Sub-Badge 1: ID Professional Communicator

Challenge 1: Solicit, accept, and provide constructive feedback

Criteria for successful completion of this challenge: Evidence must demonstrate asking for, providing critique and utilizing feedback to improve one’s own performance or work. Reflection must address: How you have asked, utilized and provided feedback to others.  

Examples:  Reflection which learner utilizes feedback to report own behavior and develop a larger picture of personal performance (actions, thoughts, writing), before and after of projects/papers that show changes based on feedback (projects with feedback from EDCI 528, EDCI 588, EDCI 569, or research paper feedback from EDCI 513 or 531) work-related evidence (design, performance, workplace, educational, other) showing acceptance of constructive feedback or giving feedback.

Reflection

The competency challenge involves soliciting, accepting, and providing feedback. The artifact I’ve chosen to include is a series of screenshots that showcase all three requirements of this challenge. This particular series of feedback came from EDCI 572’s small group discussion thread for the Design Document 1 assignment. In each screenshot, I have provided brief context in text boxes to illustrate meeting those three requirements. In this thread for Group 3, which is the group I am in, there are two other peers and Professor Hruscosy. The reason I chose this particular artifact for this challenge is because it very easily addresses the three primary requirements due to the nature of giving and receiving feedback within an online discussion thread. In fact, every online course’s “Discussion Board” requirements allow for an opportunity to meet this competency, so by the end of the LDT program, I will have many opportunities to practice these skills.

The ability to solicit, accept, and provide feedback is important in all walks of life. It is a hallmark of critical thinking to be open minded, to analyze, and to synthesize information—and all of that is tied up in an effective feedback process. In an academic setting, as in an online course discussion, one must do all of the following: understand an assignment and its components, reflect on whether one’s own assignment has met the requirements, critically analyze others’ work against the rubric, be honest with oneself and others, be kind and encouraging, and also be realistic with one’s feedback so as to provide reasonable observations and areas for improvement. In other settings, as in one’s personal life or in other professional settings, we don’t usually have the structured feedback process we might see in an academic setting, but the principles still apply and can be practiced; therefore, the competency is incredibly important as part of the larger context of effective communication or being a professional communicator. The artifact provided demonstrates the competency because each screenshot addresses one of the three required elements of soliciting, accepting, or providing feedback.

In the first screenshot, I specifically solicit a targeted look at my Main Step ordering; in the second set of screenshots, I acknowledge and accept the feedback I have been given and make changes accordingly, which are documented; in the third set of screenshots, I show the feedback I provided to my peers as well as to my professor based on what they have asked or commented on with regard to my submission.

This artifact demonstrates the competency in the following ways:  1. I express a genuine request for peers to evaluate a particular aspect of the ordering of my Main Steps in the hopes that my module is most effective; 2. I show proof that quality feedback is provided by my peers and the professor; and 3. I show my personal acknowledgement of changes made based on feedback I received or explanations about other elements if they were unclear in the original submission. This artifact demonstrates the competency on all three required elements.

I have a background of teaching writing, tutoring writing and ESL, and training tutors to tutor writing, ESL, and other subject areas. In my professional and personal life within these areas, I have seen firsthand the importance of requesting, giving, and receiving quality feedback—both as part of a classroom experience where you are doing peer review and in a tutoring setting. In almost all of my university-level writing courses, I have employed peer review; not only that, but I have provided my students with job aids and verbal instructions to help showcase effective vs. ineffective feedback. Additionally, I have designed and deployed many training modules that ensure tutors can provide quality feedback to students. Therefore, I am a firm believer in the need for people to do the following:  1. To be empowered to ask for the type of feedback they want or need; 2. To have the opportunity to receive constructive and supportive feedback that shows them ways they can meet the rubric requirements; and 3. To practice agency in deciding what to revise or not. These steps are at the heart of every effective tutoring (and teaching) scenario and are also why this competency is so important within an academic setting.  In my past, teaching tutors to give quality feedback and allowing students to decide what they will revise has been a major part of my professional life. In my personal life, I once asked a colleague to read a piece of writing and give me feedback for an important application I was submitting; she did not have the background that I have taught to tutors, and the feedback I got from her was gruff and overly judgmental because she didn’t really understand the topic I was writing about; the feedback I received was ultimately unhelpful. In that moment, I was so happy that I had given the proper foundation to my students and my tutors so that they could give empowering feedback to others instead of feedback that made someone feel badly about their work or feel like it was a waste of time asking.  This competency is important not only for academic settings but also for any other setting where you interact with others and ever need to give or receive feedback—which is ultimately all of life!

