What I have learned:
I feel like I have learned a lot about teaching in
the Master's of Teaching and Learning with Technology (MATLT) program. I had an instinctive
understanding of teaching that I have used teaching in various classroom
situations. The MATLT program gave me a
foundation of theory and experience to guide my lesson planning and
teaching. I realized that how I had been
taught as a student influenced by own teaching practices, and the MATLT program
gave me another toolset of instructional design. Learning student centered teaching theory and
methods for teaching has broadened my understanding teaching and what is
possible. Thinking about the different
possibilities for using technology also has given me a wider range of teaching
skills.
My capstone project:
I found the capstone project interesting to do. I had worked short term for several employers
over the last year and I felt like my work was scattered, as far as subject
matter. But when I started doing the
capstone project I found that I had mostly stayed in my area of interests,
which is adult education and training for business. I felt like the capstone project helped bring
all my ideas together as I worked through the weekly lessons.
I felt like there were considerable design and
development challenges in creating my final project. The expectations for each lesson were not as
clearly defined as they were in other projects in the MATLT program. This may be to give students a wider range of
choices, but it created a greater degree of ambiguity about how to carry out the
assignment prompts. I decided to create
the lessons as though I were delivering them to actual learners, if that were
possible. One of the development
challenges in that was adapting the online lessons so that they that didn’t
require a sophisticated technology structure.
So my lessons are published online for the project as pbworks.com, but
not in the secure setting that I would choose for an actual classroom or
training situation.
Program Suggestions:
My constructive suggestion for improving the final
project would be to give clearer assignment prompts. In instructional design for business training
creation often follows an ADDIE model: analyze, design, develop, implement,
evaluate. In this model the design
(creating the written plans) phase is distinct from the development (creating
in a technology with graphics) phase. In
the prompts for this class I struggled with whether I was designing or
developing each assignment. I felt like
I was supposed to do both, but didn’t really have the resources to develop and
publish viable lessons (hosting for interactive course files, or an LMS). I think I came up with an acceptable
compromise, but I felt like I was continually switching back and forth with
what my goal was.
My Journey:
This year has been a year of transition in so many
ways. I have been transitioning out of
graphic design into instructional design.
It has taken a major shift in my point of view, but the process has been
carried out with physically moving, changing jobs, job search, substitute
teaching, and study. The next phase is
transitioning into a full time teaching job with WEB International English
School in Shanghai, China, which will entail another physical move, and other
major shifts in perspective. Sometimes I
look back and just want to go back to designing graphics for corporate training
where I just work with technology on my computer, and sometimes I am eager to
move ahead and begin my new teaching position.
Not much about this year has been easy, but I expect it to be worth it,
as I move from working with computers to working with both people and technology.
People along the way:
I have appreciated the teachers in this program that
clearly enjoyed teaching. I have enjoyed
exploring new ideas and areas of research with the teachers that have put up
extra-curricular material to explore. While
some teachers seemed to just follow the syllabus and not add anything extra, I
have enjoyed the teachers that have shared from their own teaching and
educational leadership experiences. That
is what I feel like I have missed the most in taking an online degree, getting to know the teachers and learning from their life experiences. It is what I found is most missing in this
type of educational venue.
Regards,
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