Peers feedback

Don’t just point out that something is missing, detail the missing elements and explain why those are so important in your opinion. (
Peer responses ADD insight and personal experiences to the conversation via supported claims.)

Peer 1: tom

 Summarize and discuss Chapter 13. Provide examples to demonstrate your understanding of the chapter. Raise critical questions that will help your classmates better reflect on the concepts.

Source scarcity is a reality within all training organizations. There is no way to have unlimited resources to complete a training project, so we have to consider how to effectively invest resources. The purpose of this chapter is to explain the source scarcity and provide guideline on how to effectively deal with the source scarcity situation in training organizations. Broadly speaking, there are three categories of resources: people, time and money.

Scarcity means demand exceeds, or has the potential to exceed, supply. In additional to scarcity, there are two more conditions between demand and supply, which are supply exceeds demand (inefficiency) and supply equals demand (equilibrium). In the situation of scarcity, the training requirements cannot be satisfied which will results in the poor organizational performance. The situation of inefficiency cannot be tolerated in a corporate environment because the resources are costly and cannot be wasted. Equilibrium is the ideal condition in which the requirements of the training program are satisfied and no resources are underutilized. However, it doesn’t mean that the training project will be efficient as long as the resource supply equals the demand of the project, because the economic cycle also influences the training professionals. The economic cycle has four significant stages – growth, peak, decline, and trough. There are different strategies to handle the different stages. It is ideal if a business manager or training manager can correctly anticipate which stage their corporation or department is facing, but usually people are not able to do so because the economic cycle is unstable, difficult to predict and not smooth. Usually we are somewhat behind what is happening in the economy in general. The disconnect between the general economic situation and our own business or training department is known as the lag . Lag is inevitable, but it can be managed.  

 Peer 2: Join

Summarize and discuss Chapter 12. Provide examples to demonstrate your understanding of the chapter. Raise critical questions that will help your classmates better reflect on the concepts.

The chapter is about instructional project management on site and at a distance. In this chapter Litchfield (2012) points that a good instructional project manager should be able to develop effective leadership skills, communicate with the teams, and build effective teams, besides having management skills.  Those skills, with the advancement of technology, are required in off-site project management and in virtual setting. Managing at a distance will be the future of instructional design project management.

The chapter has several concept’s definition, such as management, leadership, project, communication, client, and End user.

Litchfield (2012) emphasizes leadership skills on three aspects: cognitive, behavioral, and process skills. Cognitive skill means that the manager is able to diagnose the environment by evaluating the current condition and planning how to solve a problem. Behavioral skill means that the manager is able to adapt behavior and other resources to match the actions to solve a problem. Process skill means that the manager has the ability to communicate with the team to make sure that everybody understands the plans and the goal of the project. At the same time, the manager is listening and responding to team’s feedbacks and concerns.

According to Litchfield (2012), the leadership model is based on three factors the amount of guidance, the amount of socio- emo-tional support, and the readiness level. The most important part in each stage is how the manger communicates. 

Building an effective team for a project needs an instructional project manager to help all team members move in the same direction (to reach the project goal). The manager can motivate the team with his energy and insight thought. The manager can lead and motivate the team by keeping a happy and nice atmosphere despite the project’s deadline and pressure. The manager should find an interesting ways to increase morale and engagement in his/her team so that every member can work very well. The manager also should be able to lead the team through the project’s stages (beginning, middle, closure) and adapt leadership model (Litchfield, 2012).

In the communication part, Litchfield (2012) recommend that Instructional project manager has to keep up a good communication with variety type of individual or groups, including subject matter experts, client, reviewers, instructional designers, end users, etc. With the development team in instructional project, it is critical that the manager leads and support them appropriately. It is definitely right that the members of the team are Suitable personnel, but their different personalities during working on the project may create a problem. So, the manager should be able to avoid the problem by maintaining communicating his / her enthusiasm and regularly supervise the project progress.

As you read from the chapter summary above, Litchfield’s (2012) discussion on Managing on-site and virtual design teams looks like she assumes the readers have already had the pervious knowledge about project management. Therefore, Litchfield (2012) stresses more on information about leadership skills for an instructional project manager and the differentiation between a manager and a leader. The concluding of that is, managers do things right and leaders do the right things . After reading this chapter, some questions come up in my mind; you may help me answer them

– Is every manger leader or vice versa?

– Do you believe that some people are born leader and others not?

 References:

Litchfield, B. C. (2012). Managing on-site and virtual design teams. In R. A. Reiser, J. V. Dempsey, R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (3rd. ed) (pp. 116-125). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

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