My name is Galina Culpechina. I am a former elementary, university and EFL teacher. I now work as an instructional designer, instructional analyst, curriculum developer, and an online instructor and have an extensive experience in planning, designing, implementing and facilitating face-to-face and online courses.
As an instructional designer and analyst, I have designed more than 70 Master’s degree courses for MBA, MPA, MSN, DNP, MAC, and LLM programs for academic partners such as Maryville University, University of San Francisco, New England College, Pepperdine University, Bradley University, and University of Southern California. I have experience creating courses in the following LMSs: Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai, D2L, and Canvas and using various tools these LMSs provide for student-teacher and student-student communication, collaboration, community knowledge building and gamifying learning experiences. I also use various social software and web 2.0 tools outside of LMSs to enhance student and teacher experience, for example: VoiceThread, Piazza, various web conferencing tools (Adobe Connect, Bb Collaborate, BigBlueButton, joinme, etc.), blogging platforms, etc.
My future goals include helping organizations and educational institutions to plan, manage, develop and deliver technology-based learning. I hope to design and teach undergraduate and graduate courses related to instructional design, educational technology, materials development as well as provide faculty training on integrating educational technology and using best practices in face-to-face and online environment.
My goals for this course include:
• Enhance my skills in evaluating, selecting and using various learning technologies, such as LMSs, online communication and collaboration tools, multimedia and social media.
• Explore pedagogical affordances of various social software and web 2.0 tools.
• Enhance my understanding of formative and summative assessment, particularly when delivered online.
• Create a sophisticated prototype LMS course site.
• Reflect on how I can enhance my practice by using my experience and learning from the course.
• Add ETEC565A artifacts to my existing MET ePortfolio that I created during ETEC590 Graduating Project course.
Regarding LMSs, I would like to be able to evaluate organizational needs and their specific contexts to help them to find the best solution for their particular situation, whether it is an LMS, a CMS, or any other platform.
I would also like to learn how to best support learners by creating opportunities for them to interact, collaborate, and learn from each other using the tools that various LMSs offer as well as various social media, mobile technology and multimedia. I am eager to explore and learn what best practices are for assessment in online environment.
The key approaches I feel I need to develop to meet my goals are:
• Assist and work collaboratively with junior IDs and newer faculty who are just entering the online education environment. I currently mentor a few people in my organization to orient them to best practices, backward design, pedagogical approaches, emerging technologies, instructional tools, and delivery models. I also train newer faculty members on how to use their university LMS, synchronous and asynchronous communication tools, and consult them on best teaching practices (Diaz, Garrett, Moore, & Schwartz, 2009). I hope this course will equip me with some research findings to support my suggestions and help me help them to effectively integrate effective instructional activities and technologies into their teaching and maximize their use of online teaching technologies (Diaz, Garrett, Moore, & Schwartz, 2009).
• Share my learning and experience from this course with other IDs in my organization and the leadership team and brainstorm ways to implement my learning in my work.
• Work collaboratively with my group members in this course on group assignments, particularly on developing an evaluation rubric to decide which LMS would best suit a particular organization needs.
• Reflect on each Module topic by participating in weekly discussions and adding reflections to ePortfolio.
• Share my experiences and lessons learned with peers and instructor.
• Participate in optional Collaborate Live Sessions.
• Connect with my network to share my learning and ask for their opinion on various topics discussed in the course.
I think the resources I might need for this course are:
• LMS (Canvas) I will use to build my content
• UBC blog
• Bb Collaborate for live sessions
• A tool for recording a digital story (iMovie, Adobe Spark (former Voice), VideoScribe, Screencast-o-Matic or something similar)
• Social media tools (Twitter, facebook, Linkedin, or something similar)
• Video, audio, image editing tools
• HTML skills
• Google docs, Skype, Hangouts, email to collaborate with peers on a group project
In this course I would like to focus on Continuous Learning and Collaboration (ISTE) with peers and instructor as “good practice encourages contacts between students and faculty (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). I would like to learn and discuss with peers and instructor how various tools work, how various technology can be used to meet learning goals, how to use technology to engage students, create authentic learning experiences and help learners learn and teachers teach. I will learn from peer and instructor feedback and by applying what I learn while completing practical assignments because “good practice uses active learning techniques” (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996).
I would also like to share my learning and findings with my colleagues, test various tools, and use the results in my consultations with faculty.
References:
• Diaz, V., Garrett, P.B., Moore, J., & Schwartz, C. M. (2009). Faculty development for the 21st century. Educause Review (44)3, 46-55. Retrieved from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2009/5/faculty-development-for-the-21st-century
• International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2017). Standards for teachers. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators
• Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm