This blog post is a reflection of my contributions to my learning and my learning community. As I reflect on my contribution to the courses 5302 Concepts of Educational Tech and 5304 Leading Organization Change, my self-assessment is as follows:
5302 Concepts of Educational Tech: 90/100
5304 Leading Organization Change: 90/100
My interpretation of the self-evaluated score is based on having a majority of key contributions towards my learning community and supporting contributions.
My learning community for 5302 and 5304 included myself, Kayla Miller, Robin Polk, Audrey Parcell, and 14 other members. Each member within our group supported each other by answering course-related questions and providing feedback, and members collaboratively revised each other's blogs, website content, and assignments through Google Docs or Microsoft Word.
What Worked?
During this term, I believe collaboration worked much better than the fall 2023 term. I noticed more members than last term and more participation in actually viewing assignments and helping each other revise work as needed. I noticed there was excitement this term from other peers in the cohort who expressed interest in the work others were putting out into the group. Being able to converse online and collaborate with more members this term helped me stay motivated, it helped me see the ADL experience from other career perspectives, because we are not all teachers in this program, and it helped me gain more creative insight. Much of the support from members of the group helped me confidently build and revise assignments such as my learning manifesto, my influencer strategy, and my growth mindset plan.
This term I did not utilize my previously created cohort group. This term I joined Kayla Miller's Microsoft Teams group and took responsibility for being an active member of her created group by sharing Lamar campus updates, reviewing peer work, and offering feedforward.
What also worked for me this term is that I kept a Google Doc with assignment due dates to hold myself accountable for reaching the due dates assigned, I contributed to all Blackboard discussion prompts and replied to two peers for each discussion post, and took time to view majority videos, readings, and links posted within the course.
What Could Be Better?
This term I found it difficult to adjust my work-life balance with live sessions. I am not one to make excuses, but I could not attend the weekly sessions in Dr. Padovan's course or the biweekly sessions in Dr. Bedard's course. In the district I work for we work from 7:45 a.m. until 4:25 p.m. and once car duty is dismissed I can leave at 5:00 p.m. Each school night I make it home at 5:30, then greet my 19-month-old daughter. Often fussy, I could not focus on bathing her, feeding her, and tending to her needs while needing to be at class by 6:00 and 6:30 p.m.
This same issue of not being home promptly caused me to off-put responses to peers, so I often wrote discussion posts and replied to two peers on the same Sunday the responses were due. Occasionally I found time during a conference period at work to submit a response before the deadline and was able to respond to peers for feedback in my cohort using Kayla Miller's group on Microsoft Teams.
Contribution to My Learning Community
Due to my scheduling conflict, I ensured I watched the live sessions once posted in both Dr. Bedard's course and Dr. Padovan's course on my weekends when I had child care. I took notes while rewatching the live sessions and created a calendar on Google Docs to keep up with due dates.
I joined an active cohort and contributed feedforward with peers questioning their assignments in inquisitive ways and offering helpful advice with their content. I actively contributed to Microsoft Teams group responses and Blackboard assignment discussion posts. I wrote in APA format utilized the resources recommended to me through the course's syllabus and read the books outlined in the course on my Kindle. I continued to explore Dr. Harapnuik's blog and COVA process to better my course-related content.
In conclusion, I believe I've met the majority of the key components of contributing to my learning and my learning community. Being a part of both courses has helped me realize that the more you experience the ADL program the more growth you will have over time. I am going to work on managing my work-life balance and attend more live sessions in the future. Overall, it has been an exemplary and conductive learning experience!
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