Dougherty,+Alison

=**Alison Dougherty's Design Document **=

**__Design Idea__ **
I would like to design a wiki for instructional designers to share instructional design ideas, as well as network with others in the same career field. Eventually, I would like to set up this wiki or a similar wiki in my office, but for now, since I cannot post proprietary materials, I plan to create a general wiki for any instructional designer. As for specific learning goals, I would like the purpose of this wiki to allow instructional designers to network and share best practices that enables them to improve the quality of their materials in their daily jobs. After participating, I hope the learner will take way information that can be directly applied on an instructor-led or e-learning project.

My CLE will be similar to the following website: http://www.instructionaldesigncentral.com/. This SSLE is a repository of instructional design information including resources, conference schedules, links to other websites, etc. for instructional designers.

**__Audience__ **
My audience will encompass instructional designers as well as people interested in the field of instructional design. This audience will include those working in schools, universities, corporations, and other organizations. The audience will be big, as my SSLE will be public.

The audience will be able to share information about instructional design best practices, instructional technology news, conference information and dates, and resources available to those working in this field. They will also receive the latest news on instructional design (through ASTD, E-Learning Guild, etc. RSS feeds).

The audience will be able to participate anytime of day. This SSLE will be available 24/7 for asynchoronous and synchronous communication and collaboration with other subscribers.

The audience will join/subscribe because they want to network with other instructional designers about best practices as well as perform research about instructional design topics that can be utilized in their jobs. There might be individuals who don't want to subscribe or leave. This would be due to their lack of interest in this specific career field.

**__Content__ **
 My goals is that the audience will learn about best practices, tools, and information that can be used by instructional designers in their current jobs. Hopefully, the participants will be active in this SSLE because they are motivated to learn more about their career field. They should learn about their career field through this SSLE because it will give them the resources, news, and information that is important for this type of career market. The content and resources will be structured and unstructured content resources including news, conference information, books about instructional design, design templates, etc. The audience is not required to learn all of these types of content, but decide for themselves what they would like to utilize from this instructional design repository. As for news, there will be a RSS feed that delivers news from ASTD, Brandon Hall, and E-Learning Guild. There will also be a resource of the week page.

There will be text, rss feeds, web links, bulletin board/discussion board, possible internet relay chat (IRC), some graphics/animation, slideshares, and video/audio.

If I will be posting photos or articles, I will get permission to use these on this wiki. Per Rick, my content will fall under Fair Use guidelines.

**__Format__ **
As for tools and technologies that support the main layout and organization of this wiki, I will be using Wetpaint. Wetpaint provides widgets that will help me incorporate technologies I want to add to this wiki, such as RSS feeds, discussion boards, etc.

As a consultant who works remotely from time to time, I don't always get to interface with other Instructional Designers. I needed another way to communicate and ask for ideas. At my work, I noticed there is no central repository of information or templates that could be leveraged for other projects. Even when I searched the web, I didn't find a wiki for instructional designers that allows collaboration and sharing of ideas and best practices. I think a wiki is ideal because it allows everyone to control and add content. It allows for the sharing of information, experiences, ideas, etc.

As for communication, collaboration or aggregation tools, I plan to have a discussion board and RSS feeds. There will also be a document sharing area (possibly using google or adobe docs). I think these types of tools are needed because they maximize the sharing of information. If I used a blog, it would limit information sharing, whereas a wiki allows multiple users to control content.

I will use Wetpaint to host and manage the wiki. Also, I will use google docs or another document sharing site to manage documents. MS Word, Excel, or Powerpoint will be used for the sample instructor-led design templates. Delicious will be updated to provide relevant instructional design related links to be fed into this wiki. In addition, google calendar will be used to post conference dates.

**__Evaluate & Refine__ **
I think the addition of the calendar, RSS feeds, resource links, resources (book recommendations, tools/software information, ISD models,etc.), blogroll (various instructional design job RSS feeds), video collections, and templates are a starting point for those in the instructional design field or those interested in this field. I plan to add a few co-workers to this wiki and see what they can add since this is a repository of instructional design resources and information. There also is a discussion board, where subscribers can collaborate and share information.

As for changes, I changed the name because the name that I choose was the same name as another ISD website. Based on the feedback, I changed the order of the menu items and reorganized the "ISD Resources" section. I added the following pages: "ISD Books", "ISD Tools and Software" and "ISD Models". I also changed "Alison's Resource Pick of the Day" to "Resource Pick of the Week" since this will most likely be updated on a weekly basis than on a daily basis. In the discussions section, I added some thread to faciliate discussion around a few different topics from icebreakers to ISD jobs.

First, I would probably use a different base tool. Wetpaint is user friendly in some aspects, but I had a difficult time adding widgets. A lot of the widgets I wanted to incorporate were not supported. Also, when I try and move images or widgets on a page, it's very difficult and the formatting looks messy. Second, I would probably use a another document sharing widget, rather than the Adobe document sharing service. I would rather have a central repository of all the documents that can be embedded on the template pages. The adobe document takes up a lot of space on the page and if others will be embedding documents on these pages, the space is going to fill up fast. Also, I would maybe rearrange or change the main content pages- "ISD Resources" and "ISD Templates" main pages. I put links to the pages, but it's also found in the left hand toolbar.