Understand that we live and work within systems of cause and effect in which actions may have multiple origins and consequences.
Artifact:
795A Client Project Final Report [ PDF ]
Reflection:
Context:
This report is the result of my EdTech 795A client project which was an evaluation of an SDSU undergraduate mechanical engineering course (ME203) delivered via a blended format for the first time. This blended course was adapted from an existing classroom equivalent. Of the two weekly sessions, one was held online and one was face-to-face in the classroom.
My role for this project was primarily focused on the online sessions of the course and included developing a data analysis strategy to collect relevant information, analyzing and interpreting this information for the purpose of providing observations and recommendations.
In pursuit of sound recommendations this project included the following activities:
- Pre-class “Hybrid Readiness” Survey (Appendix VI)
- Class observation logged based on Gagne’s Nine Events of Learning (Appendix V)
- Student survey (Appendix VII)
- Personal Interview with the professor (Appendix II)
- Review of relevant literature
According to the dictionary, a system is “an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole.” This project typifies a situation with a combination of numerous parts with varying cause and effect relationships that have a multitude of consequences. The very process of instruction is comprised of the systemic interaction between teachers and learners.
The most significant challenge of this project was narrowing the focus down to the most important and achievable recommendations. There were a large number of instructional improvements that could be made for this course but they needed to be prioritized in a reasonable way such that the easiest ones to implement with the biggest anticipated benefit could be put in place ahead of other less essential concepts.
This was an excellent opportunity to get real consulting practice with the added benefit of feedback from two fantastic professionals in our field, Dr. Marcie Bober and Allison Rossett. Additionally, this was a great experience working on a real project with the unique spin of participating at a distance and being able to make use of several different technological systems to help make up for not being able to be on-site.
This project shows that I am able to recognize the relevant factors from the systems involved and prioritize the corresponding recommendations for the maximum benefit within a given set of constraints. Additionally understanding how the systems interact with one another to provide solutions derived with a holistic view of the environment. Based on my observations, I was able to identify several opportunities for improving the current system..
Relating recommendations involving the pertinent concepts in a manner that can be clearly understood to stakeholders who do not have much of an educational technology or instructional design background is also and important skill on display with this project.
One lesson I took away from this project was that sometimes there are systemic factors outside our control that impact what we can and can’t do. For example, recommending that professors participate in more professional development to improve their instructional skills is not likely to have much of an impact if the administration officials do not provide the incentive, time and financial backing that allow it.
I was also reminded during this project how systems interact with one another. Changes in one often impact one or more of the others. For example, the delivery medium has a significant impact on other aspects such as instructional approaches to the content while the content itself can have an impact on which delivery method is most effective and so on. When changing one part of the system we must always be aware of how other parts are effected. Obviously, we wouldn’t want to take one step forward in one area while taking two steps backwards in another. This type of systemic, overall view is important so that we can see the details within the context of the bigger picture.
