Download Adobe Reader The Domain of Management
Project Management | Resource Management | Delivery System Management | Information Management
The domain of management is integral to Instructional Technology. This domain is essential for implementation of projects or programs. Management “ involves controlling Instructional Technology through planning, organizing, coordinating, and supervising” (Seels & Richey, 1994, p. 49). An Instructional Designer manager must possess skills such as organization, ability to supervise personnel, ability to plan and administer budget and facilities, and implement change. Management includes a variety of tasks such as planning the scope, assessing resources and constraints, establishing milestones, developing schedules and communicating plans, and meeting deadlines.
As an Instructional Designer manager, planning a project from conception includes four main considerations: cost, time to complete the project, technical performance capability, and how will the results fit into the mission of the company (Pinto, 1994). Furthermore, an instructional designer considers scope management and the work breakdown structure. The instructional designer manager has to have the ability to work with groups of people along with effectively planning the stages of a project while managing various resources and dealing with the constraints of a project.
There are four sub-domains associated with Management: Project management, resources management, delivery system management, and information management.
Project Management
“Project management involves planning, monitoring, and controlling instructional design and development projects” (Seels & Richey, 1994, p. 50). The project manager oversees projects within an organization. He/She is responsible for personnel hired and supervised, funds planned and accounted for, and facilities developed and maintained. Thus, project managers must plan, schedule and control the functions of instructional design or other types of projects (Seels & Richey, 1994)
Among other models, Greer’s ID Project Management Model (1992) 
is often used by Instructional Designer managers. This model consists of three phases: project planning, instructional development, and follow up. During the project phase, the project manager needs to determine the scope and organize the project. This entails creating a preliminary project schedule, budget and material use along with confirming the project team members, organizing the initial “Kickoff” meeting, and confirming the preliminary list of resources and time line.
The instructional phase includes gathering information, developing a blueprint, creating draft materials, testing the draft materials, and producing master materials. Gathering information includes conducting a learner analysis, environment analysis, task analysis, and contextual analysis. When designing the blueprint, the project manager is specifying the performance objectives, developing a detailed outline of content, creating a summary of the media and materials that need to be created, and approving the blueprint. Once the blueprint has been approved, draft materials can be created and tested. When revisions have been made to the draft materials and they have been approved, the master materials can be created.
Finally, the follow up phase consists of reproducing the materials, distributing the materials, and evaluating the overall effectiveness of the training (Greer, 1992).
Resource Management
“Resource management involves planning monitoring, and controlling resource support systems and services” (Seels & Richey, 1994, p. 51). Resources can include personnel, budget, supplies, time, facilities, and instructional resources. The manager must be able to plan for short and long term goals and maintain that timeline. Cost effectiveness and justification of effectiveness for learning are two important characteristics of resource management. While governing a project, an instructional technologist must have the ability to manage resources and turn constraints into resources. Many times this involves the ability to influence and motivate personnel.
Often, the managers must be able to motivate, direct, coach, support, delegate, and communicate to meet their goal. There are many techniques for motivating employees including Douglas McGregor’s X Y Theory (1960) and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) Douglas McGregor’s theory (1960) is simple reminder of the natural laws for managing people. He maintains that there are two management styles: X and Y. Managers who fall under the X tendency are authoritative types and tend to get poor results. Managers, who follow the Y or participative theory, are better received and are able to increase performance while allowing people to grow and develop.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) suggests that people are willing to grow only if their basic needs are met. He sets up a five-tier hierarchy that includes: psychological needs, safety needs, need of love, esteem need, and self-actualization. A person starts at the bottom and when each need is met, the person moves up the triangle until they reach self-actualization. Maslow believes that people do not move toward self-actualization because of barriers placed in their way by society. For example, if a
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person does not have financial security, that person’s main concern will be survival: being able to buy food and provide shelter (Maslow, 1943).
Delivery System Management
Ellington and Harris (1986) state that “Delivery system management involves planning, monitoring, and controlling “the method by which distribution of instructional materials is organized. . . [It is] a combination of medium and method of usage that is employed to present instructional information to a learner” (47). Delivery systems management focuses on product issues such as hardware or software requirements or process issues such as guidelines for the designer and instructions. The instructional technologist must determine if the technology’s attributes align with the instructional goals. Decisions regarding delivery system management are often reliant on resource management systems (Seels & Richey, 1994).
Information Management
As explained by Seels and Richey (1994),Information Management “involves planning, monitoring, and controlling the storage, transfer, or processing of information in order to provide resources for learning” (51). There is an overlap between storing, transferring, and processing because often one function is necessary to achieve the next task. Information management is about storing and monitoring information so that it may be accessed by users. Information management has expanded over the years and is now more frequently being housed on networks. This poses a security risk therefore it is important for information managers to consider security.
Knowledge management is increasingly used in organizations as part of the Instructional Design process. Knowledge differs from information due to its highly complex nature. Knowledge is more organized and meaningful to specific situations. Since it can be utilized contextually, it is more useful than information or data. Pershing (2004) states that “Knowledge management is the process of controlling or directing the creation, identification, organization, storage, dissemination, and maintenance of knowledge in order to support a strategic goal (620). Through a life cycle, knowledge is constructed and then disseminated to those in an organization. Knowledge management enhances communication, coordination and collaboration among groups of people while improving long term productivity by facilitating access, archiving, retrieval, and reuse of learning objects and instructional resources. Though knowledge management more users have greater access to organizational knowledge.
