Analysis

Analysis is the first step of the ADDIE process. It involves analyzing the situation to identify the learning problem and learning goal, identifying stakeholder needs, identifying the audience, and determining the training needs. The project proposal below represents my initial proposal for my e-learning project.

The Learner Personas included below represent my process of thinking through who I might be addressing for a different type of learning project — one in which a new type of software was being rolled out to experienced employees at my place of work, and we needed to address learner needs in order to determine how best to teach this software program to users.

Throughout the process of completing ELID 510, 520, and 530, my capstone project idea was in a steadily shifting state. As I learned more, my ideas about what I could and should create for this project were constantly changing. As a result, you will see throughout this portfolio that the Proposal may not match the Learner Profiles, or the final Capstone Project objectives. However, I have included examples of all of these types of work because they demonstrate that I have learned how to analyze a variety of learning problems, situations, and audiences.

I have included my initial e-Learning project proposal, created during ELID 510, as well as an example of Learner Profiles I have created.

E-Learning Proposal

Part 1: Project Scope

The project is a single activity designed to be performed at week 9 of an 18 week training program

Part 2: Background

• Learning Gap:  One of the difficulties our training team has encountered is that we do not currently have a way to allow new adjudicator trainees to practice working through all the decision-making steps of a case independently. This project is intended to fill this gap.
• Through this interactive activity, users will:
  • Be presented with information in a way that mimics the development of a live case
  • Make decisions about what to do when presented with a set of information, in order to arrive at an appropriate determination on the claim.
  • Experience “consequences” in the form of days added to the age of the practice case when they make decisions that are not the most expedient.
  • Experience realistic “reward” for good choices, in the form of reduced case processing time
  • Practice the steps of working a claim from beginning to end independently, and in an expedited format.
• Audience: New Disability Adjudicators-in-training
• Training Goal: On successfully completing this activity, participants will be able to:
  1. Identify the steps involved in Sequential Evaluation while working a case from beginning to end
  2. Recognize salient pieces of evidence, and understand how they relate to case making decisions
  3. Apply program knowledge to make decisions about the next step to take
  4. Identify how certain decisions may contribute to the age of a case
• Main Assessment: This project is intended to be a practice activity used to build competencies in the context of a longer training program, rather than an evaluative tool. However, this activity will be able to track the age of a hypothetical case, and add days to that age when a user takes an inappropriate step, or misses important pieces of evidence, The age of the case at the end of the practice activity would measure how well the concepts are understood.

Part 3: Design Approach

• Format/Structure:  This e-Learning activity will be fully online, and asynchronous
• Possible Technology: This is currently unknown. I would like to use some kind of branching decision making tool to create the activity. Once it is constructed, the activity will be presented to users via Blackboard.

Part 4: Implementation

• Context (where, when, how): The initial launch is projected for winter 2025-2026, to be used in the course of training the first new adjudicator class that starts after that date. The audience will be new adjudicators in training, and the activity will be presented to them via Blackboard, to be completed during the course of their training program.
• Org Considerations:
• Approval/Organizational Buy-In: This project has initial approval by the training supervisory staff. Program directors are supportive of steps taken to achieve the intended training goals.
• Time/Budget Constraints: It is currently unclear what the budget constraints are regarding software/tool to build the activity at this time. I need to identify some potential software choices, and work with IT and management to determine what is both affordable by our agency, and feasible given our particular security/firewall constraints as an agency. However supervisory approval has been given for it to be completed as part of the designer’s (my) paid job duties.
• Resources Needed/Available: I will need to identify a tool to build the activity. I have limited budget, so my hope is that I can find one that is free to almost-free.
• Relevant Organizational Considerations: We strive to make all training materials ADA compliant, and will need to provide audio transcripts for text and visual elements.
• Technical Support Expectations/Plan: This is currently not entirely clear. I intend to work with our agency’s IT to develop this part of the program.

Learner Persona Profiles: 

Persona #1:

Sandra A.

