SSE101: Survey of Systems Engineering
Project manager for a breakthrough course built in conjunction between the Saylor Academy and NASA.
Project manager for a breakthrough course built in conjunction between the Saylor Academy and NASA.
While at the Saylor Academy, we were approached by NASA contacts to create a MOOC adapted from Aerospace Engineer Lisa Guerra’s Space System Engineering course. I led a team to remix this public domain content with other NASA resources, create video scripts from text-heavy files, and record video lectures with NASA scientists and engineers.
This was a complete one-off course which no one in the organization had any experience with. Despite having no road map, I skillfully navigated technological challenges, a rigorous development schedule, and occasional federal bureaucracy to create a positive learning experience.
As the project manager for the Academy’s largest joint course creation project to date, I applied instructional design principles, learning theory, and educational technologies in the design and development of a new model for Saylor Academy courses that led to learning experiences that better engaged and excited our students.
I collaborated effectively with the NASA subject matter experts to write learning outcomes and lay out the content in the most pedagogically sound way. I worked with an instructional designer to write assessments from that content. I coordinated with our video team to write interview questions, video scripts, and graphical promotional content. Together with the content team, I created storyboards from NASA-provided content, managed the logistics of recording lectures at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and coached highly knowledgeable but occasionally long-winded or overly-technical scientists and engineers during recording. I even hosted live Google Hangouts where students could ask questions to the NASA scientists involved in the course design. Lastly, I made sure to keep all stakeholders in the know as we worked towards our production deadlines and course release date.
SSE101 had well over 10,000 students enroll, and feedback from a post-course survey was overwhelmingly positive. Not only did student enjoy the course, but the NASA SMEs expressed how much they enjoyed the project as well.
Following the conclusion of the project, I shared some of the lessons learned with Saylor colleagues. This directly led to increased use of tools such as Google Hangouts, and better video production scheduling for future Saylor projects. I not only developed a successful MOOC, but helped the entire organization learn from the process.
Other deliverables:
The video above is just unit 1 of the course. Click here for the full course still living on Saylor.org!
People involved
Hours worked
Nobel Laureate
Students enrolled