OEB 2015 - The Agile Approach to Learning Design - Denise Gaspard-Richards

(Denise Gaspard-Richards) Thank you
and good afternoon, everyone.

It's a long title and there are just
two things I need to say before I begin.

The wrap-around model
of content development:

I know today a number of instructional
designers, learning, business

who are involved in working
with design and courses (check)

This is not like the ID (check) model

or anything that we use
for instructional design.

This is really a model that
allows us to design course materials

wrapped around open education resources.

So it reduces the need for students
to purchase textbooks

and also reduces their cost,
because in the Caribbean, which I have

-- does this work? Yeah; no, I'm pointing.
OK, how do I go forward,

how do I go forward to the slide again?
(Off voice, inaudible)

(DGR) Oh it's there now, OK .... (check).
Great, thank you --

So you see a map, it's easier for me
to look down than to look up.

You'll see a map here of the Caribbean
and you will note

that I have tried to identify
where we are located:

there's a little block on the map,
to the right.

That shows you where we are
in relation to the rest of the world.

So, North America would be up to the left
and Europe will be over to the right. 1:24

Okay, so these are the islands
where we have the orange lines.

Those are the islands that comprise
the Open Campus,

I just need to tell you that.

So you'll see that they're small,
we're scattered.

Our economies are fledgling economies,
we're developing countries,

we're developing islands,
so cost is a very important element

when we're looking at students and
getting them into our campus.

Our campus also is not funded by
governments, because they are also

dealing with challenges.

So we're very much dependent on
student fee income.

We can't charge a very high fee
to come into our courses,

so we have to keep costs down.

So hence, open educational resources
and our wrap-around concept

So if we can just go to the next slide--
I'm not comfortable with

using this at all.
I'm sorry, can you help me

moving to the slides?

Thank you very much.

Okay, so the project, wrap-around content
and support

Content and support is really where
we were before 2014.

Content and support really looks at us
designing course materials,

working with course developers who
are subject matter experts,

so we work with them independently.

So an instructional designer,
if that person is assigned to

work on developing courses in
the program,

if you take a Bachelor's program,
that's about 30 courses,

they would be working with
30 subject matter specialists.

We try to break it up,
look at the courses by levels,

so they're maybe working with 5 to 10
courses at any one time.

They were working individually with
these persons, so the benefits

of all of the training and all of the
experience was just going one to one.

Then of course, you have multimedia designers

who would be working with our content,
and again that would be one to one.

So you're not getting the benefit of a
team kind of effort.

So we realize there were issues that
we needed to look at.

One of the things that reversed
was the strategy for

the academic division.

We were not longer able to sustain
such a model,

we had to produce content very rapidly
and we had to find a way

to make this work.

So what we did there
was we looked at process, using

a project management process,
and we by chance, we happened upon

the agile design model.

That allowed us now to bring our
teams together.

So all of our content experts who are
working in a particular program,

if we are working on, let's say,
on courses,

they can all be together in an online
environment working collaboratively,

so that they're sharing,
they're knowing what each other's doing.

So that you find that the courses can be
sequential, there's no overlapping

because everybody knows what everybody
else is doing and we are following

a particular plan.

So we recognized that that needed
to happen and we started that process of

moving and transitioning.

Of course, there are implications there
for the departmental operations,

we are looking at working differently
with content persons,

we are looking at our instructional
designers, working differently to support

these individuals.

And of course, there is an impact on our
production teams to produce materials.

So we found that it was easier now
to design our learning activities

around that content because we
had everybody collaboratively together.

We thought it would be a good idea
to move lessons into that way of thinking.

So if I can go quickly to the
agile learning design slide, please.

Thank you.

So, Jasmine was just talking about
some of the characteristics when you

look at agile learning and particularly
with recognizing that there's an

opportunity to be collaborative.

There was also an opportunity for us to
work in an iterative manner.

We also recognize that we could
be flexible with the model,

we could be very creative in what we did
in terms of helping our subject matter

experts to design authentic learning
activities.

We could be very responsive
because if we are working

on a project management kind of
environment,

we can respond very quickly
to the things that need to be changed.

And of course, we had to be very lean
because we are talking about developing

a number of courses in a short space
of time and we need to do things

in a very clean and clinical manner,
so that we can move ahead very, very

quickly.

Some of these support strategies
that we had to use was of course,

we had to have an emphasis on
cross-functionality.

We could not just operate
one on one, so we had to look at

bringing all members of a particular
team together.

We had to have an emphasis on
interactions,

people had to be able, they had to feel
very comfortable,.

We are in an online environment,
as I showed you in a map,

we are scattered, so your content
expert could be in Germany,

your content expert could be
in Canada, anywhere.

And I am leading the team, I am based
in Trinidad.

Some of my instructional designers are in
another island in Jamaica, in another

island in Barbados, so we all over
the place.

So we really needed to be able to
interact in a way brought meaning

to what we were doing.

Also, we want to have usable
deliverables. we don't want to just

design content and when it goes into the
learning environment it's not meaningful

to the students, it's not meaningful to
the persons who are leading the courses.

We also looked at emphasis on rapid
and decisive response to change intiatives.

People are very, you know, change is
very difficult for most of us,

for all of us.

And you had people who were working in
a particular way or over a period

of many years, and now you're asking,
"Listen, we are in a change environment,

this is how we are going to be looking at
design and content,"

and you found that there are persons who
could just not step up to the plate.

But, we were already in that situation,
so the head honcho had to hold their

hands and pull people along,
it was very painful.

And the head honcho had to actually do
some of the work in the end

so that when the time came for the course
to be delivered, there was something that

was available to go into our
learning environment.

So we had to keep, you know,
a kind of process going that was

very, very, very quick.

We depended on a lot on templates
because there was no other way to get

it done and to ensure that we could do it
in the time frame that we needed to

because we looked at a four month period
for design, development, and review

of an entire course, and you're talking
about more than 30 courses.

And in our first days of development,
we were doing something like 57 courses,

so it was a bit crazy if you think of it
like that.

So let's look at some views from the
literature very quickly with regard to agile.

The key features for our department staff:
rapid, responsive, targeted approaches,

and lean, so very much a project
management approach to what

we needed to do.

And we found that persons were not,
they were not really prepared for

that change.

They wanted to stay in the old
environment and do what they were doing

because they were comfortable,

and now you had somebody looking
over their shoulder.

One of the other things was that,
as the head of department, I could not

see everything because everybody was doing
it in their little corner.

So I could not actually see what was
happening.

Now, we are in the online environment,
we are collaborative,

I am in there and I am looking
at everything, and I can

comment on everything, and I can say,
"No, this is not working the way

it should be.
Look back at these learning objectives,

how are you going to measure that?

You know, that does not go together,
you need to re-look this."

That wasn't happening before because

I couldn't see it.

So suddenly, they had somebody in
their face all the time in the online

environment managing that process and
trying to bring it to where we needed it

to be.

So this is one of the things that we learn
from Miles, that agile learning,

learning with the speed of change,