ID vs PM: Deciding Upon Priorities

Deciding Upon Priorities

ID

While an Instructional Designer (ID) may carry his or her roles solely, a Project Manager (PM) resorts to different people once the project gets underway (Laureate Educate, 2011). Reflecting on my experience as a math teacher, project management constitutes an essential part of my work as an instructional designer belonging to multidisciplinary work groups (vanRooij, 2011. The complexity of the roles of a PM requires of him or her knowledge or ideas about instructional design, and the nature of the duties of an ID demands him or her to understand project management. As a teacher, I act as project manager, guiding the process, motivating my students (team), assessing their work, and providing guides (problem-solving techniques) to them to be successful. The team (students) also develops project management skills.

According to Lin (2006), instructional design is “the systematic and reflective process of translating principles of learning and instruction into plans for instructional materials, activities, information resources, and evaluation” (p.3). Acting as an instructional designer (ID), I would consider the needs and context as priorities during the initial phases of a project. Instructional design constitutes a way of thinking, of planning and of increasing the likelihood of a proposed solution, which will result in measurable improvement of an existing condition. ADDIE consists of systematic approaches to instructional design to analyze a performance problem, then design and develop a program. I will seek to develop clear and detailed description of all objectives, including performance measures and performance target to achieve the desired outcome. I will identify the key stakeholders for whom the project is being performed, will determine the benefits: Returns on investment (ROI) that the stakeholders projected from the project, and will think about the characteristics as bench mark for comparison should in case the project would address an existing situation.

As a normal procedure, I would undertake a formal investigation and documentation of the likelihood of the project being successful. It is important to think of what the project team as a whole, as well as each individual expert member would like to accomplish. I will study the parameters of the objective function, subject to the constraints to ascertain the feasible region for optimal output. I will analyze the human resources matrix, to ascertain which individual will work on an activity and the work effort that each resource will invest in the activity.

My role as an ID, prompts me to think as a PM. In any project, pre-planning is essential in seeking in advance if there is a need to think of any unforeseen (uncertainty) that might positively or negatively impact the clear, specific set objectives, for remedy. As a designer I need to be proactive. As a teacher and an instructional designer, I assume the role of a project manager in the classroom. I consider a project management as an extension to an instructional design. The designer follows a detailed systematic procedure to implement the design. Like an instructional designer, an effective project manager considers factors in the physics of the societal changes. While the instructional designer practically uses the appropriate technology to guide his or her design, the project manager focuses on the changes in economies, the people, management, and the organization, as the world interacts in a global market. The instructional designer is the architecture providing the blue print from start to finish of a program, while the project manager coordinates the unique interrelated activities of the goal-oriented project from start to finish. It is easier for the instructional designer to assume both the role of the designer and a project manager; though the converse may not necessary be true, it is important that the PM should have some ideas about or skills if an ID. As an effective manager, the PM coordinates and oversees each aspect of a project from start to finish. S/he may not be able to solve all the problems but s/he can solicit the help from the multidisciplinary project teams rather than through individual effort. Effective project management is a critical competency for anyone participating in such teamwork and, certainly, for today’s instructional design (ID) professional.

References

Brill, J.M., Bishop, M.J., & Walker, A.E. (2006). The competencies and characteristics required of an effective Project Manager: A web-based Delphi Study. Educational Technology Research and Development, (54)2, 115-140.

Lin, H. (2006). Instructional project management: An emerging professional practice for design and training programs.Workforce Education Forum, (33)2, 1-18.

Portny, S.E., Mantel, S.J. Meredith, J.R., Shafer, S.M., & Sutton, M.M. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

van Rooij, S.W. (2011). Instructional design and project management: Complementary or divergent? Educational Technology, Research and Development, (59)1, 139-159.