Project Ingredients

Process Considerations

Faculty

• Faculty is required to have previous experience with online and/or virtual environments.
• Faculty should have ideas for developing good virtual experiential learning assignments.
• Faculty should structure assignments around a virtual experiential learning activity.

Logistics

• Demographics
  • Universities need to determine their demographics (faculty & student) to isolate their target market.
• Access to technology and web development
  • Web, design, and/or game development software will be necessary to create an experiential learning assignment.
• Goals
  • Each experiential learning assignment needs to have a clear project management plan and a defined desired outcome.
• A timeline and benchmarks
  • It is necessary to set clear deadlines for specific tasks and to measure progress.

Turn Concepts into Minimum Viable Products

• Create a product that has enough features and functions to be useful to early users.
• Fail faster
  • Do not hesitate to create an alpha version to begin testing internally.
  • Use early testing to learn, adapt, and create a better beta version quicker.
  • Then use early beta testing to learn, adapt, and create a better final product.
• Test often
  • Test the assignments frequently with faculty and students.
• Create critical paths for functional success and severe failures.
  • Determine the sequence of dependent tasks that form the straightest route to success.
  • Then determine the point at which would be considered failure
• SMART goals.
  • Set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.
• Review costs and resources
  • Determine your level of technical skills, budget, timeframe, and access to the necessary tools.
  • Ask the critical questions, such as:
    • Do we have the technical skills needed to achieve this project?
    • Can we gain access to the necessary subscription services?
    • Can the project be completed in the time available?
• What are the goals and objectives of the assignment?
  • What’s important to the instructor?
  • What should the student learn?
  • How should it make the students feel?

Empathy Research

• Experience mapping
  • Create separate thought process maps that illustrate how students, faculty, and developers will experience the assignment.
  • Use these maps to determine the sequence of events.

Do Not Let Technology Be a Barrier

• Align the assignment with the technology’s strengths
• Virtualize hands-on activities
• Prioritize student-to-student interaction

Collaborate with Faculty

• Seek out suggestions from faculty involved in this project
• Actively find ways to get feedback
  • “I was skeptical at first, but…”
  • “I should have planned better for…”
  • “My students’ experiences and outcomes from virtual EL were…”
• Be open to change

Technology and Design Limitations

• The tiered system cannot always be applied, for example:
  • Some assignments may not have a cheaper, less complex that already exists to build from, but instead requires it be created from scratch.