Jan. 28, 1986 – the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, killing the seven crew members.

That accident was the impetus of this project for NASA, a Management Curriculum Architecture Design.

It was the only Curriculum Architecture Design Meeting I’ve ever facilitated – where most of the members of the Design Team cried throughout the meeting.

It was still too soon after the Challenger accident. NASA was still devastated. Appropriately so.

All of the people in the room knew those who had perished.

It was the toughest meeting I ever had to conduct – and I’ve had some tough ones by 1987.

May all who perished Rest in Peace.

It’s been 10 years since I posted about this project.

I had been brought in – as often happened – after my 3 associates had conducted the Curriculum Architecture Design’s analysis efforts. That was typical. I was the CAD Design Guy at R. A. Svenson & Associates – where I was later a partner at SWI – Svenson & Wallace Inc. I was busy on my AT&T Network Systems projects – and I had to carve out time to prep snd then go run and document this Design Meeting.

A Learning Path in 1987

A Learning Architecture in 1987

I Was The Go-To Guy for Running Design Team Meetings At Our Firm

Why a Performance-Based Curriculum?

A Curriculum of Courses or Modules Isn’t What Is Needed

It All Starts With Analysis of Performance

The diagram used in this next graphic was something I created for one of my first projects at RAS in 1983 – for MCC Powers. I needed to show the data linkage to the clients. It was a graphic used later in the first articles on CAD and the Analysis Methods published in September and then November 1984.

This was one of my early CAD efforts – and I have done 76 CAD projects as a consultant since 1982.

And I did one before that while an employee at Motorola – after I heard my eventual business partner, Ray Svenson, tell us about the concept of a Curriculum Architecture (which originated at the Bell Systems Center for Technical Education in Lisle Illinois where Ray, once a Bell Labs engineer, had worked before going out on his own).

Here is the NASA Analysis Report PDF from 1987. It is 53 pages in length.

Here is the NASA Design Document from 1987. It is 299 pages as a PDF.

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