How to avoid Scope Creep?

There are 2 main goals that you as the project manager would need to think about when dealing with scope creep.

1. When planning always plan as close to detail as possible.  Project control is very important, this would lead to reconfirming the plan, assessing performance, taking corrective action and keeping people informed (Portny, 2008).

     2.       Best approach to change.  Changes will occur during the project time, so during the planning time make sure there is a section that allows modification to occur with less agony as possible and communicate to your team about the changes (Portny, 2008).

Here is a real life example:

The location of my job, there are two major buildings that consist of 6 different alternative school programs.  Our school has one building all to ourselves the other building has the remaining 5 programs.  The plans of building an expansion to the other building has begun 3 weeks ago.  As the project began the crew closed off certain parts of the building still giving us access to specific sections of the building.  The all of a sudden we were told the section where we would use to walk through to get to the gym we would not be able to use because the project it a little bit of a snag.  The gas line needed to be changed before construction began, and this was in the original plan, but in the plans it was stated as contacting PSE&G and they will come in and make the changes before construction, well PSE&G is stating no one has called them and that they will have to wait their turn, this delay could take several weeks before PSE&G cones out to change the gas line.  Well this makes a big issue in the projects plan because they have a specific timeline and if they finish before a certain date, the construction company gets an incentive bonus.  Well the person who planned this project thought of the scope creep very well because of instead of waiting they will work on the expansion side they thought about doing at the end of the project and work backwards to give time for the PSE&G to come in and do their part.  The project manager met with all of the school’s principals and the head of the maintenance department to inform them of the changes that need to occur and apologized for the changes.  So now our school and another will be taking a detour for next 6 months when walking up to the gym, but at least we know we will only be dealing with this at the beginning of the project and not at the end.  The project manger did a great job of making the changes needed for the project to continue as planned.
  
Portny, S.E., Mantel, S.J., Meredith, J.R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M.M., & Kramer, B. E., (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken. NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Tools for Project Management

For my project management class I needed to post two resource tools that would be useful in estimating the costs, effort, and/or activity durations associated with ID projects.  Below I have found two tools I like the first one is a directly below. Click on link to get insights on improving the decision process and the paradox world of bad decisions. I found this tool interesting because it gave some ideas to thin about and the meaning behind the mathematical calculations.  Since I have a back ground in Math, I found this tool fairly easy to follow.  If Math is not your strong suit then the next tool would be better for your liking.

http://www.visionarytools.com/decision-making/3-point-estimating.htm

The other tool is below for you to click on.  In this website “pptmagic.com” gives ideas on Project Management, but mostly are already developed calculations tools.   

http://www.pptmagic.com/projectmgm.htm

Here you have two tools that both will lead to the same result for your project management, the difference one helps you understand the meaning behind the calculations and how to produce your own calculation tool, the other tool also can give you the meaning but also the formulas are already made for you so all you have to do is plug in the numbers and the tool will produce the figures and even graph the solutions, to help you get out more data solutions. 

Which tool do you find helpful?

Effective Communication

Today’s blog I needed to give my thoughts after I finished going over each modality.  There are 3 modalities one an email message, second a voicemail message, and last a face to face video.  All of my thoughts are below.  Click on link below to see the modalities for yourself.  And let’s see if you agree with my analysis.

http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6145/03/mm/aoc/index.html

Let's Begin

Email message: If I were the one receiving this email I get the feeling that the work I had to do was urgent.  Mark’s report needs to be done as soon as possible because Jane cannot move on her report without it, and her deadline is coming soon, so now Mark will have to find a way to rearrange his schedule to finish his end to help her out, wondering why she didn’t tell Mark any sooner.

Voicemail message:   With this message Jane might of made Mark feel she needs his help to finish with Mark’s data, even though her tone was neutral she seemed a bit stressed out.  She obviously does not want to miss her own deadline. 

Face to Face: When I saw the video her, she looked to causal, but her body language gave me a passive aggressive attitude.  The flicker of her eyes looking in a different direction when talking, pointing her finger out, not directly to me but she does have a pointed finger.  Even the smile at the end was too much to be making the situation seem friendly but in her mind she must be saying I need your data now, and I’m not taking it anymore. 

