Dear user,
Many thanks for taking time to test the leadership module. As part of project SILVER it is vital that we gather feedback from users so we can engage in an iterative design process, making improvements based on user feedback. Please tell us about your experience using the leadership module. Was it easy to use? Did you find the content interesting? Did it enhance your understanding of leadership? Do online applications such as this perform better than traditional paper-based learning methods?
With thanks, Brian Kavanagh – SILVER manager
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typo: “you staff” in example about plane crash
I enjoyed the module about the leadership very much. There are, however, few minor things that I don’t understand.
First of all, is there a reason why there are different icons for “choosing styles”, “take the quiz” and “styles explained”, “your stories”?
Secondly, I think the order of the sections could be slightly different, as I would imagine someone has to first read about different styles, before they can apply this knowledge during the choosing the style scenario. Or maybe within the “what style” part of the “choosing styles” should be a link to “styles explained”? At the moment it is not very intuitive.
Also, I have not a clue what these tick boxes at the bottom corner of each section are for? Same with the “Check some resource”
Finally, there are different text styles applied in “styles explained”, but this is probably something that can be corrected very quickly.
the programming and interaction all worked quite well. I think the “story” wasn’t as interactive as I would have liked (different choices on my part didn’t seem to bring about different narrative outcomes).
The illustrative pictures in the “styles explained” page seemed to move by a bit quickly — maybe there’s a way to present changing pictures in a less distracting but more illustrative way? Maybe the citations/attributions for the pictures could be presented in a less central place (e.g. as “footnotes” instead of in the main content pane)
Anyway, I think it’s a nice tool!
I enjoyed the whole module but was little bit difficult for me. As Aneta said the sequence of the icons need reconsideration. I also think each of the pages needs little more discussion. The stage “The conditions faced” has 5 conditions, I found this conditions little tricky , as I didn’t quite understand the terms. The graph visualization tool is nice but again little description would help I think. In styles explained section, there are few works still under construction I guess because can see “• ” in stories.
Hello,
After taking a look at the Leadership module I just wanted to say that I enjoyed the quiz and the general content but I found it hard to see the images, they were rather small and so their impact was reduced.
I also could not really read the captions and I think that in some cases it is vital to have the caption as it gives greater meaning and relevance to the choice of image.
Is it possible to view the slides in a larger format?
The images to accompany the styles are well chosen, but there is always a play button beneath even when there is only one image. This confused me a bit because I didn’t know what was supposed to be playing- thought it might turn into a video clip! Perhaps this would be solved by putting more than one image for each?
I enjoyed using the leadership module and found the graphing tool easy and intuitive to use. It was easy to compare the relative benefits and drawbacks of each leadership style against one another.
The Introduction to Leadership module was offline when I first used the tool, but I see now that it is back online.
The text on page 7 of 9 of the Challenge explanation seems to be incomplete.
I like the way the leadership module explains different styles with
Overall I think it is a nice tool — very easy to understand the different types of leaderships with the provided examples. A few points:
1) I think it would be better to have an introduction in text apart from the video.
2) It would be nice to use different icons for different modules.
3) The pictures in the leadership module move a bit too quick and are a bit small . A typical example is the picture with title ‘the impact of using the right leadership styles and behaviours’ — the words are just too small.
It was quite nice to study different leadership styles in this module. Especially graphs where you could see the impact of choosing different styles in one picture was a good idea to do. Introduction of style was good as well, but I think that in some cases you used same pictures for different leadership styles …
In general easy to use. Good navigational support, clear overview. Some little things: Whenever I “exited” a module in the choosing style section I was linked back to the main page, and not to the overview of styles page. The graph looks nice, but the overlap of the lines make it harder to follow the process over time.
The text was interesting, especially with the pictures. Scenario was interesting and the solution at the solution makes sense. Would be interesting to know if it just worked in this case or if it is a general strategy for such crisis.
For me it was a nice refreshment of the leadership styles. Helped me to be more aware about these styles.
Not sure if this online application perform better than tradition paper-based learning methods. In general it was a linear text and the chart could be reproduced by the reader with paper and pencil. Of course it was much easier and faster to see the impact of the action with this generated chart (instead of drawing it on my own).
In general there would be a great potential for online collaboration (e.g. for exchanging information about the chosen strategy).
