Management
AgrInstruct UGA Extension Moodle Transfer
Course: EDIT 7550E
Project Summary
During EDIT 7550E, Management of Instructional Technology Projects with Dr. Robert Branch, my team and I worked with UGA Extension’s Agricultural and Natural Resources Program to transform an existing Moodle course into a completely new, redesigned Articulate Rise course. As the chosen project manager, I was responsible for keeping my team on task and up to date with the latest communication or requests from our client. Our scope document shows a work breakdown schedule and organized Gantt chart I created to keep track of when we were expected to submit certain deliverables, like assignments for the course and our updated Rise modules. Being in the role of project manager can be daunting, especially for me as this was my first experience being the lead of a team - but I took this responsibility as a way to motivate and challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone in terms of management. I was the voice of our team and I made sure to check in weekly with our client via email and, occasionally when clarification was needed on a certain aspect of the project, over Zoom. However, my team and I had weekly meetings and used the project management website Jira to track each members’ progress on our respective modules. Groupme was another main form of communication for me and my team and was a great outlet for questions or thoughts that needed to be addressed immediately.
Our risk management plan, as outlined in our scope document, helped tremendously with mitigating issues that could potentially come up and significantly benefitted our ability to bounce back from a plan deviation. In fact towards the middle of our project timeline after struggling to retrieve existing content with our limited access, our client was unable to get ahold of the original files embedded in the Moodle course, so she gave us creative freedom to remake content into interactive activities and shorten lecture videos. Although this was a benefit for our team in terms of development, it caused a ripple effect where we had to change the previously format of our modules. Luckily this was something that was planned for in our risk management plan, allowing us to get back on track quite quickly and finalize the course’s complete redesign from Moodle to Rise.
Auto Finance Company Needs Assessment Report
Course: EDIT 7150E
Project Summary
In EDIT 7150E, Principles of Human Performance Technology and Analysis with Dr. Jill Stefaniak, project and time management were key skills put to work for this course. When working with a real client, it is to be expected that their response times are often unpredictable. The client my team and I were working with was never consistent in communication. Due to this issue, we were delayed in deploying our data collection tools, ultimately requiring us to build flexibility into our timeline. With this came participant availability problems that were mitigated by adjusting interview times and opting for asynchronous ways of receiving feedback, like an anonymous survey. Although we did have issues with our client, one of the strengths that came with this project was the collaboration of my team. The team members I had during the course of this project all shared the “teamwork makes the dream work” mentality. We had bi-weekly meetings where we communicated our struggles and alternative responses for issues we were running into. The clear objectives set by my team in our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the start of our project assisted us with staying on track, despite our client communication issues, which we proactively presented to each new person of contact. By having those stay consistent, and my team’s ability to manage priorities and respond effectively to unexpected challenges, we were able to ensure that the project was a success and our recommendations were supported by the data we collected.