After finishing the 3 modalities I would say the voicemail was the most honest and better delivered message of the three.  The email message seemed too harsh, where the face to face showed too much body posturing.  I would probably have gotten annoyed from the email message; because it is insinuating that I did not do the work as well as the face to face video.  Related to f2f, Jane came off as she was tired of asking for Mark’s data, and wants it as soon as possible.  The smile at the end definitely shows she is trying to hide her frustration.  Jane’s tone of voice is at the same level but her body language relays the opposite sending an ambiguous message.  Dr. Stolovitch suggested the two best ways for effective solution is avoid unclear statements and document everything.  Jane needed to be clear in delivering her message not sending mix signals, and if she was having issues with Mark then she should have document all the times she tried to communicate with Mark about getting his part done for her.

References:

Stolovich (n.d.), Communicating with Stakeholders [Video]. Laureate Education. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com.            

Post- Mortem: Collect Data Effectively

In my previous job I wanted to change how we recorded data.  My previous employment, I was a teacher for autistic adolescents for a private school within Rutgers University.  This program is viewed as a prestigious evidence based ABA program.  My class and another dealt with severely behavioral students.  Staff needed to be alert every second when interacting with these students, and was difficult to keep up with recording data has accurate as possible and telling with the behaviors at the same time.  All data was recorded with pencil and paper, at times different clickers with labels to keep up with the high frequency behaviors.  Since I am into computers and enjoy seeing the new technology tools to use, I have come up with a plan, to have an easier way to collect data and have the data automatically in graph form into a database for the supervisors to look at whenever possible so not to wait to latter part of the week for the assistant to finish graphing manually.   

Now we are talking about 7 years ago, when this happen, palm pilots were popular at this time, there was even a mini computer called OQO that was very popular but very expensive.  I have thought about purchasing palm pilots with the program called Documents to Go that gave a compatible version of Microsoft office excel.  I had made a data sheets that automatically lead into calculation into graphs.  The staff member would have the palm pilot attached to their belt of in their pocket and have a headphone and microphone wired to the palm pilot using Dragon Speaking voice program.  Staff would get a list of codes to memorize that would label specific behaviors and frequencies to the excel sheet.  At the end of the day they would sync the palm pilot to the computer and those excel sheets will have the data of the day already in graph form ready to be viewed. This process would lead to allowing staff to have free hands to deal with the behaviors and allow staff to observe the behaviors without having to look down on a sheet to record data.  My plan was well thought out in the sense of technology aspect, but was not by cost and adaptability (Stolovitch, n.d.).

When I presented my plan to the directors of the program, they have asked, does these palm pilots work with Mac computers? How much will it cost to purchase the palm pilots for all of the staff, how about the licenses for the Dragon Speaking program (Portny, 2008)?  We have a database made already with Filemaker pro on the Mac server for our IEP’s, will the excel graphs be able to be used on our database?  All of  these questions I did not consider on my plan(Stolovitch, n.d.), because I am more of a PC person and I wasn’t using the Mac that was given to me, I used my en PC to take on the data, but still able to log on to the Mac server.  I had thought we can have two different systems and possibly the directors can see the plus side to the PC world and give up the Mac.  I was wrong because the director in my school is a big fan of Mac and is the one who services the Mac to make sure everything is working correctly (Portny, 2008). 

The idea I want to do was a good one but it was not feasible with the resources that I needed to work with (Portny, 2008).  Not all was lost; my directors did agree that there needed to be a better system to record data so they had asked me to find out about video cameras, they thought about putting video cameras in all of the classrooms and hallways linked a specific room for anyone to go into to look at the behaviors of the day to take data.  For data collection outside of the building they would consider some type of portable device to use.  They would also update their Filemaker database to see if they can link some portable devices.  If I had a chance to do this all over I would have taken time to see what technology devices I have already to see what will be compatible with it for my plan to succeed.  I would also have to see what will be cost effect.

