Processes Reflection

Artifact: Instructional Design Flowchart & Design Document Chart job aids from ED TEC 540
Flowchart Job Aid

Project Description / Situation:
The assignment was to create a job aid that supported the Performance Analysis assignment we had already completed. The company I worked for at the time (and still do) was going through changes that had never taken place in its entire 85 history – layoffs, a new CEO with a very different philosophy and a new direction. The training department was ultimately impacted by these changes as well – a new Chief Learning Officer and Learning Director, who had very different ideas about how our department should work. They hired several new Instructional Designers and along with the existing staff, we had a wide variation of skills, backgrounds and education. The new managers and designers brought with them various documents and processes that they had used at other companies, but we had never used at ours. The problem was that each person would use what they brought with them randomly – no standard templates. There was no directive from the managers - no one really explained to the IDs, as a group, how or when to use the documents or what process should be followed.

Outcome:
I decided to create a job aid that would help IDs at a fictitious company (based on the one I worked for) to understand the design process and the documents used / needed during the applicable phases of the process. Using my own experience in design and speaking with colleagues, I first performed a content analysis. What documents did we have (there were 6 all-together), what purpose did each one serve, under what circumstances should they be used and at what point in the design process did each one need to be used? After gathering all the content, I determined that the best way to display the information was in a simple chart (page 4 of the attached document). I had already created somewhat of a flowchart – using the ADDIE model as a basis – to show how the design process at my fictitious company worked (page 3). After creating the Design Document chart, I just needed to add to the flowchart where each document would fit in.

Challenges:
The challenge was to get consensus on the answers to each of the questions raised above. Once my colleagues and I agreed on the what, when, why and how, everything seemed to fall into place. I must admit that since this was for a school project and I didn’t know how the managers would react to my bringing this to their attention, I never actually shared it outside of my small pilot group. Fortunately, the situation in our actual department improved, although slowly, as IDs began to understand what our new management wanted. Using the knowledge I had gained from the content analysis, I tried to influence some of the changes by taking the initiative to standardize the templates we were using, but without sharing the fact that my department was part of my school research.

Growth:
There was obviously a great deal of tension at my company and within my department when the new managers and IDs started. I think everyone, including myself, felt as if they looked down on us because most of the “old-timers” didn’t have any formal ID training and the new group all had Masters Degrees in ID. At the same time, the new IDs and managers were struggling to understand how our company and internal clients worked, which could be very different from other corporations. I think in the long run, this assignment and my analysis made me realize that we could all help each other by sharing our own individual expertise.