Initially, I was overwhelmed in choosing from the list of competency challenges, but once I knew what was going on in my classes, I could more easily see how I could complete this particular one with materials I was already creating. Because of my experience giving feedback and teaching others how to within a tutoring environment, I felt it was a natural challenge to proceed with because it has become second nature to me, and I value it as a skill. The Group 3 discussion on Design Document #1 from EDCI 572 provided the perfect illustration of all three of the components the competency is looking for: soliciting feedback, accepting feedback, and providing constructive feedback to others. What I’ve learned from the experience is that in the context of a graduate-level discussion thread, one should always ask for specific feedback based on where you think you may want an extra set of eyes; this is helpful to others as well because as projects become complicated and involve a lot of technical information that outsiders won’t understand, if we can help digest some of it for our peers in the form of the specific feedback being solicited, then it will likely produce more fruitful results. With that being said, I did exactly this when I asked my peers to look specifically at my ordering of my steps, but neither addressed that particular request. In this case, I interpreted it as my current ordering wasn’t problematic, and proceeded as-is, but in the future, if I am still unclear or uncertain about an element I requested targeted feedback on, I will make sure to reiterate my questions to my peers within the threaded discussion. Ultimately, speaking up and asking for what I need is a very reasonable outcome of developing this competency.

I will continue honing this competency in my coursework and in my professional life because I work in writing and editing, and there is always someone who needs to hear feedback from me, and I will always need to receive feedback from others. It is par for the course! I think I have a good bedside manner when it comes to giving feedback, and it makes me feel good to be in a position to know a few extra steps to take to make people feel comfortable with feedback I give them—even if it is feedback telling them a correction or revision needs to be made. My teaching and tutoring life has brought this skillset to me, and I will ultimately use it every day in my classes, in my job, and in my personal relationships; therefore, this is a very important and relevant competency to possess and continue to practice.

Challenge 2: Deliver presentations that effectively engage audiences and communicate clear messages. 

Criteria for successful completion of this challenge: Evidence of delivering a professional presentation (in-person, online, etc.) with a clear, concise, and credible message (limited main points, opening and ending, visually appeasing, and grammatically correct).  Reflection must address: The elements used in your evidence to make an effective presentation and how it engaged audiences.    

Examples: Presentations (work related or course related) via PowerPoint, Google Slides, video submission, YouTube, Prezi, etc. Infographics (EDCI 588), “7 Things to Know” project (EDCI 564), presentations (design, performance, workplace, educational, other). 

Reflection

This competency centers around delivering presentations that effectively engage audiences and communicate clear messages.  The artifact I have chosen to demonstrate this competency is one of the instructional materials I developed for EDCI 572: a PowerPoint presentation which I used during the pilot test for the workshop and which will be used to deliver this workshop publicly. I have also included the Learner Attitude Questionnaire that I used to assess the presentation, which includes questions about the content, pacing, activities, and the PowerPoint itself. The workshop is for new yoga teachers, and its purpose is to teach a method for designing yoga class sequences from scratch around the teacher’s chosen goal or class focus.  I have been a yoga teacher for 12 years, and I have taught this workshop in a more informal way in the past. The PowerPoint presentation represents a vast improvement of the delivery of the workshop flow and pacing, and it demonstrates the competency because it contains active learning to engage audiences and clear messaging throughout that is centered around accomplishing the performance objectives as they are reached. Additionally, the raw data from the pilot test, via the Learner Attitude Questionnaire, shows that the presentation was delivered effectively.