I recently when back to visit still have some friends there, and I heard they have a whole new data system, similar to my old plan but they did not think about the issues with the wireless system.  They had purchased iPod’s/itouch with a data app that automatically sync wirelessly with the server.  The issue I hear is when anybody uses the microwave in the building it cuts off the wireless signal in the area for the time the microwave is in use, having staff frustrated that the data was not sent to the server. Causing issues because the app does not store the data it takes from the person’s input and then sends it to the server when the person presses finish then clearing the sheet for the next collection.  Actually one of the directors had walk by and overheard our conversation and asked me what I would do to fix the solution?  I had asked when the app is sending the data to the server what type of program is it sending it to? And do you have choice of different places to send it to (Portny, 2008)?  The director showed me the app and I noticed that it would send the data to any device that has Numbers in it.  Numbers is Mac’s version of excel.  So I tried if the app would send the data to Numbers located within the same ipod/itouch.  The app allowed this to happen, so I told them just have them send the data to the itouch that they are using, and then at their lunch time or the end of the day have the itouch  sync to the teachers computer wired or wirelessly the numbers file.  Then the teacher computer will automatically sync to the server later in the day.  This way if anything happens you have data backed up in three locations.  I was happy to know that the plan I made in the beginning was functional it just wasn’t planned right, but I did learn from my mistakes (Stolovitch, n.d.).

References

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Stolovitch, H. (n.d.). “Project Management and Instructional Design.” Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6051999&Survey=1&47=7515625&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Future of Distant Learning

Distant learning is not a new idea, this type of teaching has been offered back in the 1700’s, the difference is as technology got more advanced like audio and visual devices in the early 1900’s. Audio and visual devices has modified how training has been used for over the years, this became the building block on how teaching in schools and universities would need to change. Universities have already started to change to either full online distant learning or to mix traditional and online learning. K-12 schools are now opening the doors to distant learning but are faced with some road blocks.

The future of distant learning will grow in all levels fields but some may take longer than others. Here is what I think would open up for the future of distant learning into two categories 5-10 years and 10-20 years. First the 5- 10 years we can see more partnerships between universities and corporations to specialized degrees and specialized certification programs, textbooks and printed materials will be replaced by online materials, and a greater number of different majors within traditional majors will be offered. For the future 10-20 years I can see the perception of the college campus will change from one dimensional to multi- dimensions, courses will vary in length instead of being semester based, institutions will be leading for the adoption of new technologies, there would be an increase in vocational specific instruction, and offer ways to engage and support different learning styles.

When completing any project, as instructional designer, we need to have a well thought out project, utilizing the design models that we have learned for example the ADDIE mode. As an ID, we need to also use the AEIOU approach to evaluate our project. When utilizing both of these approaches it will lead our outcome of a well thought out project in distant learning. When technology glitches occur, customers are not relating it to the design of distant learning. Also ID needs to take into consideration their populations learning styles (Simonson, 2009) and state the distant learner’s attributes (Dabbagh, 2007), so their distant learning project can be successful.

Distant learning has the advantage to use multiple ways to present material. The creativity of the design will reflex this. Many times I have been in a brick mortar type learning, and when the teacher would narrate a specific idea I would have to think about in my mind to see how it would work. In a distant learning design I can use technology to also present the idea as a visual. This would help me understand the material easier, so I can learn more things about the topic causing more interest and motivation on learning.

With this idea in mind, designing for distant learning can be opened to so many ways, with the use of simulation software, online educational gaming, differential instruction, etc. Hardware technology will also allow a better feel of human connection with simulation and gaming programs. When I presented the works of Pranav Mistry “Sixth Sense” (http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/), definitely allowed me to see how the training industry can change with this Mistry’s invention. He was able to invent a product that allowed the computer to adapt to the humans experience of the world, instead how it is now humans adapting to the restrictions of the computer. If I would take one of the examples from above, a partnership with corporations and universities with training to a specific certifications and combine it with Mistry’s invention, this would open up to the changes of how trainings will be held. As an instructional designer I will need to stay in touch with the new technology that is available to us and consistently think of new designs that can enhance learning.

