Explore Instructional Design Techniques

     Estimating work effort and duration of the tasks on a project is challenging because it often requires input from many different team members. I reviewed two resources that assist project managers in building project schedules and developing resource management plans. The first resource I reviewed is Workamajig . Workamajig is a resource that assists project managers in developing schedules and determining the number of resources that are required to accomplish the tasks on project schedules (Cohen, 2020). There are best practices for identifying the inputs into the tool to develop a project schedule and plan. To develop a schedule, project managers must consider the timeline, the task list, and how they will handle changes (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d.). A helpful feature is Workamajig’s ability to provide customizable dashboards for tracking the status of projects (Cohen, 2020). Workamajig allows project managers to divide the work among resources so that team me...

Project managers should choose the most effective mode of communication for each message they deliver to their teams. In The Art of Effective Communication, a multimedia program demonstrates a message from a sender requesting a report in three different delivery modalities (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d. a). The author conveyed different meanings depending on which modality she used to deliver it. In the email modality, the message seemed about right. In a memo, a project manager should state the purpose, situation, solutions, specify the form of response, and be respectful (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d. b). In the voicemail modality, the message seemed a little too long. It is more effective to be concise and direct on a voicemail by asking a question that requires a response. In the example of the communication in the face-to-face modality, the speaker did not pause for a response in between statements (Laureate Education, Inc., n.d. a). The speaker’s tone sounded more serious than ...

     After a project team completes a work effort, they should determine what aspects went well and which aspects they can improve in future projects. Project management and portfolio management are becoming more prevalent in companies across industries (“The Role of Project Management,” 2013). The ability to effectively manage knowledge is a challenge for every organization (Terzieva & Morabito, 2016). To review how smoothly a project goes and document the lessons for future use, project managers hold a post-mortem meeting (Greer, 2010). Project teams should take the time to reconvene and gather the lessons they learned from in completing the project.      A project I worked on that was not a success was a new hire curriculum for customer service representatives in a call center of an insurance company. One aspect of the training project that went wrong was that the scope changed three times because additional managers wanted their new hires to be incl...

Introduction           There are fundamental techniques that instructors should include in every distance learning course to make them effective in helping learners achieve the objectives. Distance learning is formal education or training delivered in a manner where the instructor is separated from the students, the instructor and participants communicate through technology, and instructors use media to share training content (Simonson et al., 2019). The definition of distance learning has changed drastically over the years as the internet, and other new technologies, have become available to trainers. Instructional designers must adapt their instructional strategies to design activities that use the technology to accomplish communication and provide learner support. Practitioners use different names to refer to distance learning, such as in K-12 education, where it is called virtual classroom, universities where it is called online learning, and in busines...

     The definition of distance learning is always changing from constant technological advances affecting business practices in all fields. There are different types of distance learning depending on what type of learners the distance learning is delivered, including virtual school for kindergarten through twelfth grade, online universities for college students, and E-Learning for corporate employees (Simonson et al., 2019). It is difficult to determine one standard definition of e-Learning because the technologies and techniques evolve rapidly (Sangra et al., 2012). Before taking Distance Learning EDUC 6135 at Walden University, I defined distance learning as a university correspondence course or online course with some synchronous and some asynchronous aspects.       Now that I have read the resources for the first week of Distance Learning EDUC 6135, I have formed a different definition of distance learning. For my new definition of distance learni...

One interesting concept about the way people learn is that people are social, and we learn from others. For example, connectivism combines considerations of existing knowledge, technology, vast amounts of knowledge, and complexity of modern problems to explain how we learn using modern computer technology (Davis, Edmunds, & Kelly-Bateman, 2008). It is surprising how few scientific studies that researchers have conducted on the effects of different online strategies and learning styles, given all of the attention that industry experts have paid to learning styles (Pashler et al., year). Masa and Mayer’s (2006) research is interesting because they found that learning did not improve for those learners who received learning support in their preferred style of learning and that all learners benefitted from effective learning strategies. The Learning Theories and Instruction course at Walden University has contributed to my understanding of my learning by helping me gain the perspe...