A Recent Learning Experience ... (Rita)

Think back to a successful learning experience you have designed. What made it successful? What was your role in creating that success?

A recent learning experience that I designed was the orchestration of a new engineering architecture which benefited my organization. The key components to the success of this experience were the talented people who comprised the project team. The team removed the heart of our infrastructure, re-built it, and successfully tested and restored it within a very narrow service window and with very little inconvenience to our 10,000 + demanding customers. Only one of the five experts had previous experience in executing this project. However, all five were fully capable of this level of work. It took collaborative study to be successful. That's why this was more than just a project, but a full learning experience. Perkins says that, "Intelligence is a matter of knowing what to do when you don't know what to do." (Perkins, 2003, King Arthur's Round Table, Wiley and Sons). We started out as explorers. We collaborated, studied, wrote a preliminary plan, assigned roles, wrote a final implementation plan and applied it to an implementation schedule.Great planning leaves a project team the time to deal with the unexpected. Wiggins and McTighe have an interesting way of describing this by quoting John McClean:"Architects have the patience to plan. Builders have the savvy to improvise. Improvisation, however, is not a substitute for planning. The purpose of planning is to achieve predictable results. The purpose of improvising is to maintain work progress." -- John McClean, "20 Considerations That Help a Project Run Smoothly, 2003; (Wiggins, G; McTighe, 2006, Understanding by Design, Pearson Education, p254.)What made this learning experience successful? Planning; leading by example with a positive; collaborative spirit, and the shear improvisational talent of the engineering experts on our team. In the engineering field, a critical improvisational talent isis troubleshooting. This means dealing with the unexpected and making it work. Social technology also helped: conference bridges; Visio diagrams; Email; terminal services software; inviting and sharing outside expertise and documentation from the Internet, and most importantly, a unified project plan/platform (Microsoft Project). The geographical location for the project was Los Angeles, but one of the chief experts on our team effectively collaborated and performed his "hands-on duties" 3,000 miles away in North Carolina. He did this using a conference bridge, email, modems, the Internet, and terminal services software. Another expert was recovering from surgery and he, too, performed his remote "hands-on" duties from his bedroom using the same set of technology. It was as if the entire project team was working inside the same office suite. Only three other staff members needed to be on-site to the lay down the physical architecture. This was pre-planned in a test lab and took less than 40 minutes to stage during the actual cut over. The result was a project that was successfully completed on-time and within budget.One of the most important lessons I've learning in working with experts is to let them be experts. Let programmers be programmers. Let engineers be engineers. A project manager, teacher, or mentor will never know all there is to know. So too, in the edcuational fields, a teacher can never expect to know everything. However, the project manager, teacher, mentor must have an instinct for knowing if the experts or students have the tools and environment required to be successful. My role was to ensure the success of these experts by providing tools, technology, and an empowering work environment. These are often great motivators to ensure success.