Revisiting the Wheel

In 2015, I joined a team of individuals at my organization to reimagine the delivery of our curriculum and youth apprenticeship program. Tapped for my skills in content integration and curriculum development, I was joined by a technical education expert, a character development expert, and a corporate training expert. As early as our first meeting, we discussed the development of a character and leadership component to our new program development.

It is now January of 2018. Since the early days of the team assembled three years ago, our character and leadership curriculum has gone through an annual revision. As the face of the team has changed, and as we are no longer only providing service to our own students, I have been (re)tasked with creating a stand-alone soft skills curriculum that can be delivered online and supported through a blended learning model.

Image from Max Pixel; 
Made available through CC0 Public Domain 

I have to admit, on the surface it looks (and even feels) like recreating the wheel. Soft skills curriculum providers fill educator and career training conference vendor rooms. So, this project doesn’t even have a novel stance with outside customers. At least, that’s a what an onlooker might think without digging deeper.

Truthfully, in my last year as a masters student in the Online Teaching and Instructional Design program at Lenoir Rhyne University, I have learned the value of an iterative process. Last year, I didn’t even know that “iterative” meant repeated or that an iterative process was similar to a model of continuous improvement (I understood that cliche phrase). Now, I understand that my task isn’t to reinvent the wheel, rather, I am revisiting the wheel.

This blog will track my design progress and process as I embark on the task of creating GPS Soft Skills 4.0 - the next iteration of our character/leadership and employability curriculum and assessment. Please feel free to comment, add suggestions, and provide encouragement.

Resources
For more information iterative design models, I really like this article:
Makhlouf, Jack. (2016, August 21). Iterative Design Models: ADDIE vs. Sam. Retrieved from: http://elearningmind.com/iterative-design-different-strokes-different-folks/