Unlocking Impactful Collaboration: Building Your Impact Dream Team and Crafting Effective Processes for Success

[MelissaMcClella]

Welcome to “Unlocking Impactful Collaboration: Building Your Impact Dream Team and Crafting Effective Processes for Success”. In this blog, we explore how building the right Impact team can enhance internal processes, institutional insight, and workload balance. Discover key roles like instructional designers, LMS administrators, support teams, communications experts, faculty members, and student employees, all contributing to a well-rounded team. Learn efficient planning strategies and workflows, including anticipating content needs and using planning templates. Explore an organized approval process and discover available consulting services to maximize Impact's potential. Let's dive into the world of impactful teamwork!

Assembling your A-Team

Building out your Impact team can help improve internal processes, offer greater institutional insight, and help balance responsibilities. Who should be a part of your Impact team? What could their Impact role look like? Here are a few examples of individuals who could be included in your Impact team!

• Instructional Designer/Coach - Instructional designers can offer a voice for course design best practices, and help with the creation of Impact messages, walkthrough, and support content. These team members understand the best practices for effective instructional design and can support faculty through the creation of their online courses utilizing Impact.

• LMS Administrators - As someone who manages and oversees the Learning Management System, Impact can be quite helpful! Impact Insights allow for a granular look at how the LMS is being utilized. If there are any known issues including outages, tool changes, or even general course availability concerns, the LMS Admin can utilize Impact messaging to get that vital information out to users. The support center can also assist the LMS admin by providing in time, role-specific, and context-specific support to LMS users. 

• Support Team - Dedicated support team members should take the responsibility of disseminating ticket trends among the team. This information is crucial for implementing proactive messaging within the LMS to reduce the volume of future support tickets. Moreover, the Support Team can play an active role in enriching the Impact Support Center by incorporating institution-specific support content. This involvement extends to monitoring feedback and insights about support articles, ensuring a comprehensive approach to enhancing the support experience.

• Communications Team - Incorporating Impact messaging into your institution's communication plan is essential. However, it's crucial to approach messaging within Impact strategically, taking into account the potential for message fatigue that users might encounter. To navigate this effectively, involving members of your communication team is recommended. Their expertise can be invaluable in formulating a well-rounded messaging strategy, as well as in conducting insightful reviews of messaging analytics within Impact.

• Faculty Member - The utilization of Impact messaging, walkthroughs, insights, and support stands as a valuable resource for faculty members, and it's imperative to acknowledge and incorporate their perspectives on this content. Enlisting a faculty member as part of your Impact team will not only facilitate the creation of helpful and timely content but also ensure alignment with their needs and preferences.

• Student Employee (HigherEd) - Incorporating a student employee into your communication and support strategy can greatly enhance the student experience. Certain institutions even entrust student employees with tasks encompassing content generation and support article creation. By implementing permissions, you can guarantee that students lack access to insights data while still affording them the ability to contribute content effectively.

• Curriculum Specialist (K12) - Including a curriculum specialist in your Impact team can bring tremendous value. They excel at leveraging Impact Insights to identify both faculty champions and those who might require assistance with workflows or processes. Moreover, these specialists are adept at utilizing Impact to provide essential support to faculty members, offering instructional resources, and facilitating communication through Impact messaging and the Support Center.

Planning for Success
You’ve assembled your amazing Impact team, now it’s time to plan for success by setting up processes for content management and insight review. Institutions that plan for Impact get the most use out of our tools. This can look different depending on the size of the team, the goals for Impact, and whether or not you are part of a K-12 environment, or Higher Ed environment. Some common workflows we see among Impact power users include:

• Year at a Glance:  Anticipating your content needs is important in ensuring that campaigns and support are launched and available at the optimal times. Planning will also help reduce the time it takes to prepare your content within Impact. Refer to this K-12 and Higher-Ed guide for Impact Use Cases throughout the year for some use case inspiration! 
• Using a Planning Template –Putting your ideas into a template is a great way to plan for your Impact success. Templates can help you ensure your content is targeted and timely for your faculty and students. Templates can also be beneficial for group collaboration. Check out our blog,  Mastering the Art of Planning Impact Messages to learn more about planning for your content, and to download a copy of our planning template.
  
  
• Organization Board / Approval Process - If your institution has access to project management software, it may be helpful to create an Impact board. Creating an organized space for your Impact projects can allow for multiple individuals to collaborate, and also allow for a more thorough approval process. What could this process look like? 
  1. A form captures the messaging needs of all departments throughout the institution/district. This form includes the intended audience, goal for the campaign, time frame for the message to run, content to be included in the message, and the contact information for the individual submitting the request. 
  2. An assigned Impact administrator decides if the requested campaign is suitable and meaningful for the LMS, or if it would be better suited as an email campaign, announcement, text message, etc. 
  3. If the campaign is approved by the Impact administrator, a project for this campaign is started in the project management software. If it is not selected as a campaign to be utilized by Impact, the form is returned to the submitter with reasons that it was not selected and any relevant next steps. 
  4. The Impact administrator has created a project for the campaign and assigns an Impact team member to create the content and assign visibility date and audience. The assigned team member will issue a “proof” of the message to the campaign requester for final approval. 
  5. Once approved, the campaign will be launched by the assigned team member. Upon completion of the campaign, this team member will also issue campaign results to the campaign requester. 

Utilizing Available Services

Did you know that Impact has a dedicated team of Learning Analytics Consultants and Services Consultants who are available for personalized coaching and consulting? Our consultants are here to help you maximize the features available within Impact. These services allow you to have fully customizable, dedicated training on a variety of things including new admin training, change management consulting, content creation, and adoption planning. Our wonderful consultants are also available to assist you with creating processes and a team structure that works best for your institution.  Consulting packages vary by region and LMS, so please reach out to your Impact CSM or CSM Team for more information.