Job Aid...another thought

So, after watching the job aid screencast I can't get that sock bun job aid out of my head.

Why you ask?

Because that is an example of a job aid I would see on Pinterest (which I use a lot). And that people (like me) would see and actually use.

I want to make sure whatever I design is USEFUL. I don't want to spend time and effort designing something that will never be looked at again after turning it into Dr. Leftwich to grade.

One thing I keep thinking about is a tutorial I made a year or so ago...

It's a quick tutorial on "How To Make Your Own T-shirt Quilt".

What I like about this tutorial is that it is about something that personally interest me. And it's something that I imagine would be useful to other crafty people who have thought to make a tshirt quilt, but they weren't quite sure how to go about it. (In fact, I designed it because I had several people see some of the quilts I had made and expressed a desire to learn how to make their own.)

I am now wondering if maybe I should a. re-do this tutorial applying the design principles I've learned in this class, b. do a different tutorial on something crafty that has similar motivation for me, or c. stick with the topic I've already chosen.

The pros of sticking to my current chosen topic: It is different than any tutorial I've done before and would require a different form (flowchart/decision chart) than my craft tutorial formats (so I would be learning something new).

The cons: My biggest worries about sticking to my chosen topic is a. what images I will get to illustrate the concepts (pushing, shoving, yelling, throwing, restraining, giving space, etc)? and b. will anyone ever use it?? Plus, I don't know a lot personally about the subject, so I have to rely on an SME in order to put together good information. (But maybe that too is a Pro, as far as getting something useful out of the exercise.)

Hmmm...

What do you think Kassie? Dr. Leftwich?  Anyone else who might be reading this????

W7 Getting caught up

Okay, so this was a crazy week and I feel like I fell a little behind. So I am spending my Saturday morning getting caught up on the dozen or so screencasts and readings for Week 7. ;)

I'm really digging this section on storytelling. I gotta say, I have a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and I love to read and write, yet I don't think I've ever really considered story telling as a major element in my instruction. Oh sure I've used anecdotes in my instruction to break the ice, illustrate a point, etc. However, I don't think I've ever included story telling as a major pedagogical principle in my design. How can I have missed this for so long??

When watching the screencasts on Story telling, Common Craft, and Technology Tools, I'm getting psyched on incorporating storytelling into our major project. But (insert screeching tire sounds), how? This I'm not quite sure of!! Yikes! This week our project team members each gave ourselves assignments, and almost all of us gave ourselves the assignment of 1. downloading Captivate 6 and getting it to work with our different machines, 2. sharing our started captivate file (thanks Kassie) on DropBox, and 3. finish the Captivate tutorials on Lynda.com. Maybe when we meet over Connect this week we can brainstorm ways to incorporate story telling into our instruction!!

And Kassie is going to hate me, since we said we were going to use Windows Movie Maker as our sample for the technical aspect of editing tools. But after watching the Technology Tools screencast, I'm thinking should we look at WeVideo? I really like that it is a web-based software and allows for collaboration (great for K-12 since most schools systems really really professional learning communities and team teaching). Maybe we can use it for making our own video components AND use it as our sample technical portion.  Hmm??? I wonder if that is being too ambitious to change that portion too (since the WMM part is already available to us via our 521 training).

Also, just a question, but Kassie (since you are my Hoosier Buddy this week), is that our materials being used in the Job Aid screencast?? Example #3 at 1:60. Oh wait, she said it is an example of iMovie.  Well, it's definitely our training material doppleganger! Haha! (Also, I created one just like that when I ran the multimedia lab at BGSU!)

 I also feel confident after watching the job aid screencast the my chosen topic (How to Respond to Behavioral Issues in a Special Education classroom) is perfect. I 100% fits the criteria that Dr. Leftwich mentioned.

When job is infrequent - the main audience would be substitute teachers. They may sub a lot, but likely don't sub in special education classes every time.

