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.