Synthesis
ETEC 565 Syntheses
Now with ETEC 565 complete, here is a reflection of my journey and learning through the course.
Flight Path Précis
My proposed flight Path through ETEC 565
For me in ETEC 565, I see an opportunity to learn more about digital age learning so I can help move faculty along the spectrum from entirely face to face towards richly blended and fully on-line. Some of the topics that I would like to focus on are: LMS, other web based approaches, interactivity and assessment tools and intellectual property rights/copyright.
Goal One: Learning Management Systems
My goal is to gain a better understanding of the affordances and approaches of learning management systems so that I can provide insights and advise at key times for decision making by instructors, Academic Chairs, my department and the institute overall.
Goal Two: Other Web Based Approaches
My goal is to learn about other web based tools and approaches including content management systems so I can offer them as opportunities, options and solutions at my institute when required.
Goal Three: Interaction and Assessment Tools
My goal is to learn as much as I can about interactivity and assessment methods to add to my toolbox so I can inform and guide the people I interact with on new and best practices in these areas.
Goal Four: Intellectual Property and Copyright
My goal is to learn about copyright and intellectual property in this course and apply it to situations when ever required at my institute.
eLearning Toolkit
The e-learning toolkit is a unique resource that is there when you need it. When I first started the course I thought I would spend a lot of time here exploring the toolkit as the course requirements seemed fairly straightforward. However as I started to explore the toolkit and began to understand the upcoming learning curves and the amount of work required to get through this course, I decided that I needed to prioritize to survive.
After an overview of the resources in the toolkit and realization that the LMS course site was the big ticket item in this course, I focused on the learning Management System resource. The WebCT/Vista area was a great introduction but I knew my attention would be on Moodle so I quickly moved over to the Moodle section and focused on this area and the resources provided. These resources were great to get me started and familiar with Moodle; I started to tinker and experiment with my Moodle space based on learning from these resources. I especially enjoyed the 2-minute Moodles and believe Thomaz’s accent will be with me for many years to come. This experience along with monitoring the ETEC 565 discussion forum and my son Linden’s advice to “just Google it Dad” gave me the permission to go out to the world through the Internet to find the answers to problems and difficulties that I was having.
I also spent some time in the e-learning toolkit early in the course in the Multimedia and Authoring Tools – DVD materials area. This helped me with the early work in this course.
Overall ETEC 565 Experiences
After I was accepted into the MET program in early 2009, I started to do some research into the courses to develop a program flight plan; which courses should I take first and which last. I got linked into the MET Community Website and started reading the postings and I got an overall sense to do the core courses first and the electives later. I also noted some discussion about the odd hours that students were working on their courses – “well into the night”. This discussion was probably related to students taking ETEC 565!
In the previous MET courses I had taken, I wished there was less theory and more practise or at least a better balance of theory and practise so I was hungry for some practical aspects to this program. That hunger has now been somewhat satisfied, as this course definitely has the practical aspects and in a true constructivist approach you need to figure it out, either yourself or through the course community. So with this approach I certainly spent a lot of time near or outside my comfort zone in my zone of proximal development as defined by Vygotsky (Wikipedia, 2012). This is where true deep learning happens and it did.
Here is a summary of my overall learning experience in this course:
- Introduction to, the value of and application of the SECTIONS Framework by Bates and Poole (2003) to educational technology
- Introduction to and the use of Rubrics in education
- The purpose of an LMS and a survey of different LMS’s available
- The many different ways of presenting content and some of the implementation issues
- The value of digital storytelling and how to do it
- The importance and value of assessment in education
- The importance of copyright and how easy it is to infringe
- The amount of time and effort the goes into designing and developing an online course
- The value and importance of reflection and journaling in education, especially when supported with technology such as our e-portfolio’s in Word Press
Here are a couple of examples where I used some learning from this course in my professional practice over the last three months. The exercise on using a Rubric to evaluate an LMS was timely as I was working with an Academic Chair redesigning his program over the winter. Part of this process involves developing a faculty development plan as a sub-component of the program teaching and learning assessment. When Rubrics came up a possible activity I was able to promote it as a good thing to do. Similarly I suggested a session on assessment after reading and forwarding the assessment paper by Gibbs and Simpson (2004) to the Academic Chair. Both of these sessions went forward and were much appreciated by faculty. Similarly, when an opportunity to attend a webinar on e-portfolio’s came up, I promoted this in my School and many faculty and administrators attended. We are using e-portfolios in one program and now the Academic Chair and faculty in another are planning on incorporating it into their program redesign.
The assessment section made me realize the importance how important assessment is as a motivator for students including the value of student feedback through assessment. From a technology perspective, it is fairly easy to build automated feedback into quizzes in an LMS. It was interesting to learn how the type of assessment can influence the longevity of the knowledge and skills learned by students. This certainly has parked several conversations that I have initiated recently around the differences between courses with large component midterm and final exams and those with a lower emphasis on exams and more emphasis on graded course work. This makes me wonder about the value of grade 12 diploma exams and how the impact of this approach to learning flows through entrance requirements to a student’s performance in post-secondary studies.
I found as I completed the assignment on assessment backed by the assessment article by Gibbs and Simpson (2005) that I reread the works for this course by Chickering and Gamson ( 1987) and Anderson (2008) found a lot about assessment that I missed previously.
My Next Steps
The next steps in terms of my practise in educational technology are to keep moving forward learning more about technology, applying the learning, and guiding and mentoring others in the use and practice of learning technologies.
This is my eighth course in the Master of Educational Technology (MET) program; I started in September 2009 and plan to complete the tenth course in one year and graduate in May 2013. Even though this is a long journey taking one course at a time, it has allowed me to integrate the learning from each course into the next and to concurrently integrate the learning into my roles and responsibilities as a Curriculum Coordinator at SAIT Polytechnic. At the same time I bring practical and personalized examples from my professional practise into each course.
