Thought Piece: The Heat Map
In my early days as a director, I found that, even when doing my best to scope a course development cycle, there would inevitably come one-off request for “urgent course fixes or builds” that hovered around the beginning of the semester. Despite doing what we could to assist, I could never seem to explain to folks why asking at that time of the year was the most problematic. At the time, I created a heat map graphic that I have used several times sense… in hopes that the colors (similar to a stop light) would help them see when would better be able to reach out for help, and why help was hard to come by when they were asking. I share this with you as well.
Also, a great solution is to also organize your team up to accommodate two needs: production shop and faculty assistance. In my experience, even if you are just a production shop, faculty assistance comes back to haunt you, because you established a relationship with the faculty, so it’s something to field for in your shop design.
I’m sure you each have your own version of this map (with your unique development schedules), but I share this with you as a tool that has helped me.
-Camille Funk, Director, UPCEA eDesign Collaborative
The eDesign Collaborative serves higher education instructional design teams (instructional designers, multimedia developers and team administrators) in higher education seeking networking and professional development.
Learn more about the UPCEA eDesign Collaborative here.
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