Flight Path Precis & Overall Experience
I set out in this course with the intention of learning about and playing with a range of digital tools that will serve me in my evolving work as a collaborator and designer. In practice, this term was a difficult one for me to strike a balance between my courses, personal life, and freelance work. Unforeseen circumstances required me to make an international move which regretfully has led me to be less engaged with this course than I strive to be. That said, while I was not as involved in the weekly discussions, the readings and assignments did prompt me to explore some new tools and ideas which aligns well with my original intention.
I really enjoyed exploring and experimenting with Google Classroom which proved to be far less user friendly and customizable than I had anticipated. This unexpected rigidity prompted me to think about how the platform could be combined with other tools and media to create an engaging course that would support students in achieving the learning objectives without compromising usability. These are very real tradeoffs which I can recognize my instructors have had to make for each MET course and has prompted me to think about how I will approach these decisions in future professional work.
This practical, hands on experience was a welcome change from many other courses which are almost exclusively theory based content. As often as we discuss the need for our students to have hands on experience experimenting and playing to learn, we often forget that adults can learn using similar strategies. The course development assignments in ETEC 565A provided this opportunity to bring pedagogy and practice together.
In terms of participation, one aspect that I found off putting was that learners were expected to start their own threads each week in the discussion forums. Given that I was often playing catch up over the term, I sometimes felt that I didn’t have a new or original angle that was worthy of its own thread and instead preferred to read my peer’s reflections and share my responses to their ideas, or simply to lurk. I can understand (both as a student and a learning facilitator) that it is difficult to establish reasonable guidelines and expectations that contribute to high quality engagement. However, for me this expectation felt like something of a stumbling block.
Next Steps
Moving forward, I am very much looking forward to taking a change of pace from my nomadic lifestyle and relocating to Toronto where I will be able to pursue professional opportunities that are not fully online. I will be completing my final 2 MET courses next term and will be searching for opportunities that will allow me to leverage my experience to develop digital learning solutions that balance the needs of learners and administrators.
Based on the content of ETEC 565A, I will continue to explore and educate myself on mobile technologies and opportunities to leverage these tools in the educational context. As Ciampa indicates, the relatively limited understanding of why mobile devices are so engaging poses many possibilities for anytime, anywhere learning that can help to make educational endeavors more accessible and effective (2013). Our current digital landscape is filled with so much ambiguity and space for interpretation and innovation, that trying to make sense of it all could easily overwhelm any individual. Instead, continuing to dig in and ‘play’ with new tools seems to be an encouraging route forward that will allow me to expand my evolving understanding of how education can be elevated by tech tools.
Specifically, having seen some of the projects my peers have developed this term, I would like to try my hand at exploring a more traditional LMS platform like Canvas or Moodle. At the same time, I recognize that this field is far from stagnant and continues to experience growth and evolution (Spiro, 2014).
Works Cited
Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf
Spiro, K. (2014). 5 elearning trends leading to the end of the Learning Management Systems. Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/5-elearning-trends-leading-to-the-end-of-the-learning-management-system