Learning from a project post-mortem: school district technology resources initiative

          A few years ago, our school district technology coordinator approached me to help her with a project.  The project goal was to compile a digital resource for students and parents, accessible on our school district website.  Each IDer/SME (teacher) on this team would record herself/himself teaching a specific reading/math skill in order to provide students and parents a resource for help with relearning missed skills due to absences, etc… Each teacher was trained in Camtasia, a screen capture software, and given the necessary software and hardware to begin the project.  Each teacher was also trained in uploading the media files to the school district website.  The project, to my knowledge, was never completed and/or used effectively.

            Although I was effectively trained in both Camtasia and website configuration, I only followed through on the project with a few recordings of specific reading skills.  The project fell to the bottom of my priority list as I was not held accountable and I did not see the program being used effectively.  Quite honestly, at the time it seemed like a waste of time given the other more demanding pulls on my life as a teacher.

            Had the PM been more intentional about holding the IDers/SMEs accountable, perhaps with a monetary reward or even brief emails throughout the project, this project may have been more successful (Portny, et.al., 2008).  It seemed like a great idea on paper, but it never took off.  Perhaps the PM could have spearheaded the project more effectively by showing us school districts where this type of media is being used effectively (Portny, et.al, 2008).  Or perhaps the PM could have consistently referred the IDers and SMEs back to the project goals and objectives, encouraging us to stick to the project with more intensity (Simonson, et.al., 2012, p.158).  Communication could have been helped the project to be more successful (Greer, 2010).  Since the project did not, over time, seem to be a priority to the PM, the IDers/SMEs did not give it priority.

References

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.