Project Planning

­Project Planning

When planning a project, you would use the ‘project form’ this is where you can write down all your ideas, targets, timescales and objectives out. You should use this so you can have a clear vision for the project you are about to do, you can also use this to reference if you become stuck or unable to find the right path you are wanting to go with your project.

In the planner you should have the purpose, scope, timescale, requirements, aim and objectives;

Purpose: this is the purpose of your project, why you are doing it?

Scope: Finding relevant information about the subject that you are going to be creating the learning content for.

Timescale: The time in which it takes to complete your project and set areas, so you know which part should take how long

Requirements: what you need to do for the project

Aim and Objectives: What your aim is for the project and the objective is what you want to be achieved by it. We can help this by arranging meetings to discuss how progress is coming along.

To see potential risks with projects and issues that you may face, you need to look through all the planning that you have made and highlight where the risks could occur, for instance, you could have a requirement that could be difficult to get a hold off or able to complete.

The project life cycle consists of four phases; initiation, planning, execution and evaluating. 

Initiation

This is the first phase of the cycle, here the project is generated by an idea, problem or an opportunity has arisen. Once the idea has been approved you move on to the next stage.

Planning

The next step is to plan, this is where the above comes in to action, the purpose, scope, timescale, requirements, aim and objectives. After you have done all this you are ready to implement your ideas.

Execution

This is the stage where you start to put together the project that you have planned. During this stage the whole team working on the project should be updated at points.

Evaluation

Now your project has been finished, you have chance to evaluate on how you felt the project went, every aspect of it. This will help you with future projects.

Meetings and planned milestones are great so you can keep on top of everything that is going on in your project. Without these you or your team would not be working in a coherent fashion so there could be parts of the projects that have been doubly done, not done at all or done wrong.

In the meetings and planning we can make sure that all procedures and guidelines are met for the organisation, this means by making the project accessible, follow the set standard of work and making sure that an extra requirements such as company logo are integrated.

Taking notes, listening to colleagues and saving documents is integral when working in a team, doing this helps you when you are working on your own in a group project. The communication is key so focusing on what they are saying is essential.

Learning terminology is used a lot when creating digital learning material, such as eLearning (Electronic Learning) and Virtual Classroom, we use these to describe and simplify between designers what we are talking about. 

For a project we could create for example an eLearning package for learners of food safety, we would use informative text and pictures to communicate with the audience. The outcome for this would be that when the learner has completed it they will have a good knowledge about the safety of food. This would require resources to understand the sector we are creating the package for, a design that would be informative, engaging and not boring at the same time. We would need to make sure that we can get all the resources needed and find as this could be a constrain on the project, as well as making sure it is completed in time.

Practices, Laws and Legislations of a Digital Learner Designer

Practices, Laws and Legislations of a Digital Learner Designer

There are many practices, laws and legislations that affect a digital learning designer works. Not only do these affect the way we work, it also affects how we work.

One major law that restricts digital learning designers is the copyright law, this means that images are protected and cannot be stolen. This means that we can’t use any image we find, they have to be free to use or labelled for reuse. This can make it difficult to find the perfect image and is also time consuming. Sites such as Pixabay and Pexels are great as they are free image sites, meaning that all images are copyright free and ready to be used. 

Designers often take inspiration from other work, this can be an issue as plagiarism can occur if the creator has taken more than inspiration and actually carbon copied work like for like.

Licensing can also be an issue as software can cost a lot of money and might be difficult to obtain.

Recent developments in legislations help eLearning to be more accessible to everyone. For example, the Special Education Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) was introduced in 2002 and it is now a legal requirement to take steps to ensure your eLearning packages and content is accessible to each individual.

This is a good thing as it makes the wonders of eLearning easy to access to everyone possible.

When using images in eLearning packages, you are more than likely to be using someone else’s images that you have downloaded, it is important to credit them for the images if they have requested you do so. It’s also important not to steal somebody else’s work, through direct copy or plagiarism. These are ethical issues that everyone should avoid in order to maintain personal creativeness and unique designs, not only that, it’s also stealing and taking credit for somebody else’s work.

Images in eLearning packages are just as important as text as just having plain text could make the learner lose interest and not engage them. The images need to be appropriate to the learning material they are being placed in as this could confuse them and keeps the theme and design nice. 

Images can also be used for interactions, such as drag and drop, or for use as a button, this is good as you can vary the way you move on to the next part and it doesn’t stick to the same old way every single time.

Images can also help with the accessibility for learners as some may find it difficult to take in a large amount of text in one session, this information can be given to you by the leader or the teacher of the subject for the preference of learning style for their students.

The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1998 is the current UK copyright law, this gives designers the right to control their content they create and how that can be used and distributed. This is important as content that is sent to us from teachers to be used often contains images and text from various websites, this means that they more than likely do not own the rights to it and you will have to look for an alternative to use or have the rights to use the content. For designers this is a mix of both good and bad as it protects your work but also means that the images you are using have to be free to use or have the rights or it is breaking law.

Images should be prepared appropriately for the use they are going to have, it is vital that the image is perfect size not just for the design aspect, but also for accessibility. For example, if you make images too small, they will be difficult to see but also for someone with poor eyesight they will struggle immensely to see it.

There are many formats of image;

JPEG – Images that are a good file size and keep a good quality. 

PNG – Good for websites and keeping transparency, small file size. 

GIF – Small file size that support animation and low coloured. 

TIFF – High quality and huge file size. 

Image formats such as JPEG and PNG are perfect for websites, as they have a small file size but are very good in quality.

GIF is perfect if you want a low coloured image for websites or if you want to have an animated picture.

