Task 2: Task Materials
Reviewing Your Work

- Selecting the appropriate model to use when building a Scenario-Based Curriculum is (unfortunately) an art which relies on your professional judgment about your targeted students and the nature of the material you will be teaching. (Of course, early user testing is another possibility.)

- When selecting a representative task to develop, don’t necessarily select the first one, which may have special properties because it is the student’s tangible introduction to the scenario (e.g., the readings may be heavier, and the work may be lighter than in other tasks).

- Much of the material in the optional Task Description Template can be cut and pasted from the Task Overview Table.

- Remember that task assignment messages should read like real-world rather than school assignments!

- Don’t worry about the wording of the task assignment message or other scenario documents at this stage; write bulleted or outline versions. Only focus on documents that are “in scenario” at this point.

- Bulleted or outlined documents may be easier for a group (or a client) to initially review than full-blown versions.

- If you believe that templates will be useful to structure the students’ deliverables, note them at this point. (They will be scenario documents associated with the task assignment, e.g., “use our standard proposal template which I have attached to this message.”)

- When drafting the Plan of Attack, try to strike a balance between providing adequate guidance to help the student succeed and being overly prescriptive. (Allow the student to apply some thought and exercise some creativity.) You will test your level of guidance later by reviewing your Plan of Attack in a group.

- Consider adding the step of making a learning plan to the beginning of the Plan of Attack, e.g.,

• Review what you are being asked to do in this task and what you will need to know to do it
• Make a plan for learning such things as X, Y, and Z as you progress through the task. When should you learn them? Which of the provided learning resources are most appropriate?

- Consider adding a work planning step to Plan of Attack, e.g.,

• Make a plan for the work you must do and the deliverables you must produce
• If you are working in a team, make a plan for dividing the work, considering team members’ learning goals as well as their pre-existing skills
• Review your plan with your coach.

- While some Tips and Traps may be obvious to you, others may be tacit knowledge. You may want to walk carefully through examples from your experience to identify “gothchas” in applying the skills and knowledge.

- When thinking about readings and other learning resources, don’t fall into the trap of assuming that students need to read everything up front to “learn the things they will then practice in the task.” Such an approach embodies a misconception about effective learning.

- Don’t fall into the trap of giving students too much to read. Determine a reasonable minimum and make it required reading. If additional readings may be appropriate for some students, e.g., those with particular interests, make them optional and clearly describe what the student will gain from them.

- If you have opted for the IT Basics model and have decided to write questions for Understand Your Task, try to think of questions a novice student is actually likely to have rather than the ones you wish they would ask.

- That said, however, students may not know good questions to ask, so providing an enumeration of such questions may aid their learning.

- If you opt to write questions, the Plan of Attack and Tips and Traps you wrote will be “sliced and diced” to provide answers to many of the questions.

- Providing structured templates for key deliverables will enhance guidance to the students in achieving what you expect.

Task Checklist

1. Is the selected tasks representative of the other tasks in the course?
2. Did the author(s) clearly specify how the tasks will be assigned (e.g., via a simulated email from a manager) in the scenario and specify key points of the assignment?
3. Did the author(s) clearly identify any required inputs to the students’ work?
4. Does the draft Plan of Attack provide adequate structure for the students without being too “handholding”?
5. Does the Tips and Traps follow the Plan of Attack and seem to touch on all common mistakes?
6. Are there Reading and other Learning Resources to support every key subtask, and are they associated specifically with those subtasks?
7. If the author(s) decided to use the IT-Basics model, are the key points for the Get Started document clearly identified, and do they seem complete?
8. If appropriate, do the questions in Understand Your Task follow a logical sequence and seem complete?
9. Are example Student’s Deliverables sketched, if appropriate?

Updated: September 25, 2006