Reflections
What did we learn from going through the Analysis phase? What "aha" moments did we encounter? What mindsets were useful as we went through process? And how did we identify and question our assumptions? We took a moment to think about these questions as part of our Reflections.
This section was informed by the works of Brown & Green (2015).
Team Reflections
Thoughts on the Analysis Phase
Our reflections allowed us to discuss what we thought about our team dynamics as well, which helped us modify some things as we headed into the Design phase.
Walking through the first design phase, I think I kind of got to know what "learning design" or "instructional design" means. My "aha moments" were when we narrow down our target learners based on the SME's suggestion and the survey result, as well as when we narrow down the main contents we are going to cover based on the survey results and the first round of analysis. There narrow-downs really gave us place to step into.
The challenge can be that the time of analysis and research was very limited, and we didn't have a time to discuss deeply and get everyone to the same page. However, I think we did great job regarding team works. Each of the member took charge of what s/he is good at and submitted a pretty good work. Within such a short time, our group has handed in a fairly good work because of the good team work.
As for information about the project, I think we have done a lot regarding users/needs analysis and content analysis, the next step can be to discuss deeply and organize the information together, and make a more clear information structure.
Zora
One particularly memorable moment from the analysis phase was this validation of an assumption that we discussed when initially exploring this problem, before we even spoke with potential learners. This assumption was the fact that many learners’ experiences are either negatively or positively influenced by family and friends when it comes to financial literacy. Once we actually began conducting interviews, learners were reaffirming this assumption that we had, which made me feel a certain sense of confidence that we were coming into this project with the right mindset.
Otherwise, another aha moment was the fact that in our interview script there wasn’t a specific question mentioned about learner motivation, however, this was something that came up naturally throughout each interview conducted, so it was helpful and an interesting insight how much of a factor motivation plays when it comes to this topic of financial literacy. Biggest challenge during this phase was lack of time to complete each milestone, especially combined with readings & weekly takeaways, and now also the individual focus project .
Very grateful for the team, as everyone is very supportive and dedicated to doing justice to this topic. Biggest point where my viewpoint differed from that of my team members was in the beginning when deciding whether we were going to conduct one-on-one interviews in addition to the survey that we had sent out. I was of the mindset to just use the survey, rather than trying to squeeze in interviews within the week and a half that we had left to conduct said interviews and then put all of our findings together to present. However, in hindsight, I’m glad that my team members advocated for us to do the interviews as it helped provide some much needed validation to the decisions that we will make moving forward in terms of the design.
We approached this by speaking and checking in with our SME and conducting one-on-one interviews with potential learners. As I mentioned in a previous response, it was helpful speaking with potential learners in order to check and question our assumptions, as they ended up reaffirming them and ensuring that we were on the right track. Same went for our initial conversation with our SME, we had an idea of areas of interest based on survey responses and how we might narrow our focus in regards to our target learners, however, upon speaking with our SME he confirmed that segmenting the audience based on stage in their financial journey rather than an age range may be more beneficial given our specific goals and objectives for this project.
Deja
I think one of the most unique challenges we faced right off the bat concerned how we were going to incorporate the Design Thinking Process into our Instructional Design model, particularly in regards to our research process. We sought to empathize with our potential users first (thus, incorporating the DTP) but most Instructional Design models jumped straight into an Analysis stage (whether a Needs or Gap). We were able to resolve this issue upon discovering models like Kemp, which provided the kind of flexibility and non-linearity that we needed for this project. Not only did we realize that there was probably a suitable model for all sorts of circumstances, we also came to realize how much freedom we had to change, merge, or otherwise manipulate the various models and tools we had at our disposal. Instead of feeling constrained to the parameters of any single approach or model, we learned that we could apply more of a “Swiss army knife” approach to things.
We found it immensely helpful to have established our group norms together during our kickoff session since this helped put us all on the same page regarding expectations and teamwork. We also agreed to double up on assignments so that there were always at least 2 pairs of eyes on every assignment. This proved to be very valuable since we were using the Kemp model, a very learner-centric model that required each stage of the process to make frequent touchbacks to the results of our learner analysis.
One of the greatest benefits of having no prior knowledge on a subject (which was our case) was the fact that we were acutely aware of this. This allowed us to approach the topic as complete novices and take cautious steps forward in terms of building our design. We put a special emphasis on finding and then interviewing a true subject matter expert, which gave us a very clear framework on how to proceed (that we ourselves may otherwise not have been able to do, especially within the limited timeframe). Having ignorance on a matter ended up helping us identify more strongly with our users and ask the kinds of questions that they would.
Iron
Min
To approach this project, I think we did a good job planning out our research methods in the beginning and assigning members to work in small groups to tackle different data. As a team having a background in UX design(since we all took UX design class before), we also very naturally incorporated the design thinking process into our research phase to inform us of some directions. My biggest “aha” moment came from discussing survey/interview results with group members. From this discussion, we were able to find some common themes in a thread, for example, all the interviewees actually touched upon “credibility” issues in different ways. I remember one of the interviewees said he wanted to have someone he can trust to talk about financial issues and another interviewee said it is hard for her to judge the credibility of some articles online. So when we did affinity maps, these two comments both led to “credibility”.
The biggest personal challenge is doing interviews and affinity map. I felt that I was having difficulty not bringing into my opinions/assumptions as I am also considered as the target learners for our project. For example, when I interpret people’s answers, I might unconsciously use my logic/reasons. Another challenge for our group I personally think is the balance between width and depth of the topics. We all confessed that we don’t have much knowledge on this topic, so it is hard for us to make some decisions on the content-related issues (i.e. sequencing). I think we need to work more closely with our SME heading to the next phase.
Reflections help the team focus on improving the working relationship of the group...[allowing] team members to voice concerns, share successes, and provide feedback that will help the team to complete projects successfully.
Brown & Green, 2015, p. 176