Running head: STRATEGIC THINKING 1

Get Your Career in Gear: Design Project Report

Kellie Ventimilia-Vicent, Heather Rougeot, Michael Vicent, Sarah Barnhart

California State University Monterey Bay

IST 626 Advanced Instructional Design

Dr. Jeanne Farrington

July 23, 2019

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Get Your Career in Gear: Design Project Report

Our client is seeking to incorporate a new training that will help civilian and military

employees at the Department of Defense (DoD) engage in strategic thought about their career

development. The DoD wants to provide their employees the space to explore their future career

opportunities and strategize about their paths to successful career advancements. By introducing

a new way of thinking about their professional development, employees will seek out current and

future opportunities for themselves within the organization. As an effort to continue to develop

and cultivate strategic thinkers within the DoD, this training will help employees thrive in their

professional career pathways.

Client and Organizational Goals

Recruiting new talent and retaining critical talent are two challenges confronting the

Department of Defense. Workforce Development contributes to the solutions of these challenges

by providing talent management and life-cycle career services for its civilian and military

workforce. Our client is Dr. Clare Carey who is the Director of Workforce Development. She

and her department wishes to foster a more proactive culture toward career development by

cultivating employees with strategic mindsets for professional growth.

Learner Analysis

The training addresses Department of Defense employees served by Workforce

Development. The target audience is primarily civilian employees with a wide range of ages,

experience levels, and motivation for career planning. The primary learners will be employees

whose careers range from 5 to 15 years of experience and may also include members of the

military, or employees just starting their careers.

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This application training will also benefit active duty military and civilian employees

who are preparing to retire, as many retirees choose to explore post-retirement employment

positions within the Department of Defense. Military retirees may benefit from this training

intervention by analyzing the skills they have gained during their military service that will

transfer to civilian positions. Additionally, civilian employees may benefit by identifying skills

required for internal organizational growth opportunities upon retirement.

Per our client, the target audience tends to be more reactive instead of being proactive

about career advancement. They are dedicated to the jobs that they perform, but they often do not

have the knowledge or the motivation to take a strategic approach to further their careers. Often,

this leads to stagnation in career advancement, despite the opportunities that are available. The

course design is focused on ways to motivate learners to become more engaged in applying

strategic thinking principles to their own career development.

Project Description

Dr. Carey has emphasized the K.I.S.S. approach: keep it simple and short. We have

worked closely with Dr. Carey to ensure our design is user-friendly and meets the organization’s

needs. In our “Get Your Career in Gear” course design, our team offers a PowerPoint

presentation with an instructor script, an instructor’s guide, a student workbook, and a level I

pre- and post-test evaluation. This course will be offered to DoD employees regularly as a 60 to

90-minute in-person lesson. During the course, learners will have the opportunity to work on

different activities that are built-in to their student workbooks.

We have four main topics in our PowerPoint presentation slides: Know, Think, Speak,

Act (KTSA). Each topic presents different strategic thinking methods and how to implement

strategic thought, speech, and action in each individual’s career development. The presentation
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slides have a script for the instructor to follow; this is meant to be an easy and sufficient guide

for anyone instructing the course. The script is written with a conversational tone of voice so that

when the instructor reads the script to learners in person, the instruction will feel less forced and

more interactive.

The instructor’s guide is also a significant piece to our design, as it offers time

management and sequencing for the instructor. The instructor’s guide explains the purpose of the

lesson and contains six instructional objectives, materials, assessments, and a reflection.

Additionally, the instructor’s guide includes step-by-step directions that reflect the amount of

time to allocate to each slide, the slide number, and materials needed for each slide. All of this

information aligns with the course presentation and is included to help the instructor navigate

and operate the course effectively.

Design Decisions

Dr. Carey generously allowed our team to work creatively throughout the design. During

our weekly client meetings, we received great constructive feedback that helped keep us on track

for meeting the organizational goals. One of our first decisions that we had to make as a team

was how we would be offering this course—strictly in-person, online, or both. We ultimately

decided that the best possible course design would be an in-person course where learners would

be able to ask questions and interact with the instructor, as well as with each other. However, we

also made sure that the material would be suited for an online environment for the individual

learner that is unable to attend the in-person instruction.

Next, important decisions were made which consisted of what our main content topics

would be, as well as how we would present the content. After our team researched multiple

articles and topics on strategic thinking, we found that breaking the content into sections would
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be the best way for learners to easily absorb the most information. We decided on the acronym

KTSA, which was an idea from a source written by Nina Bowman in her article, “4 Ways to

Improve Your Strategic Thinking Skills,” where she speaks about knowing, thinking, speaking,

and acting strategically.