I have found that each project at work whether it be large or small and each MET course whether it be theory or practise based allows me to connect the dots. So I plan to continue this practise into the future: learn, practice, evaluate, learn practise, evaluate; each time capitalizing on new insights and making improvements.
SAIT Polytechnic has hundreds of blended and fully on-line courses hosted on the Desire to Learn (D2L) LMS. We have a large central technology unit and we take a project management approach (Bates, 2000) to program and course design and development. So each project whether it is small in terms of repurposing an existing course or large in terms of redesigning complete programs and all of the courses, resources are provided to support the project. This allows instructors to be true subject matter experts (SME) providing the content expertize guided by an Instructional Designer and the other stuff: project management, html coding, content uploading, editing and copyright clearance is done by experts in these fields. My experience with the course site development in this course confirms that we are doing the right thing by providing these resources to projects so SME’s can focus on the content of the course development rather than worrying about upping their technical skills and thus competing for their valuable time.
In my role as Curriculum Coordinator for the School of Business, I have coordinated the design and development of over 100 of these courses over the last five years using SAIT’s project management approach. There are many more course to come in the next three years so I will continue to guide and influence Instructors, Academic Chairs, Earned Revenue Coordinators on educational technology practises and issues.
As can be imaged with so many courses on the go, balanced with many other responsibilities in my job, I have had very little opportunity to work with the mechanics of our courses in D2L. The opportunity to design and partially develop a course in Moodle in this course has sparked an interest in the course technical details and eased the fear that I might break something. At one point in this course I realized that my comfort in using LMS’s was increasing as I had three browsers open with three courses in three different LMS’s: ETEC 565 in WebCT Vista, my development course in Moodle and a SAIT resource course in D2L. At that point I realized that I had expanded my comfort zone and was feeling confident that I was not going to break anything. So when an opportunity presented itself for this summer to attend the D2L Fusion 2012 user’s conference, I jumped at the opportunity. This upcoming experience should blend well with my learning from this course to help me better understand future development issues and better guide the people I work with in making sound decisions around educational technology.
Lifelong Learning in Educational Technology
Reflection is a wonderful tool that forces you to stop for a few moments and look around at where you have been recently and over time, and see how it ties into where you are going into the future. I did this today and did some reflection based on my flight path for this course, the learning I have accomplished in this program to date and the proposal I sent to my institute in January 2009 for funding to take this degree. The common thread through all three sources is a desire to acquire the knowledge and skills based on current practices and emerging trends in learning technology that will give me the know-how and confidence to guide instructors and Academic Chairs and provide leadership to my School in developing new courses and programs. I believe I am doing this, so the question is how to continue learning with educational technology after this course and after I have completed the MET program.
As indicated previously, I integrate my experiences as a Curriculum Coordinator with my MET learning on a daily basis. So it can be as simple as sharing relevant readings with my colleagues to help them move forward to recommending faculty development areas based on MET experiences. This type of collaboration pays rewards as colleagues in turn send me relevant readings and I quite often benefit from the Faculty Development sessions as I find time to attend them with the Instructors. I see no sign of this stopping in the future as I will continue to bring forward ideas for formal and informal learning opportunities to my educational community and I will continue to benefit from these opportunities by in engaging with them.
Now that I am better grounded in my Curriculum Coordinator role with sound educational practises, I see great opportunities in the future to attend and present at a variety of educational conferences to help expand my horizons and to share my experiences and success with others. SAIT Polytechnic has a four day Faculty Showcase conference in May. This is an in-house conference based on faculty presentations bookended with well-respected Keynote speakers that has been expanding yearly and overall plants many ideas within the SAIT community for us all to build upon. Two years ago MET Instructor Mark Bullen gave a Keynote on the Net Generation and this year Terry Anderson is giving a keynote based on his expertise in distance education. For this year I have volunteered to host a couple of the sessions and next year I am encouraging faculty who are involved in some of our School redesign projects to present their work and lessons learned.
Encouraging faculty to use technology is always something that must be used with caution as not all faculty are ready for this. Rather, I will continue to encourage faculty to move towards student engagement and interaction in and outside of the classroom. When the opportunity is right then I now have a better understanding of how and when I can introduce them to ways that technology can help this happen within their comfort zones.
Closing
This course is one more stone in my bucket of knowledge and experience that I will use to help build something of value or help somebody else build something when the time comes. I now feel like I am a little further ahead, but it will not take long remaining static to quickly fall behind, so continuing to move forward is the key to staying with or leading the pack. I now feel more equipped to do this.
References:
Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University. Accessed online 3 March 2009 http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Bates, A. W., (2000 M),anaging Technological Change: Strategies for College and University Leaders San Francisco: Jossey Bass;
Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.
Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7. Accessed online 11 Mar 2009 http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Accessed online 11 March 2009. http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf
Wikipedia (n.d.) Zone of Proximal development Retreived March 30, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development
Synthesis Assignment
A final e-portfolio synthesis reflection, including a:
- 1-2 paragraph précis of your flight path
- Substantive, comprehensive reflection about your eLearning toolkit experience overall
- Substantive, comprehensive reflection about your overall ETEC565A experience
- Substantive, comprehensive reflection about next steps for you, in terms of your practice in educational technology, which could include what technologies you hope to explore moving forward, or how you plan on engaging as a lifelong learner in terms of educational technology?
- Overall quality of work is also important, as per the overall standards listed above
- Posted on the Synthesis page of your e-portfolio.
Your final synthesis should be as detailed as possible, thus there is not word limit.