Management Leadership Soft Skills Tutorial
Overview
This concept project is a branching scenario intended for department management professionals who lead experienced personnel. The tutorial takes the learner through a difficult situation with their team, and introduces them to the Leader Of The Pack Protocol. LOTP is a tested strategy for resolving pressurized situations in a timely, positive, and cost effective manner. The protocol can give management professionals a memorable guide during stressful times correcting their teams shortcomings. The tutorial was developed using Articulate Storyline and Adobe Creative Suite, and will implement xAPI and JavaScript to track learner experience and behaviors.
The Client’s Problem
This concept project imagines a a multi-nation corporate client, who came to me asking for soft skills training for the following problem.
Department managers must often correct department shortcomings by confronting team members. When done poorly, these interactions can increase negative thinking, feelings, and performance. Poor communication and strong emotions can produce negative outcomes; The worse case can be losing valuable human resources.
Project managers are often tempted to handle corrective situations in a blunt, authoritative manner. They do not adequately prepare the team, or confirm the team’s understanding of the negative situation. Team members then react with anger. Resentment, and hard feelings begin to drive the team’s decisions.
Upset or offended team members often center their responses on their own emotions. Then the focus becomes about the team member’s personal feelings and expectations, rather than the company’s well-being. A cascade of emotionally charged communications begin to develop behind the scene. This inevitably brings more harm to the malfunctioning department.
Leadership professionals need to learn how to avoid escalating co-workers’ emotions. They need to defuse situations where a team member’s personal feelings are steering communications and decisions. This is accomplished by choosing a management style that exhibits respect, and encourages cohesion within the team while accomplishing company bottom-line objectives.
Solution
Several protocols and evidence-based strategies for management professionals already exist. In consultation with a SME, I selected LOTP as the ideal starting point, because the protocol centers on leader’s responsibility within the organization to resolve problems expeditiously and skillfully.
I decided that an eLearning solution provided an ideal solution to the problem. Managers need, not only a strategy, but to practice and get comfortable with that strategy. I considered in-person role-playing activities as a strong solution, but the imagined client in this case did not want to budget for repeated Instructor-Led Training. Instead, the client wanted a solution that could be given to new managers whenever they were on-boarded, and that could be delivered to employees at multiple offices dispersed across the world.
eLearning, with its strong potential for branching scenarios and providing tailored feedback, seemed to offer the best solution. A scenario-based tutorial offers learners, privacy, the opportunity to practice and to see the LOTP strategy in action with on-the-spot feedback, while also meeting the client’s budget.
Design Theory
Inspired by Cathy Moore’s “Map It” approach, and in line with recommendations to enable learners to “learn by doing”, the course begins with minimal information and plunges the learner into the problematic scenario.
Feedback from the “team” during the scenario provides the learner with some sense of their mistakes and wise choices. Only at the scenario’s conclusion is a full description of the LOTP protocol along with additional information presented. Learners can focus on areas where they had problems and then try the scenario again if they wish.
This story-driven approach puts the learner immediately into the “action.” It is more engaging than a traditional approach that would simply present the learner with information about the LOTP protocol. Since team leaders will need to navigate conversations, not recite the definitions of the protocol, the scenario focuses on the actual behaviors, decisions, and outcomes the client wants from the employees.
Design and Development Process
Research: I conducted interviews with a Subject Matter Expert (SME) who has over a decade of experience working in as a project manager. These interviews identified common conversation errors made by managers, as well as co- workers’ common misunderstandings, reactions, or flawed decision-making processes. Extensive research on Management best theories and practices was made.
Script and Storyboard: I developed an initial script that was then reviewed by the SMES and stakeholders. After analyzing the feedback, I developed a text storyboard and then mapped out the branching scenario using a vector drawing program.
Development: I developed the final project in Articulate Storyline using Articulate assets and icons from flaticons.net.
Features:
- Each choice by the learner shapes the team’s next reaction and can lead to different routes through the scenario.
- The learner’s choices contribute to a hidden, overall score that determines the final outcome of the problem.
- The conclusion shows the user what parts of the conversation they did well in and where they need improvement.
- Further information for each area of strength or weakness is provided as well as an opportunity to retry the conversation.
xAPI Implementation
xAPI tracking of learner behaviors supports the course’s instructional design and strengthens further iteration.
Tracking answers: Each time a learner selects an answer, an xAPI statement is generated. This enables me not just to see a final score and pass rate (typical of SCORM), but to be able to identify which questions are presenting the greatest challenge and even which distractor answer is proving to be the most distracting. This information can help to identify a question that needs to be made easier or more difficult or whether additional information or training on a topic may be required.
Time spent (or Duration): This course uses xAPI to track how long a learner spends on the course as a whole as well as how long the user spends on each individual question. This information provides further insights into how challenging the course is, whether users are engaged, whether particular questions require significantly more reflection than others, and whether users are failing certain questions because they are rushing.
Resources consulted: An xAPI statement is sent to the LRS each time a learner consults one of the course’s optional resources. Additionally, a statement is generated when a learner opts to “re-take” the course after consulting the selection of resources on the final feedback page. This information allows me to analyze whether users are consulting resources, possible connections between resource usage and users’ scores and/or specific incorrect answers, and whether consulting resources and trying the scenario again improves a learners’ scores.
Browser focus: The course tracks when users minimize the course, switch to another window, or switch to another tab. This helps to reveal pain points in the course where users’ attention may be flagging or where they have to find and consult resources on their own. In turn, this enables further refinement of the course and indicates sections where additional resources or engagement may be necessary.
User ID: Each learner is given a unique, anonymous, random ID associated with their browser cache. This facilitates tracking multiple users who might be using the course simultaneously as well as enabling the analysis of user behavior across multiple sessions.
Summary: Taken together, my xAPI implementation enables me to track precisely how users are navigating through my course. It also makes possible insights into how specific learner behaviors and choices correlate with learners’ scores, individual answers, resources consulted, and time spent on the course.