Career Goals - Refined

How have your career goals changed since you started your Master’s Degree Program?  Or, if they haven’t changed, how have you further refined them?

When I began my master's journey 2 ½ years ago, I knew that if I wanted to advance in the field of instructional technology, I would need to gain my master’s degree. In one of the first courses that I took, CECS 5110 Multimedia, we had to create a resume and list our career goals. At the time, I listed three basic goals on this resume. As I look back over the three goals, I can see that my goals going forward will need to be refined.

My first goal was to achieve a master’s degree in the field of Learning Technologies for more insight into 21^st Century Skills and how to integrate those skills into lessons.  I will complete my master’s degree in May of this year. Through this master’s program, I have learned that incorporating 21^st Century Skills into lessons is crucial to enhancing student mastery of objectives. However, moving forward, this goal will be refined to include coaching teachers to integrate technology so that learning is transformed.

My second goal was to share new and upcoming technologies with teachers and administrators. With new technologies being introduced almost daily, this goal for me will not change too much for me. I will continue to share these new technologies with teachers, but also coach teachers on the best way to incorporate these new technologies into lessons so that learning is redefined so that learning is student driven and students are able to connect and collaborate with others beyond the school walls as they seek answers to their own questions in the learning process.

My third goal was to learn how to better deliver content in an online class. I feel that through the process of learning instructional design in the courses I have completed, I have gained great insight in how to create engaging online courses. I have also learned through my experiences in BlackBoard the importance of good instructional design, meaningful feedback, and course facilitation. Additionally, our school district has purchased Canvas LMS and I have now had a year to learn it’s features and I look forward to working with teachers as they continue to build their online classroom environment. I believe that this goal will change in that I will now be training teachers on how to better deliver content in an online class.

What I have learned through this journey could not have come at a better time for me. This past school year, our district hired a new Superintendent. His vision for the district includes transforming lesson activities through the use of technology so that student achievement is enhanced. With everything that I have learned over the past 2 ½ years, I feel that the knowledge and skills that I now bring to the table allows me to support his vision even more.

The HarperCollins Library ebook Controversy

My stance on the HarperCollins policy is that I disagree with the policy. Based on everything I have read and also what I have heard from our campus teacher-librarian, I do not agree with this policy based on the following information I found.

First, the fact that the book basically vanishes after 26 check-outs makes no sense at all. Physical books do not vanish after 26 checkouts, and ebooks should not either! Just because it is digital and can be controlled from the vendor once purchased should not allow that vendor to delete it for use after 26 checkouts (Woodworth, n.d.). Furthermore, the extra cost that will be accrued by the libraries will have an impact on their already limited budgets. Sustainability will become an issue for libraries as they have to continue to renew ebook license each year, limiting the amount of new ebooks they might be able to purchase (Vaccaro, 2014).

Second, HarperCollins argument that they are protecting the authors (Open Lettter to Librarians, 211) is nonsense to me! They try to make the same argument as the music industry made about the artist losing money because of piracy. However, with the libraries, there is no piracy involved! The libraries have purchased the ebooks in the same manner they have purchase books for those in the community or school to check out over time.

Third, with ebooks, some can be checked out to multiple users at one time. This would move the 26 checkouts to less than a year. The same book may have to be purchased again within the same physical year. I visited with my campus librarian about this. She informed me that there are other subscriptions available that will allow for unlimited checkouts. When ordering ebooks, she steers more toward the unlimited subscriptions than the yearly or 26 checkout subscriptions. In addition, students like to check out ebooks because they can download them and then access them from any device without having to carry an extra book (Lee, 2013).

References

Lee, E. (2013). E-Books And Cost Pressures Push College Students Away From Textbooks. CNBC. Retrieved March 6, 2016, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/24/death-of-the-textbook-and-the-50-pound-bookbag.html

Open Letter to Librarians. (2011, March 1). Retrieved March 4, 2016, from http://harperlibrary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/03/open-letter-to-librarians.html

Vaccaro, A. (2014, June 27). Why It's Difficult for Your Library to Lend Ebooks. Retrieved from boston.com: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/2014/06/27/why-difficult-for-your-library-stock-ebooks/rrl464TPxDaYmDnJewOmzH/story.html

Woodworth, A. (n.d.). Tell HarperCollins: Limited Checkouts on eBooks is Wrong for Libraries. Retrieved March 4, 2016, from https://www.change.org/p/tell-harpercollins-limited-checkouts-on-ebooks-is-wrong-for-libraries

CECS 5510 - Reflections on Week 13

I am now in week thirteen of course CECS 5510 Technology-Based Learning Environments. This has been the week to put the final touches on my course development and the job aid that is associated with the course. This has been an extremely busy week. Not only did I have finishing touches to complete, but I also had peer reviews to complete for classmates. First, I completed a peer review on my classmate’s job aid. After looking through their job aid, I realized how differently these documents can look from one developer to another. We each had different ideas on how to organize the information for whoever would be facilitating the online course. Second, I had to also complete a peer review for my classmate on the last quarter of their course. Trying to complete these peer reviews and also put the final touches on my course and job aid took more time than I anticipated.

