As of today, our instructional design is getting cleaned up and revised based on peer feedback. Hopefully we will have it ready to turn in today, also. But group work always tends to move slower than I would like, so that may not happen.
What has gone well? For starters, we have discussed many aspects surrounding a sociocultural lesson design. Our discussions go well with no major personality clashes. Although, several group members are rather quiet, so I hope they don’t end up causing conflict when they do speak up. The design is taking shape and there are some great ideas in there. I went to a seminar on “Surviving the PhD Process” this week and much of what was shared there confirmed what we are doing. Many students expressed the need to form an informal cohort to help survival rates. We are labeling that a Personal Learning Network, but it is still the same idea.
Our problems with the process so far still revolve around group participation. We have several members that aren’t really joining in the discussion or revision of the material. I think they are sitting back and waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Well, the Master’s Level student is asking what to do, but I’m not sure if we know what to have him do. He already stated he doesn’t understand anything about what we are doing, and when we ask him what he wants to do, he usually throws out a particular technical skill that he has learned that won’t really fit the project. Some of these are great skills to have, but they tend to lean towards video screen capture, and we won’t really be using that. Overall, I’m just not sure what to do with people that can’t at least come up with a good idea for their own participation. I am used to having several people in a group that can and want to do several functions and then we as the group have to decide who will the best for each task. When I say “hey, we need someone to do this by the end of the week” and no one responds and then finally they come back at the end and ask “what should I do?”… not sure what to do with that.
But going forward from here, as we get into production of the prototype – this may all change. I get that we have only really had one real task up until now – design the instruction. Once we get into developing it (uh oh – just can’t seem to avoid ADDIE, huh?), I can see where there would be a large number of various tasks for different people to take on. So maybe I just need to realize that as an instructional designer by trade, that the past few weeks have been my major contribution to the project and in the next phase others will step up.
Going forward, we might also need to narrow our focus even more. We have been doing that, but even looking at what we have may be a bit too much to handle in the few weeks left. We shall see what the doc has to say about that.
Reading Notes:
Click here to read my notes for this week on Evernote
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