In my practice as an Senior Learning Strategist (Senior Instructional Designer) on a corporate learning team, I recently wrapped-up a six-month software implementation project. In the first phase of this project (phase two will be launching it in our US office!) I was responsible for all elements of the learning cycle, from stakeholder engagement, to designing, developing, delivering, and evaluating the effectiveness of the learning (I’m currently making adjustments for the US launch). Thinking about this project now and the different synchronous and asynchronous learning activities which I developed (namely a 30-minute eLearning module and a 45-minute virtual facilitated webinars) it’s evident that I did implement some Community of Inquiry strategies without realizing I was doing so. Instead, my intention had been to build learning activities which were engaging, allowed project learning content to be developed alongside an agile project, and support learners continuing to learn and discover the software’s time-saving capabilities the more our organization used it. Essentially, I wanted learners to work together to continue sharing best practices about the software as we became more experienced in it. What I ended up following unintentionally was a supportive, confidence-building, purposely-build Community of Inquiry amongst our call centre agents!
As you will see in the infographic below, the approach my team and I took during the implementation of this project relied upon a strong teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence in order for our learners to be ready for this very important change (switching from a telephony system we had used for 12 years to a new global telephony system). The monumental scope of this change required us to leverage the most skilled Training Specialists on our Learning & Development team, those who already had experience facilitating in blended digital environments and could build a community with their learners even when everyone works remotely. In creating the content and project plan I knew I would need to build opportunities for communication, collaboration, and team-building into the project to build collaboration which would continue after the learners left the classroom. I also decided to build an eLearning module based on software simulation so the learners could feel more confident navigating through the system, even if it wasn’t totally ready for practice during the hands-on facilitated sessions (a decision which turned out to be smart as some user profiles were not yet activated during these sessions!). Overall I feel the Community of Inquiry we built during these sessions not only supported the learners during the training events, but helped them to work through problems collaboratively just as they will do with their teams now that the software solution is launched.
References
Dunlap, J. C., & Lowenthal, P. R. (2018). Online educators’ recommendations for teaching online: Crowdsourcing in action. Open Praxis, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.1.721
Stepp, S. (2020, March 24). Transitioning to Teaching Online: Presence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84vbvYJn9iQ&list=PLiB8ndupvqVAZM9MPts2yI-XVO4MJQFIu&index=3
Vaughan., N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in Blended Learning Environments. AU Press—Digital Publications. https://read.aupress.ca/projects/teaching-in-blended-learning-environments
Andrea, congratulations on completing phase one of your six-month software implementation project! That’s a significant accomplishment, especially considering you managed this alongside our full-time studies in our cohort. Your ability to balance such a complex professional project with our academic workload is truly impressive. I appreciate your insights engagement.
Your infographic is visually engaging. The circular theme you’ve incorporated is a great design choice, creating a cohesive and professional look. It effectively ties together the various elements of your project and the Community of Inquiry model. I’m curious, though – after seeing the other infographics from our cohort, do you have any thoughts about the density of information in your design?
Hi Matt, sorry about the delay in this response. I really appreciate your feedback!
As soon as I published this infographic I immediately regretted it, realizing I had far too much text. In hindsight I would have liked to use a topic which didn’t require so much context to explain so that I felt I could express what I wanted to in fewer words. This is actually something I’m finding challenging for every assignment in this program – finding ways to condense my writing enough to get my point across, but providing enough detail to have a properly synthesized and contextualized argument. I’ll continue to work on that!
Hi Andrea,
Thank you for walking me through the process of your roll out – this is truly an infographic that I can reference and draw inspiration from for future projects within corporate learning – thank you!
I am curious about the modeling collaboration point. This is always a challenge in my company – there are many folks working in silos and it’s a touch barrier to knock down. Can you tell me more about what it looks like for the team to model collaboration? How do you gauge success with that point? I appreciate your insight!
– Jessica
Thanks for your feedback Jessica! I suspect that cross-department collaboration is challenging in most large businesses, and I find when you add a global context or multiple locations that only becomes more difficult! On this project I built modeling cross-departmental collaboration into the learning design by including learners from different departments in the same instructor-led sessions (instead of only from their own teams). This assisted us both with scheduling (since a whole team wouldn’t be offline at the same time) but also allowed the facilitators to encourage cross-department conversations where best practices and new ideas could be shared. Our hope is that the learners experienced a more holistic view of the change and benefited from a more diverse perspective of how they can adapt to it, instead of just viewing the challenge of an implementation of this size from their own department’s perspective.
Hi Andrea,
Congratulations on this project rollout! Your infographic was incredibly informative, and I enjoyed how you laid out your strategies by providing insight into how they were used in your software implementation project. One of the strategies that stood out to me was the Modelling Collaboration. I also think modelling for learners is important, but it can be challenging to achieve in a virtual setting. Would you be able to share some insights on tips on how to model when facilitating or training online?
Great work!
Catherine
I love that you and Jessica asked similar questions Catherine, but with a slightly different angle so I can answer them differently! For our virtually-facilitated classes I chose WebEx since it is a platform our learners are already familiar with from their day-to-day work. Our facilitators are also very familiar with it, so have some good strategies for encouraging engagement such as asking for answers aloud, asking learners to share in the chat, asking for feedback using an emoji, and watching the chat carefully to address questions as they arise. We also focus on giving positive feedback for questions our learners ask to encourage more participation. For these live virtual sessions we also used Slido as a polling tool. This allowed participants to share their questions ahead of time, and for the facilitators to review the outstanding questions so they could be sure to incorporate answers into their presentation. We also asked some icebreaker questions during the synchronous session using Slido, asking learners to make connections between the change and how make a positive impact on our customers, as well as which feature they were looking forward to most as a closing question. Hopefully these interactive elements give you some ideas if you have to approach a similar virtual facilitation opportunity in the future!