week14

Two weeks ago, we had our dress rehearsal, and we tried to get our unit 1 done by the dress rehearsal night. After the dress rehearsal, we did our alpha test with our consultants.

We set our beta test day on the 26th, so we tried our best to finish all of the project before the scheduled test date. I tried to make the conclusion part, so I wrote some reflection questions and added glossaries. I had two meetings with Emily to learn how to set "scrollbars" in Flash. We were not able to figure out how to print the document from Flash, so we decided to make a link to pdf files so that users can download the file and print it out as needed.

For the next week, we will try to sum up the results of our evaluation and will finalize the project development. Also, we will have a final meeting with our client.

week 13

Tomorrow is our dress rehearsal. We are now having our team meeting to get prepared for tomorrow night. Last week, our project manager Emily was not in the meeting, so we did not discuss much about our project, but only scheduled our team meeting before the dress rehearsal. One was yesterday, but I was not able to join because of another class.

Now, I am finalizing drag and drop activity for the lesson one, but still we have not conluded how to provide feedback. After the dress rehearsal, we will try our best to finish the project. I hope we can get lots of feedback tonight, so that we can improve our project.

week 12

Last week, we had a meeting and discussed specific schedule to work on development together. Each person took several parts of the activities, but anyway we decided to schedule specific dates so that we can gather at the same place and work together. Thus, our first development meeting was held last week. I worked on drag and drop exercise for the unit 1. It was more motivated and advantageous to work together, since we could ask each other when we had some difficulties with Flash. Although we spent the whole day developing this module, there wasn't much progress. Yet, anyway, we have started the work.

This week, Emily was out of town, but we had our meeting without her. Since she is not here in Athens on the weekend, we won't have a meeting this weekend. All of the team members except me will be gathered on Tuesday, but I won't be there as I have other trip schduled as a part of my class. Next week, I'll work on the lesson 3 as Daisy finishes her graphic work for the lesson 3.

week 11

Last week, we had our flash template ready and finalized the ideas about activities and exercieses. Each of us took the part that we would work on for our development. We had another meeting yesterday, to discuss the flash action scripts that we will use. Since the storyboard has been confirmed, we will assign the tasks for our consultants.

Personally, I worked on ideas for the part 2 in unit one-there were some unclear parts in activities. We will have our team meeting on the weekend to work on the development together. I'll mainly work on drag and drop parts.

week 10

Last week, we confirmed our ideas that we had for each lesson. Actually we talked that we would develop prototypes, but it turned out that it meant "storyboard". So, after some confusions, we all brought our storyboard and discussed the activities and ideas all together. I think now it is the time for developing prototypes.

Most of the content information was verified. Thus, this week the most of the time I checked the content and tried to find out any more supplementary information/images, and worked on the prototype.

week 9

Last week, we discussed the activities/interactions for the module, and decided details about the page design. Since we have a picture about what the module will be like, we could discuss things more specifically. There were some ideas that would be better to be included in our module, but that we did not know how to actualize those ideas.

This week, we will mainly work on developing our prototype. While developing the prototype, we'll also think more about interactivities and/or other activities in the module, and how content information is given.

# Week 8

Last week, we discussed more in detail about the screen design. We had our 6210 team presentation last week during the studio meeting, and Daisy prepared some screenshots and explained the concepts that we will use for our module. However, there was navigation bars missing, so that is what should be discussed further. Since we use icons of books, folders, notes, etc. instead of text menu, we should decide where and/or how we can put those icons when contents/activities are shown to the users.

This week, I was supposed to work with daisy helping her revise screenshots, but honestly I couldn't work on it much. I've got files from her yesterday, so hopefully I can work on it a bit today. As other half of the team works on the interaction ideas, we will discuss more about it this week and probably start storyboarding.

# Week 7

Last week, our team discussed on the theme of our product more in detail. It was very interesting to talk about what it would be like. All of us wanted to use some metaphor for our module, and did not want our module to be linear. Thus, we decided to use a person's desk in his/her office with notes, books, a telephone, etc. Each will show modules, references, scenarios, etc.

Personally, I worked on the flowchart. Since our goal 3 deals with situations where the agents work with clients, I thought it would be good to use scenario based learning. While working on the flowchart, one of my team members shared her concern, which is our module will be too big and I agree. Each goal contains many tasks and we have 3 goals. It doesn't seem to be feasible to complete this project by the end of this semester. We will discuss on this tomorrow when we have our team meeting.