The application in general seems useful, but the UI has a number of problems that affect its effectiveness:
In the modules that are a sequence of pages, there should be a button for the next page, located in a stable place on the page so the user doesn’t have to use the mouse so much. Having to navigate the mouse distracts heavily from concentration on the slide-like content.
Slides/pages that have picture sequences are also disturbing: a user who goes through the content quickly may miss further pictures, or has to navigate to another “next” button.
The russian/soviet posters should have a caption that translates the most important text. In fact, most pictures would be more illustrative if they had captions – how does a boyish angel on somebody’s lap illustrate a leadership style?
In the descriptions of leadership styles, the changing images accompanying scenario descriptions are disturbing the user’s concentration on the scenario and the leadership style decisions.
Are there answers to the scenarios? Can I confirm that my understanding is correct?
In the descriptions of the leadership styles, the exit button should not lead to the overall menu but to the list of styles.
Why is there a waiting bubble when I click on a rating in a self-assessment quiz? It’s disturbing and it doesn’t seem to have a purpose in the UI.
Why are there some pictures with “1 of 1 – Play ….. Next >>” underneath them?
In the “choosing styles” module, in “the conditions faced” part, the test is confusing: am I assessing the impact of the conditions, or the conditions themselves? In particular, the Team Morale in the A&R scenario would be low, and the impact of this would be high. Which do I select?
The button “choose again” should rather be “choose next” because I’m not choosing a different style and redoing the impact, I’m choosing the style to proceed with in the next step.
The module was easy to use and very intuitive to complete. I like that the choices as visualized so that one can see the impact of the made decisions. Also the content is presented in an entertaining way through the example story. The example sets up the context and the particular constraints on the decision making process, so that one can imagine what the possible implications of a particular leadership style could be.
I do not have much experience in using this type of tools which contain tutorial, quiz, test etc. But this one is very easy to understand, easy to use. Information provided are concise and most of UIs are very user-friendly.
A particular comment for ”choosing style” is: I would suggest to have a seperate ”story” page instead of leaving the story slides throughout the first three pages. I did not get an indication, from any of the first three pages, that I need to go through the slides to get the story, though it indeed said to read the story. The different stage information are not clearly seperated in this case.
All bundles:
- many modules have the same icon image
- module icons are not very descriptive. Camera for introduction?
- when some resources checked, there is line and button ‘With 1 checked resource: Choose’ at the bottom. how about ’1 selected module: Choose action’?
- in ‘Whiteboard View’ the ‘Actions’ button is slightly off the card
- no general information about the modules (per module):
Who is it designated for, who created it, why, prerequisities, other relevant modules,…?
All interactives:
- EXIT takes me to the main menu, not just one level up
- upper stripe navigation in each interactive (strange term) is a bit confusing, the green arrow doesn’t advance one level further. A little introduction help page as the first page of the slideshow would be nice. Button NEXT in the lower right-hand corner would be cool.
- Image slideshow with only one image still has ‘Next »’ link
I would prefer the Image slideshow navigation to be above the picture so that it does not change its position whaen pictures have different dimensions
‘Styles explained’ bundle:
- module name ‘Styles explained’ is strange and gritty. styles overview, summary, definition, description, listing, description, …
- ‘Autocratic style’ instead of ‘Autocratic’, the same for all interactives
– Resource Details – “…different styles of leadership” – small L
– slides ‘Behaviour 1′, ‘Behaviour 2′, ‘Behaviour 3′, … have slightly confusing images with no direct connection to slide’s title. Some of them are of lower quality (bad scan?, not straight), have no caption, navigation ( Previous, Pause, …) has completely different style from other navigation on the page. Repeats in all interactives.
– slide ‘Useful?’:
– ‘Useful?’ is a strange title. ‘(Dis)Advantages’, ‘Pros/Cons’, …
– “- When there ARE constraints on budgets and money”
– slide ‘Scenario1′:
– ‘Scenario 1′?
– How should I decide? There is no user input with immediate feedback. Where do I know the right answer? Confusing! Same for all scenarios.
– ‘Sony records’ does not exist
– ‘You decide and tell them what songs they should have on the album, and make them sign the contract.’ >> ‘You decide and tell them what songs should be on the album and make them sign the contract.’ BTW, haven’t they just ‘signed the band’?