 Description:

Sandra is a Claim Adjudicator with the DDS office. She has been working for the State for 25 years, and has been an Adjudicator with DDS for 18 of those years. In the past 18 years she has learned a lot about how to perform the adjudicator job, and has seen a lot of changes within the workplace.

Demographics:

54 year old female

Married, mother of two adult children

Education: Bachelor’s degree

Lives in Spokane, WA

State office employee of 25 years

Motivations:

Sandra wants to be recognized as a good, stable, reliable employee. She shows up and does her job. She enjoys being someone who understands the rules and policies of the program, but she does not want to have a leadership position. She wants her supervisor to recognize that she can get the task done, but she also wants to be trusted to know her job and be able to complete it in her own way.

Frustrations:

In recent years, there have been a large number of technological changes to how the job is performed. She has been able to adjust to most of them, but it feels like she is being asked to learn more and more computer programs to do her work, and she does not feel particularly comfortable with this new technology. She feels like learning these programs just slows down her well-established processes, and makes her less reliable and capable of managing her own caseload. She wishes things could just be done the way they used to be, and that she could just depend on the skills and knowledge she has developed over the past 18 years.

Goals:

Sandra want to know enough about the new programs to be able to complete her own work efficiently and to keep her supervisor from hounding her to complete her assigned tasks. However, she does not want to be asked to re-vamp her general work process. She also does not want to spend a lot of time on training, because she feels she has enough work to do as it is.

Possible Interventions:

Because Sandra feels overwhelmed by technology, it would be a good idea to spend some time making sure she feels comfortable navigating the platform the e-Learning is presented on prior to beginning any content training

Because she feels frustrated by her current workload as is, it would be beneficial to keep lessons short, focused on acquiring skills for a particular task, and allowing her to practice one small chunk of a thing at a time.

In any new technology training, it could be useful to emphasize how the new technology can help improve efficiency for the tasks she is currently performing, without changing what the tasks are themselves.

Persona #2:

 Matthew B., MD

 Description:

Matthew is an internal medicine doctor who is contracted as a Medical Consultant with the DDS office. He has been a doctor for over 30 years, and spent much of his medical career doing medical work in impoverished and under-served areas overseas. He recently heard about this consulting position through a colleague, and was intrigued by the scheduling flexibility the position promised, as well as the opportunity to use his medical background in a different capacity to serve people in the U.S. He started working as a consultant only about a month ago. He is still learning the ins and outs of the DDS program and policy.

Demographics:

62-years old

Married, father of three adult children, grandfather to three

Education: BS, MD

Lives in Bellingham, WA

DDS Medical Consultant of one month

Motivations:

Matthew is very driven to learn and master new things. He enjoys this new career path, and enjoys feeling challenged to think about medicine in new ways. He is also motivated by the feeling of being of service to people experiencing health challenges, and enjoys the feeling of being helpful to a person in need.

Frustrations:

After 30+ years in medicine, Matthew is used to being considered a knowledge expert, and has grown accustomed to making calls independently based on how own knowledge and read of a patient. He is not used to being the person who has to learn things. While he knows a lot about medicine, he does not know all of the policy requirements for working in Disability Adjudication. He sometimes feels hemmed in by rules and policies that do not make a lot of sense to him, and do not seem to be in the best interest of the individual. The bureaucracy of the state office frustrates him.

Goals:

Matthew B. Wants to learn more about how to do this new job he is doing, and is really driven to gain proficiency in all elements of his new consultant job. He also wants to understand how to navigate the existing policies and rules to make recommendations that feel true to his own understanding of medicine, and to be as generous as possible toward applicants in need.

Possible Interventions:

Because of Matthew’s drive to serve the public, and because he is motivated by the feeling of helping others, policy training should emphasize how policy benefits the applicant. This could help harness the desire to help people, and use it as a way to pull the user into understanding and feeling more connected to the policy.

Because he is feeling a bit like a fish out of water, it is useful to tie new information back to things in which he might already feel like an expert.