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/