– slide ‘Scenario2′:
– ‘Scenario 2′?
– ‘You are head of cabin crew, your pilot…’ – comma missing
– ‘…to get passengers to disembark.’ – to land the plane safely?
- Napoleon’s picture is in the ‘Autocratic’ and ‘Charismatic’ interactive at the same time.
- ‘Charismatic’ interactive
– slide ‘Scenario1′:
– Seems to me, that after people find out the leader had lied he’s done. What is my decision about suitability of charismatic style good for? Actually, in many scenarios I feel uncertain what am I actually supposed to do.
- ‘Democratic Leadership …’ interactive
– two slides ‘Scenario2′:
- ‘Choosing styles’ module:
– slide ‘The challenge’ – what position am I in? I am the CEO of the company? Advisor?
– it is not clear I have to read the picture slides first, especially when they are switching automatically from the beginning. Very small font sometimes.
– it is not clear my choices of styles would be chained, no chance
– all is predetermined by conditions I set up in the second slide. Why is it not given?
– slide Impact I – lines in the graph often cover each one another, you do not see some underlying colours at all.
I just have a few comments on the UI.
. A translation of the Soviet posters text might be useful: sometimes they illustrate a specific style directly while sometimes they have an opposite meaning which may lead to misinterpretation. Also (a very minor point) sometimes the subject did not quite correspond to the style: e.g., Aurangzeb was hardly a “disengaged” leader. But that is probably not significant.
1. When going through stages it was unclear what constituted a stage. It would be nice if on the left only the image relevant to the particular stage is shown (or at least shown first) rather than all sequence from the start.
2. Clicking Previous/Next buttons under the image sometimes resulted in a bug: the next image appeared below the previous one rather than replaced it.
3. Pressing Exit button in the “Styles explained” package jumped to the top-level menu rather than one level up.
4. The buttons on the chart screen were a bit misleading: at first I thought that “Choose again” would return one step backward rather than move to the next stage. Maybe the caption can be changed.
5. I particularly liked the choice of images to illustrate different leadership styles
The content in the modules is very interesting. I just have a comment about the structure of the site. It think it would be more intuitive to have interlinks between modules, instead of having a linear approach in presenting the information. This would enable users who might jump directly to the exercise of “choosing styles”, to easily access the required info about a specific leadership style, without exiting the module to check for additional info. I like the conclusion of the “choosing styles” module!!
I think that this Leadership Module is a great introduction to the concepts of leadership as it covers the traditional (autocratic, democratic, lassiez-faire) as well as the contemporary (transformational and charismatic) styles. My favourite parts of the module are (1) the leadership quotes: “the best example of a leader is leadership by example” or something to that effect – I also liked the differentiation between a leader and a boss….. and (2) the scenario on the Apenol drugs where you get to choose different leadership styles under different conditions (time/resistance/information etc) to come up with a way to deal with the situation. You can immediately see how the leadership style affects the situation and you are more likely to remember when a particular leadership style did not work well and learn from that. The pictures are lovely and if you are a visual learner it will help you remember the attributes for each leadership style.
The content of the modules is useful. I just noticed a couple of thinks that may be taken into consideration.
When I press exit in a let’s say transformational module, it navigates me to my home screen instead of the screen within styles explained module.
The styles explained modules usually finishes with questions. It seems to me strange that I cannot answer. I understood that it is probably only a question which I should think about. Although it is easy to decide what is correct it would be nice to get people the possibility to answer and then check the correctness of their answers.
Most importantly, I would expect some more robust interpretation of my quiz results. Saying that if my score is higher than n then I behave like … seems to me very restricted. It would be nice to see, for example, how my behaviour compares with others. What is the distribution among the answers? In addition, I think that it is a petty that these threshold values have been chosen ad-hoc. If the quiz should stimulate my understanding where I stand in the society and if I should trust the results then the criteria for judging my behaviour should be based on some evidence.
The use of pictures during the modules seems useful, however I find some of them slightly arguable, e.g. Obama – Transformational vs Democratic, Napoleon – Charismatic vs Autocratic.
