TCO 341 Lesson Redesign

Fall 2021

The Problem: Mercer University’s course Technical Communication 341 suffered from a lack of interaction and a textbook students didn’t want to engage with. The SMEs did not want to fully replace the textbook, as it is full of a lot of great content and material, but they wanted something to make it more interactive for students. We were tasked as a class to each redesign two lessons from the textbook using Articulate Rise.

The Audience: All students within Mercer's School of Engineering must take TCO 341 so our largest target audience was Engineering students. We also wanted to cater to TCO Students, Computer Science Students, and Business Students. Students had a wide variety of ages, races, and ethnicities.

Figure One: Redesign Launch Page

This project was built using the ADDIE Model. We first conducted an interview with the SMEs in order to determine the problem and possible solutions. It was determined interactive online modules would be the best course of action. From this interview, we conducted a learner analysis where we determined the needs for our audience. We looked at audience motivations and why they may or may not use/enjoy the current material.

From there, we developed a task and content analysis. This involved us building the outlines for the material that must go into our modules. Some information from the text was removed while other material was added. This content was not meant to be a replica of the textbook but rather a building block to help students further engage with the material. This content analysis was built using the principles of constructivism.

From this point, we started building out the material into Articulate Rise. The program allows for easy drag and drop user interaction. My section content focused on Writing Correspondence and how to Apply for a Job. I used a wide variety of interactions for my content in order to help keep students engaged. This involved the use of accordion files, flash cards, and clickable photographs.

Figure Two: Writing Correspondence Launch Page

Figure Three: Memo Accordion File

Figure Four: Clickable Photo

After all instructional materials were fully designed, edited, and submitted we had to create an evaluation plan. This was written into our final report and was to be gauged by the percentage of students who passed the class. Another piece of the evaluation plan was to give both a pre and post test at the start and end of the course to help the professors understand where some sections may need further development.

The full redesign can be viewed here: https://rise.articulate.com/share/kJT8iSSjDfgy1p2S9pgHikFP7_BpffzZ