Reflections

Cherishe's Reflections

Throughout the time that I spent working on the challenge project with my group I gained a significant amount of insight on the importance of three key concepts: project management, effective communication and human-centered design. Through the challenge project, I gained firsthand experience in scheduling meetings, organizing and developing document, and executing tasks within a team. While working with my team I learned how important it was to set clear goals, define roles and responsibilities, create schedules, and manage our time. This is directly related to one of the course's core objectives, which is to understand project management techniques and apply them in real-world scenarios. Another course objective that I feel I learned the importance of while working on the challenge project was how essential clear communication is for keeping everyone aligned and motivated. Each brainstorming sessions, progress update meeting and problem-solving discussions, required that each group member utilized their communication skills. I believe that the challenge project allowed me to improve my communication skills which is important as it aligns with the course objective of mastering communication techniques to facilitate collaboration, resolve conflicts, and ensure that major stakeholders are satisfied with the end result of the project. Lastly,  the challenge project taught me to evaluate and consider the needs and preferences of stakeholders, target learners and my target audience throughout the design process. By focusing on human-centered design principles, my group members and I worked to ensure that our final product would be user-friendly and meet the needs of our intended audience. I believe that working on this challenge project instilled in me how crucial it is to understand the user needs in order to develop an effective user design. In doing so we can incorporate the users needs as well as the user feedback into the project design to ultimately  create products that benefits the user. Overall, the challenge project was a useful activity that required me to think outside of the box, push myself mentally and also tap into design and management competencies that I was not previously aware of. I feel that after completing this project I am now better equipped to develop an instructional design that is not only user- friendly but user-centeresd. 

Victoria's Reflections

This Challenge Project has helped foster a comprehensive understanding of the principles and methodologies discussed throughout the semester. Among many, some of the learning objectives I felt connected strongly to this project are as follows:

"Gain hands-on, authentic learning design experience by producing rigorous, field-standard work."

Navigating through this experience, start to finish, was the best way to gain hands-on experience and apply our learned-knowledge in the most advanced component of Bloom's Taxonomy, to create. We not only built our own learning design, but our process was shaped through a realistic lens, such as presenting to stakeholders. 

"Use a variety of research and analysis methods to describe the need and/or problems (‘gaps’), learner characteristics, instructional analysis, context/setting, content."

This was an area I had the least experience in, and therefore learned the most! It was really helpful to rely on my teammates, as well as advice from the rest of our peers and professor, to help fill areas of expertise where I may have lacked. As learning design is inherently iterative, I felt I was building on my expanding knowledge as our research continued to be refined and updated to fit our current scope. 

And lastly,

"Work effectively with teammates and classmates to plan and produce complete, rigorous work presented in a unified voice, and submitted on time."

I feel this perfectly encapsulates the Challenge Project experience. Being able to collaborate, ideate, and combine the best of our voices made our final product something we are really proud of. Overall, this project not only reinforces theoretical concepts but also cultivates practical competencies essential for success as learning designers in diverse professional contexts.

Elena's Reflections

Distinguish between different design processes and their respective value depending on project requirements.

At the beginning of this course, I anticipated learning about a standardized design process applicable across all projects. However, as we delved deeper, it became clear that the sequencing and structure of design processes could vary significantly based on project requirements, stakeholders, and other contextual factors. Through our engagement with our challenge projects and observing the processes of other project groups, I gained a nuanced understanding of how instructional design involves tailoring project trajectories to specific needs.

Leverage cognitive science and learning theory to inform and justify your design decisions.

The integration of cognitive science and learning theories at the start of our brainstorming sessions helped shape our design ideas. I realized the importance of grounding design decisions in relevant theories, not only for conceptualization but also for justifying the rationale behind our choices. While I previously relied on later connecting theoretical frameworks to design ideas, I now see the effectiveness of aligning ideas directly with theories suited to the project context.

Clearly and persuasively communicate their ideas and design work.

Finally, collaborating on a large-scale project like this provided many opportunities to refine my communication skills in conveying design concepts and ideas effectively. While providing constructive feedback remains an area of growth for me, our team navigated communication channels such as messaging and virtual meetings to articulate our visions. While translating design ideas into words can be challenging, we often supplemented our communication with quick mock-ups using design tools, which facilitated clearer communication of our ideas.