Some improvements for the Leadership Module which I think will make it even better are: (1) In the Apenol scenario, where you get to choose different leadership styles under different condtions, I think in order for the reader to learn to differentiate among the styles and when they are best used – the scenario should be broken up into different stages and the same condtions (time/resistance/information available, team morale etc) can be used at each stage because the answers to the conditions would vary as more information is gained/ there is more time to make a decision etc. – to make this clearer: in stage 1: we are provided with information about the death of 7 people in LA and you must recall the drug immediately etc…then you provide the conditions mentioned above and the reader selects which leadership style he would use given what he knows where he can then see how this leadership style best fits with the chosen conditions. Stage 2 can be where the police confirm that the production workers were not responsible and it seems like an external culprit contaminated the drugs and replaced it on the shelf – here more information is provided..you have already made the decision to recall the drugs so you have time to think about your next steps…..there maybe less resistance from employees because they know that they are not at fault etc so at this stage in the scenario the leadership style adopted will be different from the previous stage….. there is also a part in the scenario that mentions that the leader needs to implement the strategy and then have internal and external parties carry it out – this signals a different leadership style again – so i think having the scenario all in one with only one chance to select a leadership style and conditions is not giving the reader the chance to see how different leadership styles are needed for what had appeared to be one problem…esp since the answer provided at the end clearly shows how the CEO transitioned through different leadership styles based on the entire scenario….. I also thought that perhaps for the individual scenario on transformational leadership there should be a slide showing in which scenario this particular style is useful as I was not clear – to me it seemed like transformational leadership could have worked in both scenarios. I did not have this problem with the other styles as the scenarios were directly linked to the ‘attributes’ and ‘how useful?’ tabs which preceded the scenario. One other thing – about formatting really, in the introduction tab while it lays out the module like a table of contents in a way telling the reader what will be covered, you have to keep exiting to get back to the main menu and are not directed to the page you want to go to – from that table of contents slide perhaps we should be able to go directly to different styles, quotes etc….Just a thought
(edited version) The content was extremely interesting and especially very pertinent in the present climate. We as the public are being asked to choose our next prime minister, not so much on (seemingly similar) policies on reducing the budget deficit but on the leadership qualities exhibited on television by the leaders of the three main parties. The current debate on how these leaders conduct themselves is omnipresent. Spending two and a bit hours on this module has given me a much clearer understanding of what it is we are looking for in our country’s leaders. Using as examples situations that are widely diverse – from being stuck on a desert island to A&R having seven deaths on their hand – I was able to gain a deeper notion of what leadership entails and how different styles should be deployed in varying situations. This was something I had never even thought about before.
The module has given me an understanding of what for example engenders respect, co-operation, admiration, happiness, and fulfilment or, resentment, bitterness, and despair.
Sir Peter Parker (chairman of British Rail), wrote the first book on Management: ‘The Business of Management’. At initial stages he was derided for wanting to write a book on such a subject, now the subject is studied in university courses. This module would be extremely useful, for example, for someone thinking of studying the Management Module at University.
The module, through the photographs of different world leaders, also goes some way to give us an understanding into different cultures and what those cultures expect from their leaders. Not every country expects or deals well with democracy. Some cultures not so highly developed as those in the Western world may, for example, deal better with an autocratic or charismatic style of leadership, and may bitterly resent the Western world meddling in their country’s power structure. This module causes us to think about the varying styles and how they best suit individual countries. It gives us a more thorough understanding of what politics are all about, and what makes a memorable political leader.
The quotes were also very thought-provoking and gave rise to thoughts about the difference, for example, in a ‘boss’ and a ‘leader’.
It would have been instructive to have had some information about the pictures. Who they are. What the situations in hand are. Uncaptioned, without metadata I was largely having to rely on guesswork to find out who was who, which was a shame as the pictures had obviously been chosen with some forethought.
The content was extremely interesting and especially very pertinent in the present climate. We as the public are being asked to choose our next prime minister, not so much on (seemingly similar) policies on reducing the budget deficit but on the leadership qualities exhibited on television by the leaders of the three main parties. The current debate on how these leaders conduct themselves is omnipresent. Spending two and a bit hours on this module has given me a much clearer understanding of what it is we are looking for in our country’s leaders. Using as examples situations that are widely diverse – from being stuck on a desert island to A&R having seven deaths on their hand – I was able to gain a deeper notion of what leadership entails and how different styles should be deployed in varying situations. This was something I had never even thought about before.