Throughout this course, the biggest challenge that I faced was the inconsistency of class loads from week to week. One week seemed to be fairly easy to complete the activities, and then the following week would be packed with extra assignments. I found myself constantly looking ahead at the upcoming modules to see if there was anything I could work on ahead of time. This was done in an effort to keep from being completely overwhelmed in those weeks that had extra work.

As far as completing my course development, I have stayed right on target with my timeline. Pacing myself and sticking to my timeline in this course development was crucial to being able to finish on time and keep the quality that I desired in my course development. Since I will be using this course for summer training as well as new teacher training, I wanted this course to be ready for deployment once I was finished with the course.

Implementation of this course will not happen prior to the end of this semester. However, I have been able to use many of the videos and step by step directions that I created in this course with teachers at my school. So far, I have found these to have been created without error. The feedback I have received from teachers has been very positive and they have been able to complete the tasks by using the instructions provided. This makes me feel very good about providing this course online to teachers next summer.

CECS 5510 - Reflections at the 11th Week

My instructional design for my online course created in Canvas is drawing near the end. This has been a very large process! When I first started designing the course, I knew that I had a large amount of content to include, but I never imagined it would consume the amount of time that it did. Prior to starting the development of the course, I created a timeline. In my timeline, I made sure to also include all of the weekly assignments that were required on top of the elements I needed to develop for my own online course. I have to say that I have stayed very close to this timeline. I was able to complete all components and I feel very good about getting everything ready for final submission.

I think my biggest challenge in this project was time. With the requirements associated with my career along with the requirements for this course, I found it difficult to carve out time during the week to work. According to Canvas, I have spent 114 hours of time in the course. I realize that this is not 100% correct, but to make up for lost time, I have given up every weekend to develop this course. Another challenge has been working with the members in my peer review group. Although the feedback has been excellent, all of us working around each other’s schedules has been difficult. The one thing that helped us overcome this was the flexibility we each had to practice in receiving the feedback.

As part of my career, I am constantly completing projects within a professional timeline. What I have learned is that I have to prioritize my time. Many times this includes creating a timeline of tasks for each day or week. In my career, I am usually not working on a project by myself so the team can divide up the tasks and then bring them all back together to review and edit as needed. As I mentioned earlier, this instructional design project was different since I had to develop the content by myself. In the future, I will continue to work off of a timeline. I will also create online instruction in smaller chunks and not take on such a large amount of content in such a short amount of time.

I think that as I have gone through the instructional design process, my strengths are definitely creating content on how to do certain tasks. On a daily basis, this is one of the main tasks that I do in my career. I am constantly working with teachers on the “how” of using technology. As I continue forward, my training needs to shift. Now, I need to not only look at the “how” to use the technology, but also the “how” to transform lessons so that the tasks are not simply using technology as a substitution for traditional learning activities but include 21^st century skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. I have attempted to incorporate these skills in this course, but I know I need to expand on these items.

CECS 5510 - Reflections at the 10th Week

With only six weeks left in CECS 5510, Technology Based Learning Environments, there is not much time to complete the course project. However, I am right on target to complete the project within the time frame of the course. During the first weeks of the course, we were given the task to complete our own timeline for the components we needed to create for our own online classroom. At the time, I spent many hours developing my timeline so that I would have a balanced work load in completing the work. All in all, I have been able to stay very close to the timeline. At times, I have even been able to work ahead on the timeline.

As of now, I have roughly seventy-five percent of the course completed. The next large task will be to complete the job aid that will accompany the project. In previous projects for instructional design, the job aid has been the most challenging part for me. Within the job aid, I need to have instructions ready for someone besides myself to facilitate the course. This task has been difficult for me previously because I tend to assume the other person will know what to do in some instances. I have to make a conscious effort to address all aspects of the course as if the person has never seen any of the components before.

However, through the peer review process for this course, I have been made aware of areas that someone outside of our school district might not fully understand. For instance, a couple of the initiatives that our district has put in place were not common knowledge for my peer reviewer. Once I explained them to her, the activities I created made more sense. I will also need to incorporate these explanations into my job aid.

