Systems Engineering 210

Systems Engineering 210 teaches concepts and develops real-world skills in the area of requirements development and management within the systems engineering discipline. This is a three-day course built around an integrated hands-on case study in which students who are already practicing systems engineers, apply the skills they learn during the lecture part of the course. Even though this was a ‘revision’, about 80% of the course was rewritten. We also rebuilt the case study so that it was more hands-on and relate better to the course content and added pre-reading materials with pre-work to be completed before coming to the class.

I enjoyed working on this project because of the high degree of technical comprehension needed. With my science background and coming off the non-engineer and beginner (100 level) courses, I felt I was able to easily grasp many of the concepts and create meaningful media to be used in the course. 

 Role: Lead Instructional Designer

• Manage work to baselined project plan.
• Support training analysis, design, development, review, and evaluation activities.
• Ensure project deliverables and services meet or exceed customer expectations as measured by any or all of the following: response to customer satisfaction surveys or inquiries, anecdotal customer feedback, and evaluation results.
• Anticipated pitfalls, mitigating and communicating implementation risks to lead.
• Work seamlessly with project lead to address customer concerns and needs.

Project Challenges/Issues & Solutions

 Challenge: Customer wanted the case study to be more realistic where answers are not ’canned’  or predictable.

Solution: Working very closely with our team of SMEs, we formulated the case study so that it allows for many different results. Under the guidance of an experienced instructor, the class will discuss each result and learn from the mistakes and best practices of each group.

Challenge: Working with a team of highly experience SMEs who are located in various locations around the country, getting to a consensus about a topic can be difficult at times.

Solution: Held conference calls that everyone attends to hash out the issues together. This worked very well as the SMEs can work out their concerns verbally and come to an agreement.