Sometimes spec ed students who have difficult managing
frustration use aggressive behavior to express their
frustration. Special ed teachers, teacher aids, and substitute
teachers need to know how to calm these situations quickly
and efficiently when the do occur.

When the situation is complex - even though your first instinct with some issues might be to call the office, different situations call for different responses. These vary and aren't easy to memorize.

When the consequences of the error are serious - the main purpose of responding appropriately to behavioral issues is to protect the safety of the other students, the staff, and the student themselves.

When there are not significant resources - no school system, school, or teacher has the money or time to completed a full training on handling behavioral issues with students with mental and/or physical disabilities to every sub that walks in the door. Especially since there is no guarantee that sub would need to training ever again after leaving that classroom.

This weekend I asked my husband to bring home any and all of the resources currently used for helping subs coming into special ed classrooms at his school. And I am hoping to have a solid draft of my job aid finished by the end of the weekend...

Job Aids

So, in looking for job aid ideas, I found a Job Aid for Job Aids. :) Another good resource I found for Job Aids came from ASTD, which explains different types of job aids, how to analyze a job aid's function, reviews the kind of content that should go in one, and even gives some examples.

So far, I'm leaning towards a job aid for staff in a special education classroom at a high school. Special Education teachers are usually highly trained in handling behavioral problems, however, there are often cases where there would be staff in a special ed classroom who do not have this specialized training (classroom aides, substitute teachers, volunteers, etc). For that reason, a job aid of what to do in cases of behavioral problems would be a useful resource in a special education classroom.

I'm just beginning to learn about the principles of building a job aid, but from my brief research I'm imaging this job aid will most likely best be illustrated using a combination of a step-by-step and a decision table (If a student does x, then you should do y) and/or a flowchart (because the course of action on how to handle a certain behavioral issue really is dependent on varying circumstances).

The type of content I'm thinking of (this is not official, just based on my own thoughts:
Is the student using violent behavior? Yes.

If the student is using violent behavior, first remove the other students from the vicinity.

Is the student hurting him/herself?

If yes, call office security.

If no, wait for 5 minutes and allow the student the opportunity to cool down on his own

etc....

A job aid I kind-of like:

Pros	Cons
color scheme text is clear and easy to read the flow is clear and not complicated; I like how the arrows show the flow either as a one way direction or that the flow of information goes both ways.	I'm not digging the icons. The telephone is so old fashioned (which sometimes can be cool, but this is a technology job aid, so the retro isn't working for me) and I don't care for the "computer". I like the keyboard, but not the monitor.

A job aide I'm not crazy about:

Pros

Cons

I like the humor used I like the start is a green circle; and the end is red (but I'd like it better as either a circle or a stop-sign) I like the box with the title and description of the purpose of the job aid.

Text hard to read; the text on the pics is hard to read and covers up the pics, making them irrelevant, but the black on the gradient text is hard to read too. The black text has too much shading. The only text I like is the white on green. The squiggly lines don't add anything to me, they look squiggly just because, and not for any particular reasons; also, I want them to show the flow with I don't like the mixture of gradient shapes with the solid...be consistent

Other job aids I kind-of like (I searched for flow charts, since that is what I'm thinking of developing):

• Clear and simple


• Consistent shapes for content, with clear flow


• Good choice of graphics, clear flow


• Love it! Interesting topic. Good content. Great use of images. Good clear flow. Good colors. Consistent use of colors for the content. A+


• This is one that is like the Font one below (that I didn't like), but I like this one. The colors work better for me, making it easier to read and follow the logic. And the flow is more clear because their isn't overlap and there is arrows. 

Other job aids I'm not crazy about:

• Bad color, bad flow, too much going on


• I know I should like this one. I really should. The content is interesting to me. The design is simple. I like how they use the name of the font at the end. But I just don't like it. It's just TOO much info in a small space to me. And not enough color...the dotted white lines does not stand out enough on the black background. The flow is hard to follow because they overlap too much, and there are no arrows to show movement. I just don't like it.


• Hate it. This is a job aid on crack. Too much color...too many graphics. Not consistent colors for content blocks. Yuck!


