Month: January 2018

My thoughts, questions, and concerns from Developing Distance Education Content using the TAPPA Process (Moore, 2016)

Tappa is best suited for the microinstitution in distance education environments. It is intended to create consistency and be applied to various projects, industries, and learning environments. The process gives the majority of the creative control and flexibility to the instructional designer and provides a framework for them to work with. The TAPPA process: 

• Maximizes efficiency of rapid prototyping.
• Provides consistent development and delivery.
• Is adaptive and responsive regardless of tech savviness of users.
• Is a framework provided but the instructional designer takes it on from there.

Target

• Anticipate desired outcomes and then work backwards.
• Solid task and learner analysis.
• Recommends subsequent steps (missing from the backwards design model).
• Focuses on the end result.

Accomplishment

• Best methods to evaluate, how is success evaluated?
• Originates from ADDIE and Dick 7Carey Models (defining what will make this projet effective).
• Helps determine achievable and realistic goals.
• Helps identify potential issues.

Past

• Has something like this been done before?
• What can you learn from similar projects done in the past?
• Allows designers to step back and evaluate progress.
• Utilizing software and coding from previous work to encourage efficiency and rapid prototyping.

Prototype

• Creates an opportunity for subject matter experts and users to test out and provide feedback.
• Feedback can be quickly used to transform the end product.
• Formative assessments would be evaluated to see if they are effective based on how the design is built.
• This step is a consolidated version of the development and evaluation stages in the ADDIE design.

Artifact

• If all preceding steps have been completed properly, successful execution of the artifact will be the final step.

Popular models may not be ideal for online learning as they were created before it became prevalent. Models like ADDIE and Dick and Carey were developed before online learning became a “thing”.

It is essential for instructional designers to adapt and flex the models they are so used to using. If a department or organization has been using a certain model for years, how can one approach the renewal or adaption of other designs that may better serve the organization better in the future? 

The author discussed how the institution he was involved with focused their early years on the technical side of delivering training content with little focus on pedagogy and proper instructional design. Does anybody else feel like this is a focus in their institution? Is capital invested heavily in the technology but not necessarily the content design itself?

 

Moore, R. L. (2016). Developing distance education content using the TAPPA process. TechTrends, 60(5), 425–432.

My annotations from Design Principles – a guide (CXPartners, 2015)

Design Principles:

What are they?

• They are meant to provide rules or guidelines to align design and decisions.
• They can be used to represent a project or define the intentions of a corporation.

Why use them?

• To provide consistency and help determine the non-negotiable requirements from a boss or client.
• Creates a framework to work by.

How to make them?

• Create them once your research is complete and before the design process.
• They could be answers to the questions you have set out when considering what you need to do to serve your user.
• Agree on the final principles with project stakeholders

What makes a good design principle?

• Grounded in user or business need
• Needed to help make a decision
• Practical and actionable
• Not requirements
• Not too obvious

CXPartners (June 18, 2015). Design Principles – a guide [Blog post]. 

My thoughts, concerns and questions from Gartner’s 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies Three Key Trends that Organizations Must Track to Gain Competitive Advantage (Gartner, 2016)

Three technology trends:

Transparently immersive experiences:

• As technology becomes more adaptive in all aspects of life, the relationship between humans and technology will be more “human-centric”. 

Perceptual smart machine age:

• Smart technologies will play a large role for companies managing their data in an intuitive way. They will be able to solve problems and expand networks easily while adapting to new environments without issues. Do you think this means the skill sets required for common jobs will change? 

Platform Revolution:

• Shift from technical infrastructure to ecosystem create the link from humans to technology.
• Strategies and business models will shift with extensive data and the key will be to generate value from the data.

Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies:

• Provides insight on emerging trends that will have an impact on decisions and strategies made by organizational leaders.
• The chart evaluates the following factors against expectations:
  • Innovation Trigger
  • Peak of Inflated Expectations
  • Trough of Disillusionment
  • Slope of Enlightenment
  • Plateau of Productivity

This article focused heavily on the involvement of CIO’s and other business leaders to make decisions based on the trends they have identified. In the workplace, it seems that there is such a variety of organizational leaders and ones that may not be CIO’s per say, however they run companies and ultimately have the final say. With the speed of digital enhancements and changes happening faster than ever, I wonder how that will shift the traits required for CEO’s, Chairmen of Boards, and other C-level executives who might still be hesitant to adapt to the technology side of things.

Gartner. (2016, August 16). Gartner’s 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies Three Key Trends that Organizations Must Track to Gain Competitive Advantage. [Press Release].