Teamwork and Course Design

I decided to partner with Matt to complete our final curriculum project.

At first, I thought the best approach would be to work independently. The Lone Ranger approach is very natural for me as a curriculum designer. And since I already had a topic chosen, I could quickly make progress relying on my own resources.

I decided, however, that I wanted to experience more of a team approach to instructional design. After all, some of my greatest OMET learning experiences have taken place in groups. I have learned so much more from my Cadre teammates then I would ever have alone. Our combined knowledge and experience has been invaluable.

So how would I describe our team approach to this project? It has been an incredible learning experience! Matt is so talented with technology and has such great insight into design. We both were able to share our expertise and experience to create, in my opinion, a very useful curriculum. And even though it took more time to communicate and review each other's work, I believe the final product was much higher quality.

So what does this mean to my practice at work? Simply that there can be tremendous advantages to working with others, especially in designing curriculums. Although we already work in teams to some extent, this should be something we should pursue even more aggressively. And even when we do need to work independently, we should seek input and feedback from others.

There is also an important lesson here for my ARP. I should reach out more and share what I've learned in designing and delivering synchronous classes. This attitude of sharing ideas and knowledge can have such a positive impact within organization. Hopefully, I can influence a more collaborative environment and mirror the same growth as experienced in OMET.