Internship Report # 2

Sharin Assaad El Chadid

Internship Site: Kashida, UOB

My internship is split to 3 activities:

1. Hands on experience as a learning Experience Designer (from my job)

2. Creating a guide for online instruction
3. Creating a tutorial on Adobe premiere

Hands on experience As a Learning Experience Designer

Internship site: Kashida

There are many challenges I face as a Learning Experience Designer, these include:

When handling a new project, it could be challenging to think of learning activities to meet the learning
objectives and make sure the tool being used affords the activities you would like to have.

For example, to engage in behaviorist activities, certain elements can be added to the course such as
positive reinforcement, showing progress, gamification elements such as badges can be used. In one of
the courses I designed, I used gamification strategies to motivate the learners if the content is of low
interest to them.

To allow for a cognitivist approach, I use certain features and interactions which show what content is a
prerequisite, to display information is a certain way to avoid cognitive load and eliminate information to
avoid extraneous load. For instance, if a course needs to be taken in a specific sequence, I make sure
that the order of information is linear since there is prior knowledge the learner must acquire before
moving to the next piece of information. Also elements such as highlighting, bold and changing a color
are used for signaling to direct the learner’s attention to the important parts they need to focus on.
Lastly certain interactions can be used such as accordion, hotspot, carrousel, flip cards and others allow
information to be presented in an organized manner and in a way that does not overwhelm the learner
to avoid high cognitive load.

For a constructivist approach, I can use wikis, mindmaps, scenario based content, role playing games
within a course. Also, tools can be shared for learners to use, case studies and templates so that learners
are more autonomous, in control of their learning and content creators.

I usually use a combination of all three strategies within a whole course because I don’t think that one
strategy should be used on its own. Often, there is a tendency to depend on behaviorist and cognitivist
approaches and therefore one must be mindful to adopt constructivist strategies as they allow for
effective learning to take place. Behaviorist approaches are useful for motivating the learner and
cognitivist approached could be useful for supporting strategies, but constructivist approaches
ultimately allow for the most effective learning.

Some examples from my experience; I am working with a new client to create a training for their
employees about humanitarian negotiation. In order to motivate the learners I used gamification where
the learners get badges and positive reinforcement. I used carrousel, hotspots and accordion
interactions as supporting strategies to give learners the prerequisite knowledge they need. Finally as a
constructivist approach, I designed a role playing game where the learner faces real life scenarios where
they must use the negotiation methods they learnt. Also, they are shown videos of real life scenarios
where a humanitarian negotiation implementing the needed methods is taking place as it is authentic
and allows the learners to link the information to real life so they can transfer the knowledge after the
training is completed. I faced the course design challenges using recourses from my master’s courses to
come up with solutions and implementing them.

Another challenge I faced was after a new client approached us, set up a workshop with them to carry
out the needs analysis. After sharing the proposal with them, they mentioned that they have the funds
for the project but they were taken back by the cost and they were concerned if it is worth the
investment. Therefore, as a solution, I remembered from my Masters classes that piloting is used for
testing before implementation. This would make a suitable solution to this problem as if we create a
mini module as a pilot and test on some learners, they would only have to make a small investment to
evaluate whether it’s worth the full investment or not. Since all their trainings have been face to face
and due to the coronavirus situation, they had no other option other than going full online. Since they
have no experience with this, a pilot would allow them to properly evaluate the necessity to make a
decision to invest in the full project or not.

Creating a guide for online instruction

Internship site: UOB

In order to create this guide, I had to think of ways to reach the objective of guiding instructors on online
learning to go fully online during this crisis. It needs to be quick, mobile friendly and visual. If it is text
heavy, learners will lose interest and could cause high cognitive load.

Therefore I faced this challenge with Dr. Guenia as a resource. She supported me by giving feedback
synchronously and asynchronously to be able to reach the objective. As you can see below, here is he
product after receiving the feedback each time:

First draft:
This was text heavy and not user friendly, therefore it was changed to the following:

This version is clickable and less text heavy, however, still needs to be more visual and less text heavy.
Also, it was not very mobile friendly.

The last version is the below:

This version is mobile friendly, with the needed balance between visual and text.

Creating a tutorial on Adobe premiere

Internship site: UOB

With my background in Mass Communication, I decided to transfer my knowledge of video editing to my

classmates as it is very useful to create instructional videos. I created this tutorial by sharing my screen
synchronously using Zoom, a web conferencing tool, that way I can address any questions on the spot.

When creating this tutorial for fellow classmates, I was faced with some challenges. Since I have
installed Adobe premiere on my old laptop, and that laptop is very slow, it was challenging to go through
the tool and demonstrate smoothly.

The laptop would sometimes lag and I would use that time to describe certain features. Also, The
internet connection was of low quality, therefore, to overcome this challenge I connected via hotspot
using 3G.

Overall, if I were to do this activity again, I would use asynchronous delivery that way, I can take a screen
recording of the tutorial, edit it into clear steps and edit out whenever the laptop was lagging. This was a
good learning experience that will help in my professional development by applying the learnt outcomes
in the future.