Project Management as an Instructional Designer

Mary Beth's Trello Board 

I have a lot of strengths as an Instructional Designer. I have fifteen years of experience in the classroom, and I really enjoy the creative aspect of design. However, ever since I started my job as an Instructional Designer at a university, I always feel like my mind is being pulled in a thousand different directions. Part of this is the nature of the job. Not only do we assist instructors with the design of their courses, we also provide technical support for our LMS, design instructional materials, and provide professional development for instructors. At any given point, we usually have at least three or four tasks going at once. Sometimes, it can be mentally exhausting. For a long time, I have wanted to at least find a way to keep my own course developments organized while maximizing my effectiveness as a designer. 

I made a decision a few weeks ago to create my own system for course developments. I work with three other designers, all of whom have their own way of organizing their course developments. I have tried to build my own system before, but I never found a way to stay consistent. 

I started this endeavor by polling my colleagues. I posed a simple question: How do you keep your course developments organized? We all have the same basic structure: 10 weeks to help an instructor plan and build a course in Canvas, followed by a 2-week review process using the Quality Matters rubric. However, it soon became clear that we all had different methods of keeping on top of this schedule. 

One colleague uses folders on his computer to organize documents and templates. For example, he has a folder for each individual course. In that folder is a Word document with all his email templates, a blank course map, a copy of each version of the course map sent to him by instructors, a separate folder for instructional materials, and an alignment document to keep up with objectives and their alignment throughout the course. He also keeps a Word document with all meeting notes and feedback for each week of development.

Another colleague uses multiple modes of organization, starting with email. She keeps folders within Outlook for each development that contain all email communication for that particular course. Then, she has a folder within Teams (OneDrive) for each development, where she stores all documents, such as the course map, syllabus, instructional materials, etc. She does not have a document with all meeting notes and feedback, but instead relies on her emails to keep up with what is done each week.

When talking to my colleagues, I realized I used a combination of their methods, probably after a year or so of picking up their habits. However, these methods have not been very effective for me. I needed a way to see the full picture of a course development while organizing the small details. 

Objectives

I had four objectives for this project: 

1. Use an appropriate online project management tool to facilitate organization.

2. Establish a realistic timeline with specific milestones for course development projects.

3. Create a communication plan to keep all stakeholders informed and aligned on development goals and progress.

4. Develop a system for quality feedback at each stage of development to ensure productive meetings.

Objective 1: Use an appropriate online project management tool to facilitate organization.

I was familiar with Trello, an online project management tool, from an Instructional Design course I took a few years ago. While I have used it for random projects, I have never found a way to use it effectively for a course development. I researched other project management tools, such as Monday.com, Basecamp, and Asana, before finally deciding to return to Trello. 

After searching through templates and browsing some examples of how people have used Trello for Instructional Design projects, I found a basic template that fit what I needed and then started to modify the cards to fit what we do in our developments. Below is a breakdown of my Course Development Trello Board. 

I created 7 card decks: 1. Done (for finished tasks), 2. Course Milestones, 3. Templates and Documents, 4. Timeline, 5. Accessibility Issues, 6. Communication, and 7. Resources.

Under Course Milestones, I listed the major hurdles that come with course development, including creation of course objectives, determining instructional materials, finalizing the course map, etc. These tasks will gradually move over to the Done deck as progress is made. This helps me to visualize what major tasks are left for the instructor I am working with.

Under Templates and Documents, I have included templates for the course map, the syllabus, and a verb table for measuring alignment. These are the documents we consistently use and share with instructors in each development. As each document is updated, I will add the most current version to these cards.

The Timeline was the most crucial deck I wanted to develop. This deck provides dates and deadlines for each phase of development, broken down by meetings. We meet with instructors weekly during development, which translates to 10 meetings. Each card handles one of these meetings, including the meeting notes, feedback, as well as the follow-up email. I also added a checklist to each meeting card to address different aspects of feedback for each week. More is added to the checklist as we get closer to review. 

The Accessibility Issues deck serves a couple of different purposes: 1. It provides a place to attach documents that need to be reviewed and/or edited for accessibility, and 2. It provides a place to add notes or comments with links to specific pages in Canvas that may need attention related to accessibility. 

The Communication deck contains templates for emails that are sent with each development. Right now, I have two possible places to organize emails: in the Communication deck and in the Timeline deck. I have not decided which will be more effective for me. However, I like having a space for those email templates in one place without having to search through Outlook.

The last deck is Resources. While we encourage instructors to use the library to find resources for their courses, we have had some unique situations recently where alternative resources have to be found or even tested for our international courses. This deck provides a space to list resources, whether they are instructional materials or resources for the instructor.

Objective 2: Establish a realistic timeline with specific milestones for course development projects.

I developed a timeline using two different decks: Course Milestones and Timeline. It is difficult to put time stamps on where each component of development needs to fall. Each development is different because instructors come to us at vastly different stages and with different backgrounds. Some know exactly how to write objectives and create a course map, and some will do this for the first time in our development. However, by creating Course Milestons, I have at least broken down what lines every development must cross in order to enter a new stage. The course objectives must be written first, followed by the course map. Only then can the content building stage begin. 

While I cannot assign dates to the course milestones, I did assign dates to the Timeline deck so that I can see where we are in the 10-week schedule and determine which milestones are on track and which may need to be emphasized that week. 

Objective 3: Create a communication plan to keep all stakeholders informed and aligned on development goals and progress.

The Communication deck contains email templates for different stages of development. I added a mini timeline to the follow-up email template so that instructors can always see their deadlines and see where they are in the timeline, instead of only what is due next week. I wanted to create a graphic showing an actual timeline with course milestones, but I decided to keep things simpler. I added a section below the deadlines specifying “Development Progress” simply to let instructors see what they have completed and what the next stage will be. Many instructors are anxious to get to the content building phase in Canvas, and this may help them see what needs to be accomplished before they are ready to start building. As a big picture person myself, I think this is something I would like to see as an instructor.

Objective 4: Develop a system for quality feedback at each stage of development to ensure productive meetings.

Feedback is a huge element of the course development process. For each meeting, instructors send the instructional designers what they have worked on that week, and we provide feedback. Sometimes it can be hard to know what to focus on for feedback purposes, especially once we get to the content building stage. Some weeks, accessibility takes center stage while instructions and rubrics may be overlooked. 

To help keep me on track, I have created a feedback checklist for each meeting. When I write meeting notes, this will help me make sure that quality feedback is provided for multiple areas in the course, and that one area doesn’t dominate a meeting at the expense of other course content. Below is an example of one of these feedback checklists located in the Meeting #4 card in the Timeline:

As I prepare feedback for my meeting each week, I can check off these different areas as I go. Since more is added to the course each week, the feedback checklists get a little longer as we get closer to review time. For example, Meeting #10 has 12 items because this is the last meeting before the review starts: 

Conclusion

Overall, I found this process to be extremely rewarding. Even though I work with several Instructional Designers on my team, I never could find the right project development process for me. I realized that I need to be able to see the big picture when planning. The Trello board I developed helps me to be able to visualize the entire project while tracking the small details that go into a course development.