Lesson Plan Reflection

Purpose

The purpose of this lesson was to teach my staff how to cloud compute and share documents using Microsoft Skydrive.  I chose to teach document sharing because it has the potential to be a very useful tool. Our offices are spread out across Korea, which makes communication a bit difficult. Document sharing would prevent documents from being lost as they are passed from one office to another.

Lesson Overview

As our offices are several hours away from one another, the lesson was carried out online. It was done asynchronously because we were learning during the workday and could not get time off for a lesson. As a result, the instructions were sent to each staff member by email.  

The only change made in the lesson plan was that I decided to attach the video I made rather than upload it to YouTube. Two of my offices don’t have internet, so they stored the video on their computers and watched it there before going to another room to complete the lesson.

Steps

First, there was a link to a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA) explaining how document sharing works. This laid the foundation for the staff members understanding what they were learning and why. Second, there were written instructions on how to sign up for Skydrive, upload a document, share the document and edit the document in Skydrive. There was also a video attached of me demonstrating how to do the same steps. Third, there was a document for each staff member to share. Each staff member had a different document so that it would be clear who had shared which document.

The lesson plan assumed basic knowledge of uploading and downloading documents as well as knowledge of how to sign into a webpage. The staff also knew how to edit Microsoft Excel documents.

The lesson plan appealed to the visual learner with the written and video lessons as well as the auditory learner with the audio track of the video.  The kinesthetic learner could complete the steps while following the instructions allowing for better learning.

There were behaviorist elements as the staff watched me do the steps and then followed. There were also constructivist elements in that the staff can continue to follow the instructions until they feel they are ready to do the steps on their own without the instructions.

The Implementation

Several staff members completed the lesson within 30 minutes of it being sent to them, but a few couldn’t complete it until the end of the day.  Overall, I was very pleased with the ease with which most of the staff completed the lesson. There were very few problems and most were resolved through the staff calling me or each other. I was very proud when I heard that one of the shyer salesladies had called my secretary for help and that my secretary coached her through the whole lesson. This demonstrated that some staff members learned quickly enough to teach someone else.

 The hardest part for most of the staff was signing up for Skydrive, especially typing in the CAPTCHA for the non-native English speakers. We solved that by having them play the audio over the phone so I could listen and tell them what to type.  There was a potential problem in that not all the offices had speakers. Luckily, most of those that lacked speakers didn’t notice because the video was easy to follow.

Reflection

Upon reflection, I wish that I had asked the staff to share a few documents instead of just one. This would have given them more practice in doing the steps of uploading and sharing. Also, it would have allowed them to practice sharing editable and non-editable document, which can be confusing at first. I’m glad that I included the video, as the staff members who had the most difficulties were those who were trying to just follow the written instructions. I’d actually started including screen shots in the instructions, but the instructions started being so lengthy that I stopped. In the future, if I have more time, I will definitely include pictures.  

The real assessment of how the less went will be next week when the staff have to share documents using the new system. However, I believe that having the instructions, the video, and each other to rely on, the staff will be successful.