• I mostly like this one...but it needs some tweaks. #1 there is too much unnecessary paragraph text. Instead of typing "If you like (book) then read (book) or (book)" they can accomplish the same things using simple "If you like"/"then read" phrases with the images of the books (which are already there!). Then if they feel necessary, they can just caption the images with the author's name.


• The actual content isn't bad. But the color is AWFUL! Very distracting and hard to read. And I'm positive they could rearrange the blocks in a way to make the flow a little mess manic looking.

Week 6: Evaluation

I am really interested in Evaluation... so this week's Tools for Evaluation and Assessment screencast was especially interesting to me. Most of the tools shared were brand new to me, so I am excited to try some of them out and to bring them back to my colleagues.

The biggest issue I have with online classes is the lack of timely evaluation and assessment. I have often been in the situation where I have multiple assignments due that are related to one another, but due weeks apart. Ideally, I would be receiving feedback via evaluation and assessment in a timely manner so that my subsequent assignments can be modified and improved based on the feedback I receive from the instructor, however more often than not, I am not receiving this feedback until well after a time that it would actually be useful to me. For instance, if I have a project proposal due, it would be useful to receive feedback on that before my first draft is due. But typically I have not. If I have a first draft due, it would be useful to receive feedback on that before the final draft, or even the second draft is due. But typically I have not.

Really, the number one thing that has frustrated me about online learning as a student is this issue with timely evaluation. Because as a student, I like to know if I'm moving in the right direction, and the best way to know that is by receiving feedback from the expert...my instructor. This issue is also directly related to Week 5's topic: Motivation. When I don't receive timely feedback from my instructor, it decreases my motivation. I'm less likely to work as hard on subsequent assignments if I feel like my instructor is slacking off on the assessments. I feel like "why should I invest a lot of time on this...my instructor isn't even looking at them anyway..."

As an instructor, evaluation is so important because of ^^^ that. I need to instill confidence in my students that Yes, I am reading everything you are submitting. Yes, I am putting in effort to be an active participant in this class as well. Yes, the work you do really does matter.

But also assessment is so important because not only does it tell the student "Yes you are learning what you are supposed to be learning" (or not), but it also tells me "Yes you are teaching what you think you are teaching" (or not).

So in review:

• Clear assessment is important, but it is also very important assessment is timely.
• Clear and timely assessment is important for student motivation.
• Clear and timely assessment is important for instructors to evaluate their instruction, and be able to modify and adjust if the learning objectives aren't being achieved by the students.
• All of these online tools are fantastic to help the instructor simplify their evaluation process. Hopefully the simplification will result in more online instructors giving more timely feedback.

P.S. Dr. Leftwich, I appreciate that the evaluations in this class have been more timely than any of my other online classes! Thank you!

Job aid topic brainstorming

Looking through the Week 6 To Do list, I noticed that the Job Aid assignment is coming up... so I started thinking of topics.

My husband is the Work Study Coordinator at Bloomington High School North, so immediately I thought of creating something useful for him and his staff and/or students.

I asked what kind of Job Aid would be helpful for his students and/or his staff... and these were the ideas we came up with:

For students:

How to get a job
This job aid would detail the process of looking for, applying for, and interviewing for a job. This would be useful both as a teaching aid in his classroom and for practical use in helping his students find jobs. And because many of his students are learning disabled, a clear job aid using lots of graphic representation would likely be more accessible to them than some descriptive text covering the same material.

Cons: could be hard to create visual representations for many of the steps, especially because many of them require written components.


For staff:

How to handle behavioral problems

The Work Study Coordinator has two classroom aides. These positions are full time, however, because they are not salaried permanent position, there is a fair amount of turn over from year to year. So having a job aid to help train new job aids on how to deal with behavioral problems (which can commonly occur in special ed classrooms) would be useful for him. But also, it would be useful for when one of the aides is out, and there is a substitute in the room who might not be very familiar with protocol.