Additionally, we decided on four learning activities--one activity for each section:

1. Know - The learners will complete a checklist activity to assist them in determining their

skill sets. They will read different skills in seven different categories and chose to mark

skills as strengths, interests, and/or growth opportunities.

2. Think - The learners will apply the Strategic Thinking concepts that they have learned to

3 scenarios. They will then discuss their ideas with a partner.

3. Speak - The learners will work in groups to write down the names of several employees

whose opinion they trust (such as a peer, supervisor, or mentor) and draft a message to

them asking about the skills or traits that they feel add value to the team or organization.

4. Act - The learners will end the training by using a template to create a career plan, which

will include positions they would like to hold in the future, areas for growth necessary to

qualify for those positions, next steps they need to take to start progressing toward their

career goals, and timeframes for completing them.

Overall, the team’s decisions made throughout the completion of this project were with

the help and guidance of our client, Dr. Carey. She set aside time to meet with us on a weekly

basis where she carefully listened to our ideas and thoroughly reviewed our draft materials. She

offered grammatical and content improvements each week that ultimately enhanced and refined

the course design as a whole. Dr. Carey also stepped outside of this project to offer meaningful

career advice, which we are all extremely grateful for.

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Evaluation

Once development was complete, we conducted usability testing with third party

sources. We selected three people to test the course. We chose an electrical engineer, a

contractor with the Department of Defense, and someone working their first adult job. One of the

testers took the course as a self-guided training in the online format and the other two

received in-person with one of our team members as the instructor.

The testers provided feedback on the course, content in the presentation, and their overall

experience. They found that the training was easy to navigate and follow. They had no major

issues completing the training, nor any difficulty transitioning between activities or slides in the

training. Their feedback was positive and they found the content useful and easy to comprehend.

Some specific feedback the testers gave the team was that some of the terms or phrases

used were not always clear and stated that certain phrases should be elaborated on during the

Powerpoint presentation. Terms such as, “big picture” were found to be vague with no clear

definition of time or scope for example. The testers also pointed out that some of the language

used in the support materials did not always align with the language used in the Powerpoint,

which created a disconnect between the content and the associated activity. In addition, testers

felt that there was too much instructional content on some slides in relation to the visual content

that appears on the presentation view. They felt as though too much time would be spent on an

individual slide without adding visual interest. Some final comments on the Student Handbook

indicated the additional support for in-class participants would help complete activities when the

information for a section was no longer displayed on the screen.

After receiving feedback from the testers, we were able to make some changes to our

training based on their recommendations. We aligned the language in each of our training
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materials so that it is consistent. We added some content from the presentation to the Student

Handbook to improve the learners’ ability to complete the activities. Due to time constraints, we

were unable to make significant changes to the amount of instructional content associated with

each slide. However, we agree with the feedback we received and have considered ways that the

presentation could be improved to maintain learners’ interest in engagement. We discussed

breaking the content into smaller chunks across more slides or animating bullet points to appear

on-screen as the material is covered.

Our client did not require a formal assessment for the course, but the team felt it was

appropriate to use short questionnaires to get learners thinking about the content before the

course begins and to provide a knowledge check to help them gauge learning after completing

the class. The client requested that the questionnaires be brief, so we limited them to 6 questions.

The client does not intend to collect the questionnaires from learners, but indicated that

instructors for the in-person classes might do an informal check-in with students about their

results. In the future, however, the tests could be collected as a means to measure learning if the

client chooses to do so.

Teamwork

Our team decided on our project roles very early on. Our first team assignment was to

establish our roles prior to our first client meeting so that our communication with our client

would be consistent throughout the entire course design. We established our roles as follows:

 Project Manager: Sarah Barnhart

 Facilitator: Kellie Ventimillia-Vicent

 Designer: Michael Vicent

 Graphic Designer: Heather Rougeot

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Sarah was responsible for ensuring all group meetings were scheduled and created all

agenda items for each weekly meeting. She kept group members on top of their tasks, and made

sure all assignments were submitted accurately and on-time. She made sure the team addressed

client questions, comments, and concerns. She ensured the project was meeting the

organization's mission statement based on the initial client project definition and all instruction

from the client to follow. She was also responsible for communicating with Dr. Farrington as

necessary. She recorded notes at group meetings and emailed them to the team each week. She

also developed the timeline and deliverable dates. She made sure all email communication

addressed the team’s next-steps clearly and checked in regularly with group members prior to

deadlines. Sarah also played a large role in grammatical edits to all reports and written

assignment.