Next week, we will start to work on storyboard and basic graphics so that we can provide some templates for our module.

week 6

Last week, our team decided on design scheme for our project. We will use some metaphor such as notes, books, etc. We also spent lots of time wokring on our objectives. We checked our tasks together one by one. It was definately more helpful than working on them alone. Also, the content has been revised, so we needed to reflect content changes in our task analysis.

This week, I worked on task analysis again with test items and performance objectives. Although this is not first time working on it, I get frustrated everytime I work on it. Also, sometimes the matter of testing constrain our creativity in that we do not want to come up with objectives that cannot be "measured". Anyway, our team will discuss more about it tomorrow night and hopefully we will move forward so that we can start our storyboard next week.

week5

Last week, we had Emily back so we could discuss more about the content. Since the task due this week is the timeline, we were able to think about bigger picture about our project while discussing the timeline for each task. Anything specific has not been decided yet, but we agreed that we would meet this week with some ideas on the activities, screen designs, etc. Emily also said that there will be some content changes. I reviewed the timeline that Emily primarily worked on. It seemed nice but somehow not easy to figure out what we need to get done.

We received Dr. Clinton's feedback on our task analysis and objectives yesterday. What we did was task inventory but what he wanted to do us was a set of performance objectives. We will discuss more about it tomorrow during our team meeting. Next week, I'll mainly work on those revisions.

Week 4

Last week, we received some feedback on the scope document and the needs assessment. I sometimes think that usually it is possible to find out what our client needs, but sometimes it is not easy to realize what learners need. Of course there is a matter of "numbers" of the prospective learners in case of a large company training modules. I personally think that design of learning should reflect what learners want to gain from it, yet it seems that in most cases, we should meet what client needs as they have right to decide.

Anyway, I brought a rough draft of the learning goals, objectives and task diagram and we discussed about them based on my draft. The content was not familiar with me, although I tried to find other references to improve my understanding. It was good that we have many people in our team so that I can get some help from them. There was the most frustrating point while I was working on objectives and tasks. As far as I remember, Dr. Clinton stated that learning goals are something expected to do in real world while objectives are something needs to be achieved in instructional settings. My team is working on two units of plant pathology-one is about basic concepts about plant pathology (knowledge) and another one is about plant disease investigation. The ultimate reason we provide these two units is to make the agents competent to do plant disease investigation "in real world" and they need to apply some basic plant pathology concepts while they are working. However, our teammates wondered if we would be able to measure those "skills" considering this is delivered online. Thus, we decided to come up with lower level of objectives although the learning goals are remained refelcting the needs of the application skills in real world.

It is of course important to measure if learning was effective or not, yet sometimes, I think objectives limite students' abilities as they set some boundaries for the safety zone (regarding grades). Just some random thoughts..

For the last week, I primarily worked on objectives and task analysis. My team worked together using email as usual and I submitted our team's document today. Next week, I assume that I'll work again for those as we receive feedback from Dr. Clinton.

Week 3

Last week, we finally got the content from our SME. To review and get familiar with the content would primarily my job as I'm supposed to work on instructional design. We discussed a little about the content when we had our team meeting last week, and discussed all the details about needs assessment and the scope document. We've been working on the document emailing back and forth, and finalized the documents today.

I've been going through the content, but plant pathology is totally new to me, and it is not easy to understand. It seems that almost everytime I design some module as a designer, I need to study the content by myself even if there is a SME. Luckily, the content documents are quite well-organized. I got a draft of instructional goals and task analysis and will share with my team tomorrow night.

15/5s-#2

Last week, we talked about needs assessment in detail.
We had some consultants from 6200 class, but nobody applied for development work. We were thinking about using "service hours" if we cannot have any development consultants. Daisy created two amazing logos for the team, and we voted but haven't got the decision yet.

About the content, Emily said she got the content from SME today. I was not able to meet her today, so she will bring the content for the team meeting.

So far, I have not had much work for my primary task. Since we got the content, however, I'll go over the content and start to design the units. As we discussed last week, we'll have brainstorming before we get to start the design process.

service

first week

We had our first team meeting last week, and had a meeting with our client yesterday.
On the first meeting, we talked about our client meeting, basic tasks for the project, and other works required by the class. Our project is basically develop a system for our client and put a module (about plant pathology) in it. My primary role is instructional designer and I have to figure out how the content organized in the coming week.

Usually, most design and development projects I did during my undergraduate were team based, but I haven't worked with team members for multimedia development project since I came here to the States. This makes me excited!

desk crit 1