The ability to deliver presentations that effectively engage audiences and communicate clear messages is important for any instructional designer, trainer, and teacher. If you can’t deliver it effectively, what is the purpose in working so hard on the design and development?! The implementation stage is a pivotal moment in the design of a learning experience, and presenting effectively is certainly part of that. In the case of the yoga workshop around which this PowerPoint was developed, I am acting as both the instructional designer and the Subject Matter Expert, as well as the Instructor, because I have been teaching yoga for over 12 years and mentoring new yoga teachers for the last few years. The ability to not only design an effective presentation that is concise and not cluttered with extraneous material, and that contains relevant and scaffolded learning, is important in any presentation delivery; additionally, the ability to deliver the material with the confidence of an SME is important so that the learners will trust the material and its relevance to their lives. With these things in mind, the artifacts demonstrate an understanding of pedagogical necessities (e.g. active learning activities, scaffolded material, etc.), presentation best practices (animations, Instructor notes, images vs. text, etc.), and subject matter expertise. In the creation of the Learner Attitude Questionnaire, I asked questions that targeted both content-specific, activity-specific, and general attitudes about the presentation and its materials. The data suggests the presentation was delivered effectively, was clear to my audience, and kept them engaged. In any cases when feedback indicated a gap in understanding, which was minimal, corrections were made to the instructional materials and the PowerPoint you see here. These two artifacts together represent practice of this competency.

I have designed countless PowerPoint presentations for classes, workshops, seminars, and trainings, and delivered them as well. Additionally, I have been mentored by both a talented instructional designer and a VP of Assessment so I have a good foundation of writing effective assessment questions—both of these things play into this competency of delivering effective presentations that are engaging. All of this experience has informed my current delivery of the Yoga Workshop presentation and the mechanism by which I evaluated its effectiveness. In other scenarios in my professional life when I have had to deliver an effective presentation that did not involve a PowerPoint, I had to rely on my preparation and my status as an SME. I am thinking of a special event yoga class I co-curated and taught for a local nonprofit which involved three live musicians, a chorus of women singing, and about 130 yogis in attendance. A picture of it is the first image on the PowerPoint, as a matter of fact. In this scenario, the competency of “Delivering presentations that effectively engage audiences and communicate clear messages” was at play because it was a seriously high-pressure situation with a lot of expectations on behalf of the venue, the other organizers, and of course, the yoga students in attendance! In this case, I was well prepared, rolled with the punches (and there were a few hiccups, as there always are), and kept my composure as I worked through the teaching of the class. Everyone moved and followed my instructions for the class, and I got lots of hugs afterwards. This is an example also of bringing a level of confidence to the table when you are presenting—if you are well prepared and knowledgeable on your subject, no matter what happens when you’re standing up at the podium or walking around a crowded room of yoga students, you will adjust and deliver. I am so glad that I have these experiences to back me up in the field of instructional design because everything we create is presented in some way, and I do believe I have a firm grasp on designing and delivering presentations to a variety of different types of audiences.

The PowerPoint presentation and accompanying Learner Attitude Questionnaire from my Pilot Test of the yoga workshop module works well to demonstrate this competency because these artifacts encompass delivery of a presentation and confirmation of “engagement” and “effective communication” as a result of the learners’ responses. What I have learned from the experience is to always keep the learner front and center in the design of the materials, including the assessment, and in doing so, you will effectively deliver engaging content. When an instructional designer keeps the learners at the forefront of design and development, they are always there in your mind every step of the way. I will continue to develop my ability to deliver effective presentations that are engaging and that have clear messages by learning more throughout the LDT program with regard to new design strategies, new activities, or new active learning strategies that I can use. I have found that peer feedback in my classes has been great for this because many of my peers come from K-12 backgrounds, and they have many wonderful suggestions for keeping materials and presentations engaging and clear. In fact, I incorporated a “T-Chart” activity with post-it notes in the PowerPoint artifact here, and that was a suggestion from a brilliant peer! I will keep absorbing, reflecting, and working on this competency in my classes and in my career.