Kellie was the point-of-contact for all of Dr. Carey’s questions and comments. She

emailed Dr. Carey all of our design revisions and scheduled each weekly client meeting. Kellie

also presented the project definition document and project design document to Dr. Carey. She

responded back to Dr. Carey with professionalism and made sure to include all zoom meeting

links as necessary. She sent upcoming meeting reminders to Dr. Carey and set the agenda for the

meeting ahead of time so that Dr. Carey knew what to expect. She was responsible for

responsiveness and “thank you” emails to the client. Kellie also developed the instructor guide

and infographics. She always communicated additional needs to the project manager.

Michael created the formatting for the final product submission, such as the content

outline to the PowerPoint. He ensured the design work was evenly distributed amongst team

members based on quantity of tasks involved in the design. Michael researched much of the

content and voiced suggestions on how the content would best be presented in the overall design.
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Michael also worked with many of the course revisions. He checked in regularly with group

members upon every group meeting and prior to deadlines. Michael always communicated

additional needs to the project manager.

Heather created the design and layout for the PowerPoint presentation and ensured that

banners, graphics, fonts, and colors were consistent throughout the document. She also designed

and created the Student Workbook containing the custom templates and guides for all learner

activities, while ensuring that the content, colors and theme aligned with the PowerPoint

presentation and instructor guide. Heather always asked for design feedback from all team

members before passing the design materials on to Kellie to deliver to the client. Based on client

feedback, she researched, modified and created new, custom graphics to tie together the content

and theme with the client’s vision. She was responsible for making sure all graphics met the

needs of the client, specifically ensuring they were culturally sensitive and retained consistency

of the theme throughout the design. In addition to her design work, she also helped with content

and grammatical edits for all documents. She checked in regularly with group members with

questions, ideas or concerns at every group meeting and prior to deadlines. She made sure to

communicate any additional needs to the project manager.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges was ensuring all of the content aligned. For example, after

making changes to the student workbook, the instructor’s guide needed close review to make

sure the instruction aligned with the presentation. We also faced challenges with consistency.

Since we had multiple hands on multiple aspects of the course materials, we had to make sure

our content, presentation, graphics, layout, and color scheme were all consistent.
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In addition, one of our team members had an unforeseen medical emergency that slightly

affected our timeline. However, we communicated this situation to our client who understood

entirely and was extremely supportive. By good fortune, our team member was back to good

health, and we were able to present our draft materials prior to the deadline.

Lastly, we had trouble with our client being able to see the notes in the PowerPoint. This

was a significant challenge because the notes act as the script for the presenter who delivers the

course. Luckily, we were able to turn our PowerPoint into a PDF so that the notes were visible to

the client.

Advice for Future Students

The following advice is for prospective MIST students and our future instructional

designers:

1. Assign your project roles early. Establish who will be responsible for each

aspect of the project, like establishing communication with the client, designing

the graphics, laying out the foundation of the course materials, keeping everyone

on track, etc. All team members can evenly contribute to all aspects of the design,

but assigning your team roles early will help you manage the entire project.

2. Schedule weekly team meetings. It is helpful to schedule team meetings often.

Set an hour aside each week to meet with your team. Make sure you have an

agenda for each meeting so you are using your time wisely. It also helps to

schedule these meetings shortly after meeting with your client so you can debrief

as a team about your client’s thoughts and feedback.

3. Check in with your client regularly. You may think that you and your team

have designed a wonderful course for your client’s topic, but if it does not meet
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the organizational objectives, then you will not deliver a successful course. It is

important to communicate regularly with your client so that all elements of your

design meets your client’s needs. Do not assume you know what they want.

4. Do not “tease” your client with materials that you cannot deliver. You may

get carried away with creative ideas in hopes to offer your client the latest and

greatest course design, but there are very real factors you will need to consider.

Most evidently, you are limited on time. Also, your client may not be able to use

your product due to logo stamps or functionality features that will not align with

the organization’s operations.

5. Don’t wait to get started. Start now… Right now! The sooner you get started,

the more time you will have to think your ideas through. There is simply no time

to wait. Create a timeline for all of the project deadlines, including client

meetings, and team meetings. Stick to your timeline and stay ahead or you will

more than likely fall behind.

6. Think with learning objectives in mind. It’s easy to get carried away with the

great ideas you and your client have come up with and all of the activities you

want to create. However, be sure to take the time and think about your client’s

needs/goals and the learning objectives for each topic you plan on introducing in

your training. You may begin creating activities with no real learning objective in

mind. Define your learning outcomes early and then create activities to support

those objectives.