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QED of San Diego |
Mail your response to QED@sdsu.edu. Include "544" and "IM" in the subject header subject header. No attachments please; use plain-text e-mail only.
Graduate Student in Educational Technology
Department of Educational Technology
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-1182
Dear Graduate Student,
You have been recommended by The SDSU Department of Educational Technology as a potential QED sub-contractor. As leaders in the analysis, design, and evaluation of instructional products, QED is constantly seeking new ideas and we invite you to submit a letter (pre-proposal) by the date indicated in the QED Project Plan an initiating memo identifying an educational or training problem suitable for our SITE Series. You may address training or educational problems for any age group, but we are particularly interested in addressing the needs of California's culturally diverse school and work populations. We therefore encourage, but do not require, you to consider target populations that have been traditionally underserved by the educational and training establishment such as immigrants, minorities, and the marginally literate.
Your initiating memo (pre-proposal) must succinctly address the following issues in less than 500 words total.
For purposes of the pre-proposal, you should select super-context that might be reasonably taught in less than seven hours. Our project timelines will not allow for extensive research on subject matter content. Therefore, you should select a super-context with which you are familiar-that is for which you could serve to some extent as a subject matter expert if necessary.
You should briefly describe the SITE in terms of three sub-contexts: the technical or operational context (e. g. fax machine, cell phone, word processor); the social-cultural context of learner performance (e. g., needs of some organization or community for particular skills and/or knowledge; if your technical system involves a consumer-oriented product such as a videocam, identify likely user goals in the context of family, community, or business needs and interests; the existing information context that the learner might be expected to use in operating or using the technical or operational system (e. g. manuals, on-line help, customer support service, site-based mentors or coaches).
Briefly describe the prior knowledge and acculturation of the prospective learners as these relate to acquisition of SITE-related skills and knowledge. Factors such as age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and education are certainly relevant, but such factors should be described in terms of how they might help us to make future instructional decisions about content, instructional strategies, delivery systems, and the like. Other relevant issues include the literacy level of the target population and the approximate size of the population. For purposes of the pre-proposal, it will be helpful if you can provide a Rough Order of Magnitude estimate (ROM) for the numbers of people who might actually use the product within, respectively, the San Diego region and continental US. Very rough estimates are all we need at this point (e. g., hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people).
Describe the current or likely performance problems of the population within the SITE. Consider performance problems in all three sub-domains: technical/operational, sociocultural, and informational. We are also interested in performance opportunities as well as problems: Are there new and significant goals that would be fundamentally consistent with the needs or missions of the company, community, family, or individual, that might be realized if people possessed the relevant SITE skills and knowledge? In other words, would better knowledge of the SITE help people to do something in the social sub-context that is new, useful, and even unanticipated. How could an instructional product empower members of the target population to realize their goals and interests?
We are in the business of designing products that can be delivered through replicable means such as computer programs, videotapes, workbooks, on-line services and other distributed/distributable media formats. While it is certainly important to consider the need for involvement by site-support personnel in the eventual implementation of our products, we want to know why you think the problems and opportunities you have identified are amenable to product-based solutions. Why would a product-based approach be better than simply hiring teachers, trainers, or coaches to implement the instruction? In this context, you may want to address the possibilities for recovering our potential product development costs. What are the chances that we could recoup our development costs and make a profit given the potential size of the market (target population) identified in your ROM and the potential cost of product development?
Our niche in the training and education industry is instructional design: We do not try to compete with developers of information products such as manuals, job aids, performance support systems, and the like, although we do design products that integrate with such informational resources. For example, some of our products include components that teach people to make better use of manuals and on-line support systems. We also embed in our instructional products components such as job aids where appropriate. However, what distinguishes our products from strictly informational products is that QED attempts to ensure that people will develop specific skills and knowledge that can be measured. All of our products provide opportunities for guided practice and evaluation of learner performance.
We recognize that it will not be possible to respond to the five issues listed above in great detail in such a brief pre-proposal, but you should respond in some way to each of the five points. In any case, we will not entertain pre-proposals that exceed the 500-word limit.
Below is a recommended time budget for completion of the pre-proposal (Initiating Memo) which should guide your level of effort in preparing this document. Upon receipt of your IM we will ask you to submit an honest accounting of your hours via a pre-formatted e-mail form which we will send you. Therefore, please keep track of your hours.
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Task Description |
Your |
Est. |
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Initiating Memo (IM) or Pre-proposal |
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Review Request for Pre-proposal |
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1.5 |
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Review options for project |
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1.0 |
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Write descript of Social, Technical, Informational, and Educational Contexts |
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1.0 |
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Describe learners and performance probs/opps |
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0.5 |
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Write justification for instruction and product |
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0.5 |
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Copy edit memo |
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0.5 |
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Proof/correct initiating memo |
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0.5 |
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Submit initiating memo |
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0.0 |
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TOTAL HOURS |
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6.0 |
Submit Preproposals to QED in the form of e-mail letter or memo (plain text, no attachment). You will receive within a few days, by e-mail, notification of any contract awarded and further details about requirements for the next phase of the project, the Initial Analysis of Problems and Opportunities.
Please make sure that your pre-proposal includes your e-mail address and home and work numbers.
Our technical and marketing experts will review your pre-proposal, and subject to their approval, we will contract with you for Task 2, an Initial Analysis of Problems and Opportunities (IA), which will be due no later than indicated on the QED Project Plan. Should it be awarded, the contract for the IA will be a fixed price contract for a total of $720. This includes 23 hours for your labor as a design-analyst @ $25 per hour and an additional 25% for incidental costs and your overhead. For tax purposes, you will be considered an independent contractor. However, once submitted to QED, the IA will be considered the result of "work for hire" under applicable copyright statutes and QED will become the exclusive property of QED. You may, however, use the IA in your professional portfolio as an example of a work product.
Your initial analysis will be reviewed by our staff and you will then be invited to team with other QED contractors on further product development efforts which may or may not carry forward elements of your pre-proposal and/or Initial Analysis.
QED looks forward to reading your pre-proposal and to a creative and productive prototype development effort. Welcome aboard!
Cordially,
Gabriel
Ozgood
President and Chief Creative Officer
Quality Educational Design, Inc.
Mail your response to QED@sdsu.edu. Include "544" and "IM" in subject header. No attachments please.