References

Dabbagh, N. (2007). The online learner: Characteristics and pedagogical implications. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 7(3). Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol7/iss3/general/article1.cfm

Mistry, P. (2009). Sixth Sense. Retrieved from http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson

Converting a F2F training to a Distance Learning Format

I was given an assignment to convert a face to face training to a distance learning format: A blended online training.  Below you will see how I plan for this type of change and given example of a past experience that has worked for me.  The key to converting this type of training is to know who you are presenting to, and make your changes that will work best for that audience and always practice the training before the real training to get the kinks out of the implementation stage. 

Click on link below to download the pdf of file on the planning stages of topic above. http://www.mediafire.com/?wdzhm5ygh4bimdh

Evaluation of an Open Source Online Course from Stanford Engineer

Introduction

The course I decided to evaluate is an open source online course offered from Stanford Engineering, http://www.ml-class.org/course/video/preview_list ,  even though the course is coming from an engineering department, the course is called Machine Learning.  I used to be a Mathematics’ major before I switched to Psychology, so this will help me to truly evaluate the course since math as a lot to do with computer programing that can lead to AI- Artificial Intelligence.   These online videos are based on linear algebra.   The pre-requisite skills are the Algebra I & II, Geometry, and Calculus I, II, & III.  The ideas of Linear Algebra are a different way to solve problems with multiple variables that leads to computer coding.  When looking into the course you will hear words like matrices, vectors, and linear equations.  Now let us see how they planned and developed this course for distance learning.

Description & Planning of Course

The title of the course is Machine Learning; here there are a set of 3 sections called Introduction, Linear regression with one variable, and Linear Algebra review, which the last one is optional.  All of the sections consist of videos to watch all within a certain length of time.  The longest video runs for 14 minutes and the shortest video is 6 minutes.  Within the introduction there are 4 videos available that goes in linear order starting with the first video called Welcome.  Below is how the sections are set up.

I.                    Introduction

A.      Welcome – running 7 minutes

B.      What is Machine Learning- running 7 minutes

C.      Supervised Learning- running 12 minutes

D.      Unsupervised Learning- running 14 minutes

II.                  Linear Regression with one variable

A.      Model Representation- running 8 minutes.

B.      Cost function-running 8 minutes

C.      Cost Function- Intuition I-  running 9 minutes

D.      Cost –Function- Intuition II- running 9 minutes

E.       Gradient Descent- running in 11 minutes

F.       Gradient Descent Intuition- running  in 12 minutes

G.     Gradient Descent for Linear Regression- running in 10 minutes

H.      What’s Next- running in 6 minutes

III.                Linear Algebra Review

A.      Matrices and vectors- running in 9 minutes

B.      Addition and Scalar Multiplication –running in 7 minutes

C.      Matrix Vector Multiplication- running in 11 minutes

D.      Matrix & Matrix Multiplication- running in 11minutes

E.       Matrix Multiplication Properties running in 9 minutes

F.       Inverse and Transpose running in 11 minutes

 Each of the videos follow the same layout, you will see a person sitting in front of his computer screen, he turns toward the camera and begins to talk about the  topic having the video zoom towards the computer screen.  Then as you look on to the screen of the computer you will no longer see the person talking but you will be able to hear him.  The person talking (the voice) is always talking about the topic you see on the screen and when the screen starts to show a problem to work on, the voice then describes how to solve the problem using as many visual cues as possible.  Below is a picture of one screen with the voice describing the procedures on how to solve the problem.

                                                                         Figure 1

As you can see in Fig. 1,the voice goes through the problem he lets you know which number he is dealing with by highlighting it with a certain color, and h when he moves along the problem and to another number he changes the color of the highlighter, so when you want to pause the video you can see the connection of which numbers are used.  This procedure is great, because you can see how to solve the problem exactly as if you had a tutor in front of you as a F2F set up.  Another edition that is great is the practice function.  When you look back on the picture you can see two yellow hash lines on the video timeline, these markings let you know when a practice exercise is available.  When you get a chance to work on the problem you get a choice to skip or submit your answer.  There would be 4 answers to choose from, only one is correct. When you pick your answer and click submit you will be told at that point if it’s correct or incorrect.  If incorrect you can still work on the problem to get it correct, or if you don’t want to you can still have the choice to skip it.   There is no place on the video for you to write the problem out, you will still need a piece of paper and a writing utensil.  During the video clip playing you have the choice to press previous video or next video and to zoom in on the screen 1x, 1.2x, and 1.5x.

