I’ve experienced as a teacher, distance learning is evolving and reaching out greater than it ever has before. Technology has allowed it to reach villages and teach using IPads, use phones to collaborate with peers instantaneously and give students a great option to traditional learning. I’ve seen different ways of learning that were impossible like the augmented reality of the hololens teaching medical students using holograms and I’ve learned about research and learning methodologies with peers I never would have met otherwise while working multiple jobs. Distance learning is fantastic but not without its problems.

Some of the things I believe need to be corrected were brought up in this week’s resources, others weren’t. In this week’s resources, using distance learning to save money and not doing a true assessment beyond the base line goal to see if the results are successful is a very important and real problem that I’ve witnessed firsthand. As an ID, this is going to be one of my top priorities to make sure I can effectively put the information in a format that will show more than just economics in the short term.

Another problem that I’ve personally tried to address is that all thought distance learning shouldn’t be identical to face to face instruction, there still needs to be a proper adaptation of the merging of what makes online courses effective and what makes face to face effective. Often times I’ve seen course results from student’s projects being less advanced from online students than face to face because of a strict let’s keep it different policy. This can be detrimental if pushed inappropriately to the content being taught and it’s an easy fix. As an ID, I want to make sure that I don’t forget the strengths of both to make powerful instruction that works for as many learners as possible. I believe this is the future of Distance Learning.

References

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., & Zvacek, S. (2015). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education

Chapter 2, “Definitions, History, and Theories of Distance Education” (pp. 31–40 only)

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.

“Distance Learning Timeline Continuum” (n.d.)

This multimedia, interactive timeline chronicles the evolution of distance learning from 18332009.

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Distance education: The next generation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

• What did you find surprising or striking as you furthered your knowledge about how people learn?

It’s amazing to stop and think about all the different ways that people learn. Somewhat overwhelming actually. As a teacher I’ve experienced on some level all of the different theories that I’ve now studied but didn’t know their backgrounds or sometimes their terminology. I’ve taught based off of instinct, experience and training from when I was a martial arts instructor which I never realized how handy it would actually be for teaching and life decisions. I was very happy and surprised that my instincts and training have been pretty good so far and has been substantiated by what I learned in the Learning Theories and Instruction course. Not only that but it has expanded my knowledge and given me a lot of ideas on how to change classes I teach.

• How has this course deepened your understanding of your personal learning process?

This course has deepened my understanding of how I learn personally by having me reevaluate and examine my own learning process more. I already knew I was a visual learner and that for certain subject matter needed elaboration and analogies, but I found that I’m also a cognitive/connectivist learner that gets bored with behaviorist learning if I do it for too long. I need to be challenged. I also realize that I do like acknowledgment more than I thought I did which was a surprise for me because I never really thought about it. Getting positive feedback and comments helped motivate me a lot more than I expected and in turn makes me think of how I need to work on giving more of it to my students. Another thing that I acknowledged was how much I prefer more freedom with solving problems. This was something I had done in the past but once again, never really stopped to think about.

• What have you learned regarding the connection between learning theories, learning styles, educational technology, and motivation?

I’ve learned that the connection between learning theories, styles, education technologies and motivations are extremely intertwined with teaching, especially teaching in current times. There is no absolute right way of teaching everybody. People are different from different backgrounds, beliefs, strengths, weaknesses, ages, experiences, perceptions and adaptability levels, and so must the tactics of teaching acknowledge these differences. The connection to me isn’t trying to find the perfect way or rule of how to teach but rather the best balance of addressing the majority of commonalities that learners do have.

The assumption that most learners (adult or otherwise) have certain things mostly in common.

1. The need and want to know
2. Access to technology that’s common today.
3. Responding positively to motivation and being affected by both positive and negative reinforcement
4. Empirical experience (though more prevalent in adult learners) that can aid or in some cases hamper learning
5. At the very least, the ability for introductory or basic behaviorist learning if not cognitive

• How will your learning in this course help you as you further your career in the field of instructional design?

What I’ve learned in this course will help me address a much broader range of learner then I acknowledged before. I’ve already started rewriting some of my courses upon reflection of problems that students have had in some classes after studying the material of this course. I believe as a teacher, especially if you’ve been doing it for a while, it’s extremely important to look from the perspective of the students and not just students from the past but students who are different from the ones from a few years ago. I know my students have changed over the years. They have more entitlement, more technological distractions, far less behavioral control and even lower sense accountability, but there is also the students who are far more technologically savvy, are more vocal and less shy to comment (I suspect social media has something to do with that), and know they have a wider range of resources at their disposal to find answers so it’s a mixed bag, but a different one from when I was originally a student. Knowing these different theories, styles, technologies and motivational techniques inspire me to make much better content as a Teacher and Instructional Designer.

Now that I have a deeper understanding of learning theories and styles it really hasn’t changed much on how I learn, but more so on how I teach. I think that as a teacher it’s really easy if you’ve been doing it for a long time to forget the diversity of the class. I found myself reading the material and seeing the faces of students I’ve had in the past pop into my head and thinking to myself “man I could have possibly done this or that differently”. I found myself rewriting some of my curricula after reading the material.

Over the past few weeks, the various learning theories and learning styles explain a few things about my learning preferences. Rather I should say solidify what I pretty much knew. I’m a visual learner and a cognitive/connectivist learner with subjects that I like and more of a behaviorist learner with subjects that I don’t in addition to being an obvious adult learner. I prefer videos and charts over extensive reading. Of course, extensive is relative but I do absorb a lot more from seeing and hearing at a much faster rate. No doubt because most of my technical training for the last couple of decades has been that way, plus being an artist, I’ve always been a visual learner.

I use technology constantly in my learning. Right now I’m typing this up on my laptop with 2 additional screens connected to it. I use video tutorials, I search using google constantly, I create word documents and copy and paste information from the internet, pdfs, and anything else related to what I’m doing so I can find it later or refer to it. I also record information so I can view it for practice later either on my camera, phone or tablet. The funny part is that I still write down tons of notes in a couple of sketchbooks because writing down something I read (a definition, diagram, word or terminology I didn’t know, etc.) helps me remember and have quicker reference to information. Even with all of the technology, there is still something far more intimate about physically writing something out rather than typing it.