I am the Coordinator of Professional Development at a law firm in downtown Toronto. Our department oversees the learning curriculum for the firm. We run over 100 programs a year. Some of the programs are part of re-occurring curriculums, whereas others are new content. In addition, we run the 2 week orientation program for our summer law and articling students as well as firm retreats. I have worked in professional development for approximately five years. We I first started I was purely on the project/ event management side of professional development. Meaning, my primary focus was on program, event, and orientation logistics. This included tasks like researching offsite venues, ordering catering, arranging audio visual equipment and support, creating PowerPoint presentations and handouts, and drafting evaluations. I obtained a graduate certificate in Project and Event Management from York University and considered going into events full time. It was not until my Manager gave me an online learning project that I changed my focus.
I was asked to work with CPD Online (a third party company) to set-up a private video library for the firm. CPD Online hosts videos and has private libraries only accessible to people with their own access code. Our clients often need help obtaining their CPD hours so we host a series of programs for them throughout the year. However, the recordings of those programs are hosted on our intranet site making them inaccessible to clients. CPD Online allowed us to share our content with our clients while maintaining our firm’s privacy and protecting proprietary information (highlighted by Bates 2014 as an important media selection criteria). We were the first CPD Online private library so we had to create everything from scratch. I found the process of developing our library to be both tedious and exciting. I liked creating something new and it was great seeing my ideas come to life. Once the project was done, I realized I really enjoy online learning and decided to pursue it further. While I still manage the logistics for our learning initiatives, I also re-designed and now maintain our department’s intranet page, I create short video (where applicable) for our live seminars, and I will be creating some online modules for our students using Articulate Storyline.
The increased scope of my role is what inspired me to apply for the MET program. I wanted to learn more about the world of online learning and gain the skills to develop and implement programs/software at my firm. My MET goals are two-tiered. For my current role, I would like to learn about content design strategies and software. When to use online resources and when not and what works best and for whom. I also want to get some hands on experience developing my own content in a wide variety of formats. In the future, I hope to be in a management position and am looking for the MET program to give me guidance on technology selection and implementation. A lot of professional organizations have a LMS – unfortunately my firm does not. With that said, there has been a lot of debate on whether or not we need one. In this course I hope to learn what types of platforms exist, what they can do, and how to select the appropriate platform for our organizational needs. I am also interested to learn how a LMS works/connects with other technologies and resources (e.g. Outlook, Intranet pages, mobile devices etc.). Further, we are looking to create a learning blog at the firm. I would love to learn some tips and best practices for creating a professional blog. How do you make it both a social and professional experience? How do you engage users and encourage participation?
In order to attain my goals I think I primarily need practice. As Bates stated, everyone has different learning styles and preferences (2014). My preference is to learn by doing. I want to experiment, test software, use trial and error, and take advantage of the knowledge and experience my classmates bring to the course. Bates (2014) also highlighted the role of interaction in learning (whether it be student – teacher, student – student, or student – material). I think in order to succeed I need to ask questions and receive feedback. It would also be helpful to see real life examples of online learning my classmates have created. I look forward to being inspired and creating new things throughout this course, helping me reach my ultimate MET goals.
References
Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in digital age, Chapter 8. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/