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DevLearn 2015: Dorothy's Top 3 Highlights

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I thoroughly enjoyed attending DevLearn 2015, a conference specifically focused on educational technology. I have never seen so many instructional designers gathered together at one particular conference. It was great to be able to network and hear about the work others did in the same field. Reflecting on the conference notes, my three main take-aways and items I plan to focus on implementing include:

Agile Project Management: This full day workshop covered the basics of agile project management to practical application examples that could be applied to any eLearning project. I plan to:
  1. Share agile project management concepts with my team, in particular this infographic:
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    “Agile is as much an attitude as it is a project management method.”
  2. Discuss collaboratively to determine what would further enhance and streamline our DL development process; In the discussions, I also plan to incorporate discussions related to Carnegie's Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycle, profiling personas, etc.
  3. Document new DL development processes
  4. Implement, pilot & form new norms for development of online resources

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Games, Badges & Tools to Support Learning: These topics seemed to be trending topics at the conference. Many presenters shared gaming concepts and how the application of these concepts could enhance learning. I enjoyed my session where various tools to support learning were shared, from games to iBeacons (devices where you receive extra information if you’re in physical proximity to something). I plan to:
  1. Play the Knack game that was suggested to assist with profiling, etc.
  2. Determine whether or not specific tools to support learning would work well for our team

Innovation: All conference keynotes touched upon the need for innovation within our field (e.g. looking at dots that others don't see) and learning to fail and keep pushing ourselves to innovate. At the conference, I bought a set of story cubes for myself as I thought it was a great introductory activity when brainstorming or building pilina.
  1. The two keynotes mentioned the Importance of storytelling (mo`olelo). I saw a lot of tie into to connections of culture & the importance of using stories to not only look into our past, but also looking ahead of what future stories we might want to tell others (innovations).
  2. I plan to integrate the use of story cubes into an upcoming team activity to increase building pilina as well as encouraging moʻolelo and inspirations for future innovations.

Bonus: The very last session I attended at DevLearn is something I hope to be able to find some time to dive into practicing, advanced animations using PowerPoint. Here is a sample of what can be done with PPT animations. I hope to:
  1. Increase my PPT technical & ID skills (play around)
  2. Determine what to pilot PPT with.
  3. Pilot & continue increasing skills.

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