Week 7 -- Live Evaluation
On Tuesday, I met with part of my client team and presented my materials thus far.
The presentation went so-so. I realized that I had not adequately prepared my participants. They were my secondary clients and I had made too many assumptions about their knowledge of and investment in the project. We spent a large portion of the meeting getting everyone on the same page - what is the project and why are we here.
As we started into the presentation, my major concern with my design was confirmed. By using two different paradigms for the presentation versus the job aid, I had confused my audience. What I had been attempting to do was create a stand-alone job aid as the takeaway and a typical F2F training session. My previous concept of an exceptional training session (especially one that uses PowerPoint) only uses the slide show as a prompting device, not the content delivery mechanism. Having taught PowerPoint ad nauseum, this is a design tip that I strongly stress. This might have worked however the presentation was category/task oriented and the job aid was linear. This disconnect presented difficulty to my audience following the presentation.
Additionally, I was surprised at a cultural sensitivity that I completely missed. By using the Children's programming titles, I alienated my audience with my first slide. "Who is Mr. Rogers?" It never occurred to me that my metaphor was culturally bound. Once I explained the metaphor being used throughout the presentation, my clients were able to follow more easily. But this certainly is an area ripe for revision.
So this week, I'm revising what I've created and hope to meet with my primary client next week. It'll be nice to put this phase of the project to rest.