What to do during a seizure

Since many of the special education students are on medications that list seizures as possible side effects, special education teachers more so than other teachers really need to know what to do in case of an emergency. For the same reasons listed above (high staff turnover, uncertified substitutes, etc), having a clear and graphic explanation of how to respond in one of these emergencies would really benefit the staff and the students.

Con: There are some posters detailing the steps of dealing with a seizure already. I am not interested in reinventing the wheel.

Thoughts?

INFOGRAPHIC FINAL COPY!

Hey y'all!

I have a busy weekend planned, so I got my infographic done a little ahead of schedule. Yippee!!

Thank you to everyone for all of the feedback. I think I incorporated it all! :)

Here is my final draft of the infographic assignment (to view it without the profile over it, just right click and choose "View Image in New Tab". Then you should be able to zoom in to it full size 11x17).

W5 Motivation

For this week's blog on Motivation, I chose to review one of the Business Studies lessons on the mentormob.com site: How to Negotiate a Salary.

Honestly, I chose this training because I suck at salary negotiation, and I figured if I was going to watch a training to evaluate for motivation, I'd pick one that I'd be intrinsically motivated by at the onset. :)

The training is split into 6 parts.


Part I
The first part is, in my opinion the best. It is a Howcast video that is very well organized, clear, concise, and even entertaining. 

The video begins with an introduction to the topic. Then gives of a list of things you will need (Salary data, patience, asking price, convincing arguments, confidence, potential compromises). Then it goes step-by-step through each of those components explaining why you need them in voiceover, while showing supporting video. The video is very well shot and the actors are just over dramatic enough to be pretty entertaining. (I especially like the very dramatic head nods :). They demonstrate each of the steps as being described, so that the explanation is clear. Also, I like that the video uses text to highlight important aspects (like the list at the beginning and the tips, such as "Ask for a salary range", and "If you lack confidence, your potential employer will know you won't argue with a low offer."), and that they clearly mark these with titles "You will need" and "Tip". (This is especially interesting to me, since my team project will be teaching how to make instructional videos).

This video is on the Independent side of the Interaction scale, but I feel like it is still pretty Engaging. It draws the learner in with its quirky acting and sound effects. It's a very Directive Structure, but again, I did choose to watch this video, so in that way my motivation was already set towards them. The clear narration being acted out and accompanied by text make it very easy for anyone to follow. They are definitively not trying to challenge their audience, but simplify a socially complex situation that many people have difficulty with.

Part II
Part II of the training is a Washington Post article called Know Your Worth by Sakina Rangwala, published on October 9.

I have to say that the first thing I noticed about this article is that there are zero comments, only 4 Facebook recommends and only 6 Tweets. And it was published 5 months ago. I have to admit that seeing this colored my opinion of the article pretty quickly.

Overall the article is nicely divided into 6 parts: How do I determine my worth?, What impacts my worth?, How do I find the typical salary for my position?, When's the best time to bring up the subject of salary?, Do I have to disclose my salary history? and I have a job offer from Company A and a higher offer from Company B. I really want to work for Company A. What should I do? The information in the article is pretty generic. It's the same stuff we've heard over and over again "Don't be the first to bring up salary," "Have a walk away number in your head," etc. And I *love* their suggestion for How do I find the typical salary for my position?: Check the job announcement for a salary range. (Sarcasm alert!) Really? I should read the job announcement to see what they are willing to pay?

Overall, I'm just not motivated much by this article. Nothing bothers me about the design itself, or the structure/organization of the information. But the content itself is just so useless. It's the same old regurgitation of cliched "what-to-do"s. And really, while the information in Part I might be just as old and generic, it was presented in a novel and interesting way, so it did engage the learner, and I would have watched the video to the end even if it hadn't been a class assignment. This article however, I would have stopped reading after the first paragraph.

