The semester project (online masters program in Instructional Design at SDSU) for my team mates and I was to create a project proposal for a fictional company. The process began with an RFP from the company “United Nations University”. Their proposal request was to create web-based training for their entire teaching staff in order to make them technologically proficient and fulfill the university’s overall mission.
Measures of Dispersion and Variability: Range, QD, AD and SD
United Nations University RFP (case study)
1. Project Proposal Presentation Coach-2-Learn Instructional Design Consultants EDTEC 684: Spring 2009 Martha Tessmer Kate Winsor Brian Dickey Andrzej Bojarczak United Nations University Technology Integration
Our company, Coach -2-Learn: Instructional Design Consultants,represented here by M.T, K.W., B.D., and A.B., welcomes this opportunity to present our proposal.We have developed it in response to a request by United Nations University for a Technology Integration project.
UNU has become a recognized leader in higher education and has rapidly expanded its global reach,establishing 32 campuses in 15 countries and employing 1000 faculty and staff.This rapid expansion has brought with it rewards as well as challenges.The organization relies heavily on technology to accomplish its mission of educating learners around the world.In any given year approximately one third of its teaching force are new faculty who do not always possess the same desired level of technological knowledge and skill. As a result the use of technology within UNU is not optimized.
The overarching goal for this project, then, is to firmly anchor technology-based learning both in traditional classroom and online curricula.More specifically, UNU would like to make sure that all of its faculty can and will employ a range of technology in their classroom teaching and that they will be able to develop and facilitate a basic online course using the LMS adopted by the university.
Coach-2-Learn fully appreciates that challenge.We share UNU’s firm belief in the pivotal role of technology in today’s educational sceneand in the absolute necessity of maintaining a qualified cadre of teachers who understandhow to use technology optimally to ensure the best learning outcomes.The solution we propose is a WBT program consisting of two courses: Technology Integration in the Classroom and Technology in Distance Education.The courses will be offered in a dual format: Asynchronous and Synchronous.The first format will allow the UNU faculty to work at their own pace through the training materials within the timeframe established by the university.By employing a variety of delivery methods in the asynchronous courses, we will reach a diverse audience with different learning styles.The synchronous format will consist of online sessions that will provide an opportunity for hands-on practice, guidance and real-time feedback to reinforce the content learned in the asynchronous part.Our solution also includes an optional online support component. If purchased by UNU, the faculty will have access to a peer-based forum and a resource library.We believe that the pairing of these two rich instructional methods together with the online supportwill adequately prepare UNU faculty to apply the new skills and knowledge to their own classroom teaching and online course design.
The faculty will access all components of our training through a portal in Moodle, the LMS currently used by UNU.
As you can see here, the learning outcomes for the first course, Technology Integration in the Classroom, will include a thorough understanding and application of psychological factors that influence learningas well as employing various technologies such as PowerPoint, multimedia, social networking, and the internetfor instruction delivery in the traditional classroom.
To teach all these concepts and applications, the asynchronous part of the TIC course will consist of six modules and a cumulative assessment at the end.In the synchronous part, we will conduct three sessions to reinforce what the participants will have learned in the asynchronous component.
Let’s take a look at some sample screenshots of various elements of the TIC course.The first slide is the home page for the Asynchronous TIC course, where the faculty will access all the modules, the peer forum,the resource library, and the help menu.
This slide shows the content inside one of the modules.
In addition to the summative assessment module at the end of the course,there will be formative evaluation at the end of each module in the form of short, non scored interactive quizzes with immediate feedback.
Here is a screenshot of one of the synchronous sessions in the TIC course that will be conducted on the Wimba platform.
The learning outcomes for the second course, Technology in Distance Education, will focus on understanding and incorporating differences between distance education and traditional classroom instructionas well as on employing various tools for delivery of online courses, such as authoring, assessment, collaboration, and administrative tools.Basing online instruction on solid learning theory will also be one of the outcomes.
The faculty will access all components of the TIDE asynchronous course through a home page similar to that used for the TIC training.
In the TIDE synchronous session the faculty will have a chance to practice adding and managing content to their course shells.
Here’s another slide showing the same topic.
As we mentioned before, an optional component to our WBT consists of a peer-based user forum and a resource library.The peer forum will foster collaboration between the participants.Our instructional designers will spend two hours each week while the forum is active to monitor it and respond to concerns and questions from the faculty.The Resource Library will have 5 advanced tutorials for those teachers who will want to acquire skills beyond the basic training. The tutorials will include such topics as creating podcasts of recorded lectures and building basic animations in Adobe Flash, just to give you a couple of examples.In addition, there will be a list of links to sites with vendor-developed tutorials for the software applications the faculty will learn during the training.Finally, all the job aids, demos and videos used in the TIC and TIDE asynchronous courses will be accessible through the library.
Here is a screenshot of the Resource Library page.
Our proposed training program will start on April 5th, 2010. Both the asynchronous courses and the synchronous sessions will last ten weeks each.There will be a two week delay between the start dates for the asynchronous and synchronous parts since faculty will need to complete the asynchronouscourses before they can register for the corresponding synchronous sessions.The optional online support would be active from the beginning of the training program through the end of 2010.We are confident that our proposed training will produce results desired by UNU.After faculty complete the training, they will be expected to start developing online courses and modifying their face-to-face instruction.The first “success stories” will be presented at the annual meeting of the Board of Directors on September 18, 2010.