Great Advice on Presentations

Great advice...

The Future of Presentations: Top Trends for Communicators from Haiku Deck

Rueful “Rubrics”

A recent encounter with a colleague who insisted that he could not award a student the highest mark on a so called “rubric” because this would mean the student is perfect has raised some concerns over the fairness, and therefore quality, of assessments sometimes meted out to unfortunate and unsuspecting students.

I was a member of a team assigned to assess pre-service teachers. They are assessed on a number of dimensions ranging from lesson planning to the sometimes intangible qualities of professionalism. Although some of us on the team referred to the assessment instrument as a rubric (I know I did), on further reflection it is not a rubric, but is rather a rating scale. I define the instrument as a rating scale because it consists of a series of statements that are ranked (rated) from one to five, with "five" being the highest. For example, a statement may go as follows: “student is punctual” or “objectives were clearly written.” A student may get a "four" if she is mostly on time or a "two" if his objectives are unclear. In my case, I believe the critical elements missing from this rating scale are the criteria that describe the behaviours or conditions that warrant a particular rating.

An end and a beginning

So… after two years, give or take a month or so, I am finally approaching the goal of achieving a masters’ degree in Instructional Design and Technology.

It has not been an easy road. As I learned throughout the various courses, distance education may not be the best option for everyone, especially if one lacks powerful motivation, but it is here to stay. It also provides opportunities for previously under served populations who may not otherwise have had an opportunity to access educational offerings, especially in higher education. But I digress, this post is about ending… and beginning. 

Creeping

By this June, the school’s new auditorium should be open. This would be great, expect that I was supposed to be completed five years ago.   

It began as the grand dream of a former Parent Teacher Association’s (PTA) president. He recognized the need for a place where all the students could assemble at one time unaffected by the pelting sun or the rain. The building fund raising started off with great enthusiasm and there was talk of having graduation in the new building “next year”, which was 2010. The PTA president planned a series of concerts, barbecues, fish fries and other fund raising activities confident that if a certain amount were to be raised, the Ministry of Education (MOE) would chip in with the rest. It was a pity that no one thought to share this information with the MOE.

Communication Modalities

Photo courtesy of Daily Pic

A multimedia presentation displayed one message via three methods of communication; e-mail, voice mail and face to face.

The gist of the message was that Jane needs Mark to let her know when he will send her a report which apparently is overdue. She needs to know when it is coming. Her message then goes on to say that data contained in Mark’s report is needed to complete her, Jane’s, report. The message concludes by stating that Mark may opt to send the data separately.

If I were to receive this message as an e-mail, I would not take it seriously. I would conclude that it could not be that serious because there is no guarantee of when an e-mail will be read. For all Jane knows Mark may not get this e-mail anytime soon. He may even still be in the all-day meeting. I get the impression that Jane’s anxiety and possibly anger is escalating because first the message is asking when she will get it, then it goes to the fact she needs it then, it goes to appealing to Mark to send even just the data that should have been in the report.

The Website that Wasn’t

Image courtesy of Trevor Pritchard

Over a decade ago I was involved in a project to create a website for the local chapter of an internationally recognized club. This was long before services like WordPress, Blogger or even Facebook made it easy for almost anyone to create attractive and engaging content without much design or code writing experience.

The site never materialized, despite a great deal of effort on my part and several other team members involved. Here are some of the issues resulting in the non-publication of the site, a failed project.

Fuzzy Project Definition

Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, and Kramer, (2008) identify distinct project phases. After deciding if the project is needed and is possible to do, the definition phase should outline exactly what needs to be done, the time frame, who should do what, etc. The web design project was never clearly defined. The leadership team knew they had expertise within the club, i.e., a programmer and a content developer, but beyond that, there were no clearly assigned roles. For example, a person may be a good writer but someone who knows the content needs to provide it in order for the writer to “package” it. So the club had a long and illustrious history, but who had access to this content and who would do the research?  

Project Management and Instructional Design

Project management and instructional design share a systems approach with clearly defined processes. These processes maximize the probability of success. 

Upcoming blog posts will be looking at issues surrounding instructional design and project management.

Image courtesy of Scott Maxwell  - http://thegoldguys.blogspot.com

and http://www.flickr.com/photos/lumaxart/2137737248/in/photostream/