As far as implementation, I will not be able to fully implement the course until next summer. This course will be offered to any returning teachers that need further assistance with using the Canvas LMS. Additionally, new teachers hired through the summer will also have the opportunity to complete the course during the summer. We will also offer the online course during the first semester of school for those teachers that could not complete the course during the summer. I look forward to the first group of teachers taking the course. I believe that once I have students in the course, I will have some areas that I will need to update after receiving their feedback on the course evaluation.

Timelines and Peer Reviews When Designing Courses

Designing and creating your own online course can be a daunting task! I remember back to what my mother used to tell me. She would say, “You can put hard work and time into a project now to save time later, or you be lazy now and spend double the time later.” This quote has always stuck with me as I work on any type of project. No matter if it is working on projects around my house, at work, or for my college class, the amount of time and energy I spend up front truly dictates that amount of time I will have to spend later. Take for instance designing an online class. It is going to take a substantial amount of time to design the course so that those who participate can easily navigate and work through the lessons and activities without getting confused and/or frustrated. I have found in my experience of creating training sessions for teachers in my school district that I have to put about 3 times the amount of time into the creation of the training as is the length of the training itself. However, with adequate planning, in the end, my job as the facilitator becomes more streamlined which saves me time during and after the training.

As I have designed my online course for my master’s class this semester, I have also found that it is extremely time consuming to create the course so that it is easy to navigate and also has clear and concise instructions for the students. I have been fortunate to have a fantastic peer reviewer. She has been so detailed in her feedback to me on items that I might want to address. Questions she has raised about terms that I use within the instructions that she did not understand made me realize that if new teachers to our school district were to take my course, they may not understand these as well. As a result, I have tried to give more information within the instructions to explain these terms. Additionally, she has looked at the activities that I have created so far and she has had questions on due dates and how the collaborative pieces would work. This has also made me go back and rethink what I have written so that the students will have a better understanding.

As a peer reviewer myself, the work of my peer reviewer made me think more about the work that I reviewed. I could tell that my peer reviewer spent time watching my videos, looking over my assessment rubrics, and reading through step by step instructions that I created. With her great feedback on each of these, it made me do a better job when I looked over another students\’s work. I realized how much the peer review of my work helped me make a much better product. I want to have the same influence on the student that I peer review.

As I mentioned earlier, I spend a majority of my time at work preparing for upcoming trainings and meetings. Each of these requires a large amount of time to prepare so that they run efficiently. When thinking about a professional timeline for preparing materials, I feel that I am involved with this every day. Professional timelines make it so that there is usually not enough time in the work day to properly prepare. Many times, I have to spend hours outside of the work day to complete the tasks in preparation for the activities that are to come. However, I know that if I put the time and effort into the creation of my materials now, my training or meeting will go much smoother for my students and myself.

Canvas LMS Structure and Instructional Design of a Course

As I have begun to design a course in Canvas for my Technology based Learning Environments master’s course, I feel that I have been at a slight advantage over my classmates. This year, our school district purchased the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) for all teachers and staff to use. Although I never received any formal training, I have learned to use the system through the built in videos and documentation in Canvas. As a result, I have been training teachers on how to use the system for several months now.

With that said, as I worked on my instructional design document, I already had a fairly clear picture of what the Canvas LMS had to offer. I knew the structure of Canvas and how I could use the different pieces in the design of this course. Additionally, I have been able to share some of my knowledge with classmates for this course since the LMS was new to them. Although I do not know everything there is to know about Canvas, I know enough to create a course. Additionally, I learned a couple of things while conducting the peer review for my classmate. I did not realize that there are built in templates that can be used to get a course started. Knowing this will help me with teachers in my district that have a tough time figuring out the organization for their course.

The design model of Canvas is working great for me. I am dividing my course up into Modules that the participants will work through. I have set up the modules with pre-requisites so that students must work through them in sequential order. However, students can always go back to previous modules to review content if needed. Since this course will be offered to my teachers over a 10 week period, this will help me in facilitating the course while it is in progress.

Canvas is a very user friendly atmosphere for both the designer and the student. Additionally, the Help documentation and videos are easy to access and understand. If I have any questions at all, I can quickly find answers to them. The only thing I have found so far that I would like to see enhancements made is in the rubrics. First, the rubric does not align the rating columns as you add additional ratings to the rubric. It really bothers me that they do not line up. However, the interactivity while grading student assignments makes it easier for me to forgive this issue. Furthermore, the rubrics cannot be shared with other teachers or colleagues through the Commons area. This has been a major frustration for our teachers. They would like to be able to share these rubrics with each other. I have sent in an enhancement request to Canvas. I hope they receive enough requests to make this a top priority for future upgrades.