The module has given me an understanding of what for example engenders respect, co-operation, admiration, happiness, and fulfilment or, resentment, bitterness, and despair.
Sir Peter Parker (chairman of British Rail), wrote the first book on Management: ‘The Business of Management’. At initial stages he was derided for wanting to write a book on such a subject, now the subject is studied in university courses. This module would be extremely useful, for example, for someone thinking of studying the Management Module at University.
The module, through the photographs of different world leaders, also goes some way to give us an understanding into different cultures and what those cultures expect from their leaders. Not every country expects or deals well with democracy. Some cultures not so highly developed as those in the Western world may, for example, deal better with an autocratic or charismatic style of leadership, and may bitterly resent the Western world meddling in their country’s power structure. This module causes us to think about the varying styles and how they best suit individual countries. It gives us a more thorough understanding of what politics are all about, and what makes a memorable political leader.
The quotes were also very thought-provoking and gave rise to thoughts about the difference, for example, in a ‘boss’ and a ‘leader’.
Overall a refreshing approach to training / learning.
Few comments on the UI or on typo’s etc:
Method
Why is there a question mark in the parethesis “(ie leadership development chat room?)”
Outcomes
This is one of the first pages a new learner will read and yet it states “…the wrong styles”, which means the message the learner could take away from this, even before they start the module proper, is that there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ styles.
It might be better to say “…an inappropriate style for a situation”
Quiz – Introduction
typo – “for development an opportunity for growth” I think this should be ‘and’
Transformational style – Scenario 1
The instructions say ‘decide if a transformation style is useful in this situation’ and then makes this superfluous by giving the ‘answer’ as part of each of the scenarios, for eg by saying the company goes into receivership!
It might be better to present the scenario on one screen and then give the impact of using / not using the style under discussion on another screen, for comparison with the learner’s own decision.
Apenol case
In slide 7 of 9 the caption currently says “to restore confidence in the” – the sentance appears truncated.
I have, like the other participants, thoroughly enjoyed the test module on leadership.
Particularly the materials (quotes and imageries) are very well planned-out and thought-provoking too.
A few thoughts on the design:
1) The exit button on the right hand-side in each session – I always feel like click that to move on. Maybe it’s my old habits using online survey software, where you’d expect a ‘Next’ button there.
2) On the back of this, when I click the actually numbered tabs in each session, I’ll have to aim very precisely on the number itself – it may be easier to make the whole tab clickable.
3) The introduction could be done in text format as I did find the video (especially when you have to see someone face-on) a little distracting.
4) I’m not sure whether the imageries are the final ones or just used here as examples. But I still struggled on some occasions trying to figure out who is that and what the pictures’ about…maybe a little pilot test/survey before finalising the more ‘recognisable’ visuals or just put a note under each picture?
5) Really enjoyed the interactive case study on the Apenol drugs. Highlight of the course!
Overall I thought the module works well; I found it interesting and informative. Where the module performed best, in my opinion, was that it felt accessible and easy to digest at all times.
A few more opinions:
- The intro was good, I liked the directness, but I didn’t feel it was immediately obvious where to click once the video ended.
- I found navigation on all other slides worked well.
- I found it easier to read the text when text columns were narrower rather than following a line of text across the screen.
- Slides which combined both images and text were the most interesting. If images on different slides more consistently aligned with one another or to a grid, as slides changed the transitions between slides would feel more comfortable. Similarly if overall page sizes remained uniform.
- In the “Styles Explained” section – having asked a question in the scenarios, it may be nice to then outline some of the potential outcomes of adopting that style in that scenario. The user could then compare their opinion.
- It was good that information from all sections could be easily accessed whenever required.
- The interactive elements worked well.
- At times the images required some consideration.
- I enjoyed the quotes.
I must admit I got lost after a few minutes – I signed up and looked at the first video and the next two sections with a questionnaire and then I managed to close the window and lose the course. I could not start again since it was prompting me to make a new account rather than offering a path for a returning learner. I could only see a few pages so cannot comment on the content. On the technical side: too many javascript errors and why was the opening window made without giving user the right to resize it? I was forced to scroll horizontally!