Conclusion

This open source online program was very well planned with visual cues to follow along and activities for the learner to participate (Simonson, 2009).  Allowing the screen to be legible with multiple options of increasing the screen which would make the letters and numbers bigger (Simonson, 2009).  The lengths of the videos are short to keep the student interested in the topic (Simonson, 2009).  Giving the student options to skip the problem or to see the videos multiple times gives the student options when taking the course (Simonson, 2009).  I enjoyed this course layout so much I gave the link to one of my students in high school who is thinking about electrical engineer for study, now he gets a chance to see the topics and get more information about the subject.  He was able to follow along and answered the problems from the Linear Algebra review.   

Thank you Andrew Ng for making this open source online course. 

References:

Machine Learning Retrieved October 6, 2011 from http://www.ml-class.org/course/video/preview_list

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Interactive Tour

Here I need to figure out a solution to a problem given to me for my distance learning course. Question below states:

A high school history teacher, located on the west coast of the United States, wants to showcase to her students new exhibits being held at two prominent New York City museums. The teacher wants her students to take a "tour" of the museums and be able to interact with the museum curators, as well as see the art work on display. Afterward, the teacher would like to choose two pieces of artwork from each exhibit and have the students participate in a group critique of the individual work of art. As a novice of distance learning and distance learning technologies, the teacher turned to the school district’s instructional designer for assistance. In the role of the instructional designer, what distance learning technologies would you suggest the teacher use to provide the best learning experience for her students? When reading this question the first solution I thought was BigBlueButton and afterwards was Teamviewer. Teamviewer is very well developed remote assistance program. It’s an application that can be installed on your any computer device; pc, laptop, Mac, ipad’s, android tablets, smartphones, and iPhone’s. Teamviewer also has a portable version app that can run out of any usb drive. The portable app would have no need to install on any computer device and would still be fully functional. I have used this application for personal use, I had connected my work laptop with my home computer, so if I needed a specific file, for example; for teaching a class I forgot to place a specific video on my work computer, one choice can be to connect to my home computer and play the video on my home computer and watch the video on my work computer that is connected to the projector at the school or another choice can be making a file transfer of the video from my home computer to my work computer and just play the video from my work computer, if I had a student absent from class let’s say he is home sick and I didn’t want him to fall behind, I can send him an email with the potable app in attachment for the student to run his computer, or for a smartphone, download the free app so I can connect with the student and he/she can see the video with their classmates. Teamviewer is great for presentations connected to multiple participants. For the question above this application can connect the students with the Teamviewer and interact with the museum curators and take a tour of the museum. There is a chat function also available for students to interact with other students but there is no way to make group discussions during interactions, but the BigBlueButton can.

Bigbluebutton (BBB) is one of the best interactive distance learning applications I have seen. BBB can replace the traditional classroom by each component. Let’s think about the types of interaction we would come across when students would be in a F2F museum tour. Students would see the tour with their own eyes walking through the museum while hearing what the curator had say about each artwork on display. If the any student had a question they would raise their hand out, waiting for the curator to call on them, of if the curator would ask a question. At times to not make the tour boring I have seen teachers giving the students group projects where they would have to go back to the tour areas they visited and find the answers from the assignment. BBB allows this process to happen without stepping one foot into the museum. BBB is located on a cloud computer, a host site of the school, even embedded onto a LMS/CMS. For this problem from above, BBB is located on host site with a specific login. Everyone involved will have access to BBB with their own login information. When using BBB, the teacher would be the moderator who has control of the presenter and all of the participants; roles can be switched between presenters and participants, click on link to see all the videos of the features bigbluebutton has to offer http://bigbluebutton.org/content/videos.

References

bigbluebutton retrieved September 23, 2011 from http://bigbluebutton.org/overview
Teamviewer retrieved September 23, 2011 from http://www.teamviewer.com/en/solutions/meetings.aspx

Mindmap

Idea of Distance Learning on Prezi