Coaching the Customer

Instructional design is a double-edged sword. One side of the blade is learners who will engage with the material. As the instructional designer, I had to delve into the personalities, learning styles, demographics and prior knowledge of the learners in order to craft meaningful lessons. However, the second side, that will cut you if ignored, is the customer - the actual business, school district, teacher, etc. - who has requested the development of a learning product. This week, I turned my attention to this second edge.

My customer, high school principals and apprenticeship coordinators, are not subject matter experts. This made my job easier, as I spent my time conversing with customers to hear what their needs were in terms of time frame, educational setting, and deliverables as opposed to conversations that included all of those topics AND content.

One interesting point in the conversation came when I questioned the time frame of the course. I suggested that the first two tiers be designed for completion within one semester and the last tier be opened up to a full school year. The last tier is dedicated to leadership - a fairly chewy topic with more intense evidence needed. The customers weren’t sold. The course is competency-based. This means students work to provide proof of competency in a behavior or personal character trait. The customers thought that the time should be open-ended to allow a student to continue to work on a tier until every competency at that tier is mastered.

Mastery-based, competency education does mean that a student is allowed to work toward a skill until it is mastered - instead of being pushed on to keep pace with peers. However, the customers were clear that they needed to be able to give a grade at the end of a semester. These felt like opposing forces - opened ended time to allow for mastery vs. a hard stop at the end of the semester.

Luckily, I have been researching soft skills programs for a while. I was able to cite a program in Chicago that has a repeatable “professionalism” curriculum that school staff encourages students to return to each semester in order to continue their personal development. The content offerings are deep enough to allow continued pursuit of mastery at varying levels of difficulty.

Ed Surge's Whole Student Competency Plot;
Retrieved from Edsurge.com

My extended research on the topic also allowed me to share a tool created by the educational think tank Educause that maps growth toward a cloud of goals in a visual that looks a little like a spider web. Each trait area has an arm that extends from a shared center point to the outer rim (likes spokes on a wheel). Students are scored for each trait on a continuum that extends from the center point (beginning learner) to the outer rim (mastery), then the scores are connected in a loop. Each loop represents a snapshot of learning and the gap between loops is a visual representation of student growth.

Educators are easily won over with pretty graphics, so the scoring tool and repeatable competencies made sense to my customer. This graphing tool would have a loop of scores that represent minimum proficiency. When a student has achieved minimum proficiency in every skill/trait, they can earn a grade for the course. A student could repeat the course until the student has achieved mastery in all skills/traits.

As I transition out of the analysis phase and into the design phase, I’ll take with me the lesson I learned this week. It was very beneficial to be smart on my topic when meeting with the customer. Continuing to stay on top of best practices and research as a subject matter expert will likely make design a lot easier as well.