A note to my classmates: My apologies for being less present during this last course. I’ve unfortunately been balancing school with some additional responsibilites at work and in my personal life. As such I haven’t been able to respond as timely to your blog posts. I am hopeful that changes with our next course (our last together!).
Image attributed to Articulate Content Library
I’ve been working in the Instructional Design field for about eight years now, but being mostly self-taught and mentored by peers I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve picked up some bad habits. For example, it took me a long time to learn that my stakeholders and learners weren’t interested in academic theory; They were more interested in what they needed to learn to achieve their academic goals. It also took me some time to learn that in corporate learning stakeholders are often willing to forego an ideal learning situation if it means a project can be done quickly. It’s also taken me until just this course to reflect on my needs analysis style and realize that I had a lot to learn about the power of empathizing with the learners and the stakeholders.
As I started to develop my problem of practice in the first two weeks of this course, I already had in mind a project I could apply it to at my workplace, and – if I’m being honest – I had a solution in mind as well. To leverage the words of Steven Covey in his Book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey, 1989, as cited in Habit 2, n.d.) I was practicing the second habit which is to “begin with the end in mind”, with that end being the problem that I assumed was causing the lack of engagement with the knowledge base system at my work (and which was at the centre of my problem of practice). To kick-off this project I conducted an interview with the Knowledge Management team and their Manager, and both of us were surprised that the root-cause of our problems was not a lack of understanding with the corporate system in question, but rather a lack of engagement by middle-management. This revelation only came about because I used a Design Thinking approach to my needs analysis interview, attempted to put myself in the end-learners’ shoes, and took time to build trust with the subject matter experts I was meeting with. Looking back on this experience I’m certain I would not have gained the insight I did (or build what I believe will be an effective digital learning artifact) had I not mindfully set aside my unconscious biases to gain an unbiased perspective (Design Thinking: Empathize, 2018) and and focused foremost on the needs of the the learners.
In the end I think I’ve achieved a digital learning solution which will be more effective at meeting the needs of both the learners and the business. By approaching this learning problem from an empathy perspective by means of the design thinking tools I was unable to unlock needs which neither the department’s manager nor myself knew existed, that being leadership motivation to use the new tool rather than a knowledge gap. As Li, Liu and Xu explain in their article, “motivation is fostered when individuals’ voices are heard and choices are respected. Accordingly, a humanized environment should be one that provides choices to students as well as opportunities to reflect on their own learning.” (Li, Liu, and Xu, 2022, p. 2). Since the hidden truth I had uncovered through the design thinking process was that we needed to re-motivate and re-engage these leaders with the recently-launched knowledge base system, I decided to build a virtually-facilitated workshop which would solicit the feedback of participants, respect their feelings about the knowledge management system, and include a personalized activity where they could find ways – big or small – to use the new system to help them address their team’s personal goals. As I’ve been on vacation I haven’t had a chance to get feedback from my stakeholders yet, but I very much look forward to making some adjustments based on that when I return home in a week’s time, and hopefully facilitate this session before the end of August. Wish me luck!
References
Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind. (n.d.). Franklin Covey. Retrieved August 11, 2024, from https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/habit-2/
Design Thinking: Empathize. (2018, June 9). Mindful Marks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q654-kmF3Pc&feature=youtu.be&themeRefresh=1
Li, Q., Bañuelos, M., Liu, Y., & Xu, D. (2022). Online instruction for a humanized learning experience: Techniques used by college instructors. Computers & Education, 189, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2022.104595
Hi Andrea, thank you for your reflection post and your insights into instructional design with a more experienced lens. Depending on the environments where we do design, we can have more or fewer opportunities for exploration and reflection. I have had the great pleasure of working in many environments, each with unique learning for me about the craft of human learning design in digital formats. It’s great that you were able go a bit deeper into the problem of practice your organization was facing and to find out more about the complementary causes. Subjecting the wrong group of folks to further training when what they needed was more 360 awareness and support from supervisors and leaders can create unhappy folks and be a waste or organizational time and resources. You’ve done great work this semester to solve your PoP.
Thank you Jenni! I really appreciate your feedback and the opportunity to learn with you during this class. I hope our paths cross again soon!