TIFF is perfect for big printing or large images as the quality is very high.

Some factors that need to be taken in to account when using images mainly comes from both downloading and uploading, you need the right image size so it doesn’t appear stretched or pixelated. You can overcome this by downloading a large image size so when it is used and downsized it keeps the quality high, or if you are wanting a large image, make sure you have the right size so when it is made bigger it doesn’t appear pixelated.

Planning to Collaborate

Planning to collaborate

The collaborative technology that I will be discussing in the document is Outlook. Outlook is a great tool to use when on a project, both to start the project and to monitor it throughout.

I have chosen Outlook to discuss as I feel this is an integral part of the way we work here and communicating with the rest of my department and the whole of the college. It is a widely used collaborative tool that many people have become accustom to over the years. The simple yet incredible depth of what Outlook has to offer means that most basic of user can use it, as well as the advanced user been able to really squeeze every drop of tools it has to offer.

Outlook is great to use as you can have multiple people in emails so this makes it easy to distribute information to a whole group. Not only to send emails but you can also arrange meetings for discussions and planning, this is perfect for keeping up to date and sharing ideas.

The advantages of outlook is that it is very simple to use and easily accessible, this means that every single colleague has this so you have the opportunity to communicate with everybody in the workplace, all’s they need is a computer to log in. This means that you can communicate regarding projects, updates, meetings and work related information. The limitations to this could be that they don’t check their emails often or are away from their desk a lot.  The disadvantage of this compared to Skype is that it is instantaneous in that once the message is sent it instantly appears on their screen, and the communication can be a lot faster than email, although this is great for instant communication, for longer writing and sending files and information I would recommend using Outlook as it is far more professional and formal.

Outlook helps overcome barriers such as having to communicate with staff over a long distance, making it more time efficient for you and them, you can also make sure that the appropriate people who need to see the information are cc’d in so the email isn’t directly for or aimed at them but they can see it. Another barrier that comes with using Outlook is that when collaborating on a project, sharing files could potentially be easier to send on One Drive. To combat this, when you are sending a file, you can send it to everyone you need, if there are any updates to be made to the document you can resend it in the same chain of email, this way everyone can see what the latest document is and what changes have been made throughout. Outlook is very adaptable to many situations, you can also have your signature at the bottom, which disclose the information you are communicating to be representative of the college and gives your info out which follows the procedure. These guidelines are out in place to ensure that you are aware of what you are saying or sending in these emails and that they follow the policies of your workplace, these also protect yourself.

The guidelines that could potentially be used are arranging your outlook inbox in to different sections and creating folders, this means you could have set spaces for specific emails such as important, to-do and completed. This ensures you can be efficient, by knowing what emails are where and you can keep them if needed once you are finished with them. The college has a strict set of rules on Outlook, to send out non-work related things such as sending inappropriate content and images that are hard to monitor in quick time. If these rules are not followed it is a potential that you could lose your email rights, or even worse, your job. This would make things very difficult especially when working on projects, if you can’t communicate with other team members. To combat this I would make sure that the consequences for carrying out an act like that would ensure that no one would want to do it, and to have a keyword search for anything that is not for work purposes so this would highlight any bad emails.

Integrating collaborative tools is a perfect way to run a project, for instance, you could use skype and outlook together, you could create a meeting with outlook and have a group video call on skype, This cuts out the need to arrange a meeting room if you need to have the meeting as soon as you possibly can or if it’s to update the team. There are issues with this too, Skype calls can sometimes go wrong and there can be an issue with the quality of the call and can even drop. This can be very frustrating when you are trying to discuss issues or potential ideas and having to repeat yourself or having to use another method completely due to the programme. 

Having a set of rules for Outlook is essential, if misused it could become a complete mess. To resolve this issue we all follow the same code of never sending too many emails at once; this can take up lots of space, take lots of time to get through and most of the time multiple emails could just be put in to a single email. Make sure what your sending is clear and concise to avoid confusion and even more emails by having to ask to clarify what you are meaning. Keep everything to strictly work related, there is a time and place for personal conversations and through Outlook at work is not one of them. This also helps work efficiency, as you are not stopping working for invalid reasons. By following these rules, a project can be maximised to its full [potential by getting the relevant information to the right people, make sure documents are all in an organised fashion, meetings and the minutes after them sent out can be arranged and distributed.

Outlook can work great with a wide array of different collaborative tools, to give a few examples;

Outlook and Skype: As discussed further up the mix of Formal and informal chat between a team can further push the efficiency when working on a project. For example, if I am working on a project and I need to know the image that is needed for an eLearning package that was discussed in a meeting; instead of sending an email and having to wait for them to receive it, read it and reply, I can just send a quick Skype message that flashes on their screen and have an instant reply which means I can carry on working straight away.

Outlook and One Drive: Outlook and One Drive collaborate fantastically if you want to edit live and store documents in folders and share them. For instance, if I wanted to distribute roles for an upcoming project and wanted to let the team assign themselves to a role, they can edit the document in browser, which saves straight away, and you can see the changes been made at the exact moment. This can divert the confusion of if people are going for the same role, save the document and send it back, this wastes time as you have to tell them both that there is only one space for that role and one of them has to choose again.

The college internet can be a big issue for Outlook, as experienced, if the internet is down that means that you cannot use Outlook on your computer and preventing any documents you have saved or need to download and send emails is not possible. A way around this is to use another collaborative tool, a smartphone, to download Outlook and sign in to your account on there. As this is using your phones tethered internet and not the college internet system, you are connected online and able to send emails and receive emails from other members who have also done this. To go one step further, if possible, you can tether your phones internet to the computer and carry on using Outlook as you are connected to the internet now.