Mastering Collaborative Leadership

Building Cohesion, Commitment, and Interpersonal Excellence in Teams

I developed this scenario-based eLearning concept project for project leaders in a university context. This project helps the team leader enhance leadership skills that focus on building team cohesion, commitment, and interpersonal excellence in their team members.

Audience

Project Leaders
Project Coordinator

Tools

Articulate Storyline 3
PowerPoint
Miro
ChatGPT
TTSmaker

Responsibilities

Instructional design
Action mapping
Visual and graphic design
Storyboarding

The Design Process

The Problem

In the past few years, the faculty affairs unit had many projects that did not meet their goals due to issues related to team cohesion, goal commitment, and interpersonal communication skills among team members. Team leaders who were responsible for leading these projects lacked essential leadership skills, which compromised the projects’ outcome.

The Solution

This concept project is designed to assist team leaders and coordinators in a university setting by developing essential leadership skills. These skills are crucial for overcoming challenges that frequently disrupted projects and impeded their successful completion when they are lacking.

This concept project uses scenario-based learning to help team leaders acquire important leadership skills that help them build team cohesion, develop common commitment to the goal among all team members, and develop interpersonal skills among team members. Alongside an immersive eLearning experience, recommended solutions include live workshops for all team leaders and members.

The Process

I started the project by creating the action map using insights from Gagne’s nine events and Meyer’s multimedia principles for optimal learning. I created storyboard content, visual mockups, and a functional prototype, all of which were reviewed, and refined before being finally produced.

Action Map

For this project, I acted as the SME drawing on my extensive experience being in academia and being in different team projects and committees. I also consulted with colleagues who worked in a similar setting. We determined the major skills team leaders should have in order to successfully lead their teams into achieving the desired goals. The skills are: building team cohesion, building common commitment to project goals, and building interpersonal communication skills among team members. For the project to be realistic, the action map included detailed scenarios with their choices and consequences that focused on developing these skills. All scenarios were geared towards a measurable goal of better team connectivity and better project outcomes.

Storyboarding

The action map served as my springboard to create a detailed text-based storyboard with detailed scenarios. Each of the three skills that I aimed to develop through this training included two realistic scenarios that fostered this skill. Each of these scenarios contained one correct choice and two incorrect choices as well. All the choices included feedback as to why the choice was correct or incorrect so that learners know the impact of their choices in real-world situations. The feedback helped the learner think more deeply why their choice was correct or incorrect. The training also included a mentor guide to help learners throughout the scenarios and give them tips on best choices. Each scenario focused on the skill that I wanted the trainer to practice.

Visual Mockup

To bring this project to life, I wanted the overall design to keep the learner focused on the content. Therefore, my design was relevant, simple, and not cognitively heavy for the learner. All the slides contained relevant background pictures and clean and simple design that delivered the content in an organized manner.

Interactive Prototype

Once the mockups were completed, I created an interactive prototype of one scenario only. I then received important feedback regarding the design and functionality. Finally, I started building out the rest of the project.

Full Development

After receiving the feedback on my prototype, I developed and completed the entire project. The design included subtle animations between slides, textboxes, and characters, and a distinct background picture for each skill. Throughout the project, I used variables and layers to guide the trainers and show them the consequences of their choices. In all the slides, the mentor picture was there to guide learners when needed.

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