Task 2: Task Materials
Getting to Work

- Review the two possible course designs and decide which is most appropriate for your student audience, objectives, and course content:

• IT Basics provides a model for courses typically aimed at teaching basic skills to a less sophisticated audience
• Practicum in Enterprise Security provides a model for courses typically aimed at teaching complex skills to a relatively sophisticated audience.

- Select a representative task from your course to work on during this workshop task and the next one.

- You may find it valuable to fill in a Task Description Template for the selected task, but this is optional if you feel that you understand all of its key aspects adequately.

- Review the portion of the scenario associated with the task, the student’s deliverables, and any required inputs.

- Decide how the student’s task will be assigned in the scenario context (often via an email or other message from a fictional boss). Enumerate key points that should be covered in the assignment (remembering that it should resemble a real-world assignment much more than a “school” one!).

o Set the scenario work context (e.g., “We’ve been asked to write a proposal to design and build the new overpass on Highway 85.”)

o Clearly identify the work the student is expected to do and the deliverables to be produced (e.g., “I’d like you to do the following for me…”).

Focus on key points, not the wording.

- Decide how any required inputs will be provided to the student (usually as scenario document’s attached to the boss’ message, e.g., “I have attached the Highway Department’s RFP and a preliminary analysis of project requirements done by our sales team.”)

- Now put on your “expert hat.” Consider how you would do the task were it assigned to you and draft a step-by-step Plan of Attack capturing your approach. As before, worry about key points and overall flow at this stage; you will make final wording decisions later. (You may wish to review an example Plan of Attack.)

- Walk through your draft Plan of Attack and, at each step, consider if you have any expert advice – especially advice on avoiding common mistakes – for a student following the plan. If so, add it to a list of Tips and Traps. (You may wish to review an example Tips and Traps.)

- As you walk through the Plan of Attack, also compile a list of readings and other learning resources that the student can consult during the course of the task. Label each with a descriptive phrase to help the student to understand its value, e.g., “To learn about writing an effective use case, read Chapter 14 of Leffingwell and Widrig’s Managing Requirements: A Use Case Approach.” (You may wish to review an example Readings and Resources.)

If you have decided to use the IT Basics model, there is additional work to do:

- Draft the key points for a “Get Started” document to help the student to understand how to approach the task. (You may wish to review an example Get Started.)

- Consider whether you want to use the Plan of Attack and Tips and Traps in the form in which you drafted them or if a typical student might benefit from a sequence of questions and answers, like Understand Your Task in IT Basics, to lead him or her through the task in a potentially less overwhelming way. You may wish to review an example Understand Your Task.)

- Sketch examples of the student deliverables which must be produced (or simply enumerate them now for later production).

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Updated: June 28, 2005