Project GO, Instructional Design Process

Client: Project GO (Get Outdoors) is a community service organization that seeks to engage students in outdoor nature activities. They needed an online pre-class training that would maximize the in-person class training. Topics for training included 1) advertising the group in the community, 2) planning group activities, and 3) handling difficult leader-student interactions.

eLearning Provider: Project GO volunteer leader training was created by MnISPI's (Minnesota International Society for Performance Improvement) eLearning Special Interest Group.

Roles: I was grateful to be involved with this project from start to finish. Because the project needed diverse child characters, and I have a media background, I guided the team in creating original pictures and videos for the Storyline training. I also led the team during the Development phase, Quality Testing, and Evaluation Planning. In addition, I also helped with the Outline, Scenario building, and Storyboard Creation, Image Editing (lead role), Video Editor (lead role), Storyline Developer, Quality Testing (lead role), Evaluation (lead role).

Analysis Section: Another MnISPI member led the team during the Instructional Design phase. She also took the lead on communicating with the client and creating the Needs Analysis, and debriefing the team on decisions that were made.

Media Challenges: Storyline 360 was our tool of choice, but we lacked suitable images in available character libraries. This training required us to show a variety of cultures with a variety of affects (positive and negative). It also addressed challenging behavior, so we decided to create our own images for the training.

Design work was supported by myself and other team members. We all helped with the Training Outline, Scenario Writing, and Storyboard. The Storyboard proved very instrumental during the photo/video shoot. Instead of shooting for all possible poses and expressions, we shortened our shoot time by shooting shots required by our training script.

Media Creation:

Photo/Video Studio Shoot: The client was able to obtain space for our shoot at a indoor Nature Center. We set up our green screen, and cameras, etc. Used the storyboard to set up shots with actors, paid for by the client. The client also rented lights for the green screen.

Outdoor Photo Shoots: Another MnISPI team member took photos of the children in outdoor spaces to be used later for an introduction to the training. I led other outdoor photo shoots to create backgrounds for the characters.

Adobe Audition: Two team members went to the library and read the character dialogue. A recruit acted as voice talent to create the voice for another character.

Photoshop: The photos to remove the green, color correct, and export .png files.

Premiere Pro: I imported stills and video into Premiere Pro to remove the green from the green screen and composite it with stills from the outdoor shoots.

Storyline Development:

Google Drive/Google Sheets: I took all media assets and organized them in folders on Google Drive. We used Google Sheets to let team members know who was working on the most current version of Storyline, and to protect the files from "revision madness."

Storyline: MnISPI members worked in pairs to create the training from the Storyboard. Each pair was assigned a scenario to develop.

Synthesis: I synthesized all team members work into one file. I worked with the Technical Assistance team member to harmonize all the elements in the training.

Quality Testing on devices: Worked with a smaller team on quality testing to make sure the training would play well on all devices.

Hosting: The Technical Assistance team member hosted the training on his server.

Client check-in: We also worked with the client to make sure the training appeared correctly on her website. Throughout this process we continued to keep the client informed of our progress and involved her in decisions that had to be made.

Desktop and mobile phone versions of the training were hosted on the client website. Unfortunately, volunteer leader training was delayed due to covid. So, we were not able to check the training in situ.

Survey Monkey: Another team member and I designed evaluations for the training. We created a very quick survey using Survey Monkey that learners would take to let us know about their experiences with the training. The survey could be administered via text or email (link takes them to the Survey Monkey portal).

Written Evaluation: The client agreed to do a written evaluation of the training after classes started up again (after covid). We wrote specific questions for her to answer, particularly: "Did the training help to even out the 'knowledge gaps' between volunteers who were experienced working with children and those who were not?"

Letter of Recommendation: Our client was ecstatic about the results of our project. She relayed this in a letter she wrote promptly after seeing the finished results.