Change of Course

Progress has been slow.  Slower than I thought it would be at this stage, anyway.  I have a new medium for my project, though.

After discussing my original project format with MSIDT faculty, I discovered my concerns to be justified: paper manuals will not meet the technology requirement of the degree.  The scope of the project, which I'd thought to be daunting since I'd be writing the entire manual, was determined to be to large for the limited development time allotted to the project.  Their recommendations gave me a new spin on an idea I'd had for the project at the start of the program over a year ago.  Instead of paper manuals I will create a simulation of our order management system.  It will still train the same topic but will cover only a tutorial on using the system.  It will also train an efficient problem solving strategy for one or two common scenarios encountered on the job.

www.dontdrinkthekoolaidblog.com

The simulation will be carried by a web site.  The site will also contain information and links and perhaps a feedback form or separate page for a quiz.  I'm still working on the exact contents.  The idea is that the site will run within our company intranet.  I designed and built a prototype of the web site for another assignment this semester and so far I am pleased with it but it's kind of bland.  I'm learning that I don't have much practice in creative design.  It is functional and makes use of some color, but doesn't have any 'wow' factor.

Take a look at this website, for example: http://www.csszengarden.com/  It is an old site in Internet years but shows off some very attractive and creative designs.  It shows off not only the power of CSS to reformat a page but also some amazing graphical techniques to link page elements.  I have no delusions of getting my web site anywhere close to these designs, but something that doesn't look like it was designed in 1998 would be nice.

No School Like the Old School

I am pursuing a MS in instructional design and technology.  See that last word?  Technology.  At this point in history, that doesn't mean overhead projectors or film.  It doesn't even mean PowerPoint.  It is more than that.  I've practiced at building self-paced interactive learning modules.  I'm writing a blog.  I'm recording podcasts.  I'm looking to mobile technology as a possible platform for viable learning.  Despite that, PowerPoint may not even make its way into my final project.

You see, my company conducts all training in either a classroom setting or apprenticeship format.  For the classroom, that means instructor manuals and trainee manuals.  For an apprenticeship...well, just hope that the person you learn from is a decent teacher.  Currently the position I'm designing training for, called E Holds, is trained by apprenticeship.  Although it is an upgrade to design manuals for classroom training, I would rather put something like an interactive simulation into the hands of the learner.  In a way I can understand why they might prefer classroom training.  The time spent in training can be strictly controlled, and adherence to a nationwide schedule is very important to my company.  So for my company, does the old school classroom fit their business model better than new technologies and trends?

Perhaps there is a happy medium, a middle ground between scheduled instruction and self-paced learning.  If I can find a way to meet the demands of a tight schedule and increase learner control in the process, maybe I can convince corporate to give it a shot, to innovate in training.  If not, hopefully a couple of training manuals will still be good enough to fulfill my degree requirements.

And So It Begins

I have my topic for the MSIDT final project.

I've been toying with the idea for months, even beginning preliminary brainstorming on how I might implement it.  Every method I have considered will be time consuming to develop.  I had a second option, to develop a tutorial for the features of my company's website.  My managers felt that since our website is constantly in development that it would not stay current long enough to be useful.  They're probably right, but it would have been a much easier topic.  But my managers have selected my first idea.  Corporate has approved it.  And I'm freaking out a little bit.

My project will be to write the classroom training manuals for a position in our customer service department.  The task of this position is to investigate and resolve customer orders that are on hold due to discrepancies.  The position requires the ability to make good judgement calls with incomplete information rather quickly.  It is a position that I held for more than three years and continue to oversee, so it is a position I know very well.  So what's the big deal?  Why the freak out?

I have trained others in the position six times and each time I did it differently because there are currently no training materials aside from the procedures document.  Since the position involves complex decision making with few guidelines, training beyond the basics is elusive.  The trick is that, despite no training in how to make proper decisions, your decisions are reviewed by Corporate daily.  If you made a wrong choice, you hear about it.  It is through this process of making the wrong judgement call and later being coached in how I should have handled the situation that I have learned how to think like Corporate, how to make the decisions they view as valid.  But how do you train someone to think and make decisions the way that the corporate office wants you to?  We can't wait three years for the newbies to get it right, and recently there has been a major focus on avoiding these internal errors that a newbie would never see coming.  So now what?

That's where I come in, apparently.  Concept attainment.  Decision making strategies.  Indexing common discrepancies and their preferred resolutions.  Through the use of examples I will be guiding trainees through inductively acquiring the concepts behind company-approved decisions.  My company does a huge amount of preventative training to avoid making errors in the first place.  Hopefully this project will raise this position's training to the same caliber.