Part III
Part III is another video, entitled Human Resources: How to Negotiate Salary During Job Offer. Again, this is a really good example for me, given my Team's Project Topic. Because the woman in this video gives basically all the same information as the video in Part I, with a little more emphasis on the actual semantics of the back and forth, but it is sooooo boring. First of all, her speech is very monotone and the video is just a head shot of a brown football helmet (allusion to Steel Magnolias) speaking to the camera. It is about as Passive a video as you can get...I am not at all engaged by what she is saying. Also, this is a great example to me of how using simple editing techniques like text can really improve a video's effectiveness. Because the woman says things like "you'll need to do # things" and "first of all", but there are not titles/text/captions that pop up to support what she is saying. Inserting that kind of text into a video like this really does ease the complexity for the learner, and would have helped to break up the monotone monologue that she delivered.

Part IV
Part IV just takes you to Salary.com. Salary.com has been mentioned a few times in the previous Parts as a way to estimate the salary range (if not provided). 

This is the first portion of the training where the learner has an opportunity to interact with the content. So far they've been told to "find a reasonable salary range", but by inserting this step, learners are directed to practice finding those ranges. They are not collaborating peer to peer, instructor to student, so as far as the definition Dr. G gave us, it's still an Independent Interaction, however because they will actually be entering parameters and receiving feedback, it is much more actively engaging. Also, learners have more choice, because they can search for salaries by job or for jobs by salaries, etc. Overall I think the website has a lot going on that I wish wasn't there. It actually took me a few seconds to figure out where we were and why. But I guess all of those buttons and ads are a necessary evil if the site wants to stay free for users. :)

Part V
Part V takes us to Salary Expert.com. This section is basically a repeat of Part IV. I guess there point is just to show you that there are multiple ways to research the same topic. Personally, I like the SalaryExpert.com layout better. It is a clear white screen except for the actual information you have to enter. So to me, it has all the same levels of Interaction/Engagement/Structure as Part IV, but the complexity of this one is lower on the Ease scale because it just seems more clear and user friendly than the Salary.com page.

Part VI
Part VI is yet another Salary database website. Again, I think they are just trying to give the learner a lot of Choice. "See, here are all of the different ways you can find a salary". At this point I can't even remember if they emphasized checking multiple resources during the first 3 parts, but if they didn't, they should.

Overall impression
To me, they could have shown the first video (as the introduction to the concepts) and maybe two salary wizards (for practice and comparison), and then ended with a summary page, reviewing what the learner had learned using a bulleted list,asking them to consider certain things, and providing additional references (such as the additional salary calculators and the New York Post article). I think the overall take away would have been the same overall level of interaction, structor, and engagement, but the complexity would have been less challenging and the overall interest in the content would have been better. Because as it is now, the most entertaining (IMO) part of the 6 step training right now...is the first step. After that...they kind of lost the interest of this learner.

Infographic First Look

Yikes. I'm nervous to post this! But I want to get some feedback before submitting my final project.

Please be kind. :)

P.S. Sorry I uploaded it so big. It is designed to be a 11 x 17 poster, and you couldn't read a lot of it when it was smaller. Just "Open image in new window/tab" and then you should be able to read it there (without my profile text obstructing the view.

Design Question

I'm working on how to do the map for my Infographic, and it occurs to me that there are many people who don't know where Central Asia is. So I thought I should maybe add the names of some of the neighboring countries (Russia, China, India, Iran, Turkey) to give people a reference point for location. I tried adding them as a smaller font and using 50% opacity. Is it distracting? Unnecessary?  Feedback/ideas/suggestions...

Thanks

Reflection: Infographics: Visualizing Relationships

I've already watched the First and Second of the infographic series on Lynda.com, so I figured I should go ahead and watch the last in the series: Visualizing Relationships.

The main point of this video is to teach someone how to make a Radial chart to show relationships between multiple entities.

This was interesting to me, because I had never made a radial chart before.

While watching the video, I actually started thinking of how I could use a radial chart to depict the relationships between the Central Asia languages and the US universities that teach them. This was actually an aha moment for me, because before watching this video, I wasn't sure how I was going to depict this information.