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's 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.

This is not like the ADDIE 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, okay, great.
Great, alright thank you --

So you'll 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 is 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.

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 for us

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

Our campus also is not funded by
governments, because, of course

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,

which is 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, and

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 that there were issues that
we needed to look at.

One of the things that reversed
was the strategy for

the academic division.

We were no 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
is 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

in a project management kind of
environment,

we can respond very quickly
to 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 the 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 that 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 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 just
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, 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, 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 phase of development,
we were doing something like 57 courses,

so it was a bit crazy if you could
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, there 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: living with

the speed of change," that's in an
international journal,

that the key finding that Miles found when
they looked at this view from the literature

in a management setting, is that
a majority of employees see their

colleagues as a more valuable resource
for acquiring new skills or knowledge than

their internal learning management systems,

and I wanted to be able to apply that
to what was happening in our environment.

In terms of a learner-centric view,

the key features for learners, because
ultimately we're developing courses for

use by our learners, so we had to
factor that in,

we had to ensure that our courses

had some real-world relevance,
that there would be some flexibility,

both in terms of the learning styles that
the students would be able to use and in

terms of the types of resources
that we're able to provide for them and

also that they can go look for for
themselves using the kinds of guidelines

that are there in the materials.

We also had to be very nimble

in terms of preparing our courses
for the students and, of course,

twenty-first century skills.

Those were just so critical,

and it's something that we hadn't
concentrated on before,

so this was an opportunity to bring in,
you know, go digital, look at the kinds

of multimedia communication skills that
we wanted to develop in our students,

critical thinking skills, innovative-ness,
all of these things we had to ensure

would have been included

in the courses we were designing.

So if we move now to project center--

how am I doing for time? I'm okay?

Yes? Great.

All right, so the key elements that we
thought that we needed to have for

the success of our project and moving
our course development into this flexible

and dynamic kind of environment is,
of course, that we wanted to be iterative,

that we wanted to be collaborative,

we wanted to have creative opportunities
available because if you're talking about

project management, you're talking about
being very rigid and moving things along

in a particular way, but we recognized
that we had to do differently.

So in terms of what was happening in
the courses,

while we had the courses development
cycles structured in such a way where

they would have to develop
a course outline, then they would have to

do a course plan that would give all of

the elements of what we were going to
include in the course materials,

and then of course, the design, the course

materials using the wrap-around concept.

We realized that it, it could not be a
linear thing, it could not be just

move from one directly into the other,

so while we had a course outline
and they worked on the course plan,

when they were working on the course plan,

we would realize that there were things
needed to change, go back, look at your

course outline, then you move on,

you continue on with your materials,

as you're doing you're materials,
you realize that there are some resources

that you really need to include,
so you have to keep going back.

So that meant that we had to be meeting
constantly, so we were working through

weekly meetings trying to figure out

what were the problems,

if there were any,
what we needed to change,

what we needed to do
and continue on in that type of process.

Of course, working together in the

online environment.

Why, there's another slide here,
I'm not going to go into it.

What I want to do is go into the
next slide which really shows, you know

for the student this is why we were
doing what we were doing.

We wanted students to be able to move
from a point where they could filter

information, they could select

information, so they could know
what they would be practicing when they

get into the real world.

They would have to be able to
integrate information because of course

we want them to be able to use

whatever we are providing in that

material and provide them with that kind

of authentic experience that we want,

and of course, for them to figure out

what have I learned and how will I be
using this new knowledge and skills I have

developed in a real-world environment,

so there's a lot of authenticity going

on here.

So next slide quickly.

How we did it, as I said,

we talked through our process that we used

prior to 2014, and there were a number of
processes that we used prior to 2014,

so we consolidated,
we re-engineered,

we had a number of templates that
were designed,

we revised all of our protocols,

and of course, we redesigned our
collaborative work spaces.

So we work right now in a environment,

where we have everybody interacting

just as the students would if they're
using the learning management system.

The project management approach:
we had targets, we looked at a re-assessment,

we had those weekly meetings,

we always had debriefings at the end
of each stage,

and of course, we had to have some
contingencies in place.

And what our outcomes were,
human performance, of course,

you have the departmental leadership,

you know, had to look at how I worked,

what kind of leadership I brought to them,

and we interrogated that.

How effective were the teams in that process,
we have interrogated that.

Our processes,
we have done that.

And what kinds of lessons
have we learned?

We are still finding ourselves

in a situation where some of our

multimedia requests are not linked to

generative strategies of learning.

We need to focus more on quality,

on learning activities to recognize that,

and we need to have all of this linked
to recall integration, organization, and

elaboration strategies throughout project
implementation.

So whatever we do in terms of the development,

we have to use these kinds of strategies

to help our students over the line.

Okay, and I think I end here.

Thank you.

(Emcee) Okay, thank you.

That was a marathon.