ETEC 500: Research Methodology in Education
This course introduced me to educational research and the power of ERIC EBSCO and library.ubc.ca. It also introduced me to RefWorks. I didn’t enjoy the assessments, but the textbook was useful and a good reference if I ever want to go further in academia (not very likely). Overall this course gave me the ability to think critically on all those speakers who say “according to the research”, without actually validating their claim. I was now capable of finding the research and coming to my own conclusions on its validity.
ETEC 565M: Mobile and Open Learning
Most of my artifacts were created via this course and I can honestly say I enjoyed every aspect of it (from the blog style WP site, to the technological forecasting assignments). The professor was a bit of a stickler for marks, and an academic (to date it is my lowest grade) but I still really enjoyed looking at the different technologies shared by the instructor and students.
ETEC 540: Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing
The readings in this course killed me, literally ripped my soul out. I was having to look up every second word and I just couldn’t understand the content. I was really regretting taking this course, but there was some hope. I posted a few blogs on my frustrations and the professor messaged me explaining the nature of the readings (the book was from a 19th century monk who was disturbingly wordy). He didn’t have a problem with my posts and encouraged me to think critically on the content and go beyond it. I can honestly say the professor made this course tolerable, if it wasn’t for his input it would have been a very poor experience. In the end this course introduced me to blogging which I really enjoyed and it allowed me to create a few multimedia products, I am most proud of ETEC 540: The evolution of the presentation. This course really brought me through all the stages of grief but when I accepted the course for what it was I really did end up enjoying it.
ETEC 511: Foundations of Educational Technology
This course was a massive shock and if I had taken this course first, I would have likely quit the program. It was so horribly ported into canvas that many of the links were dead, and you had to manually search for most of the readings (which I found out of date) yourself. There was basically a single academic essay. I HATE writing essays for the sake of writing essays, so I tried to add some original thought to it, but even that was incredibly boring. I didn’t take too much away from this course.
ETEC 512: Applications of Learning Theories to Instruction
This was a bargaining course for me as I tested the waters in multimedia projects but did struggle with some of the content. I did however really take to Vygotsky and social constructivism and really got insight into the nature of online learning (especially in higher education). It made me reflect on my own University and how the poor teaching and learning environment produced a student with enough self efficacy to pass. Really all online learning is highly dependant on the motivation of the student, as they say you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink. This also was a relatively well-designed course that was quite easy to follow. It had a lot of check-ins and used canvas well.
ETEC 510: Design of Technology-Supported Learning Environments
This course introduced me to flipped and blended lessons, which will forever alter the way in which I teach. I created a few multimedia projects to enhance the collaborative project at the end, which lead me to start my own YouTube channel for my students. This course pushed me into acceptance, and I got a lot out of it.
ETEC 520: Planning and Managing Technologies for Higher Education
This course was all essay based and I did not like the LMS (WordPress). I thought this was going to be a lovely course on using technologies in higher education (I thought I would be learning about Canvas) but no, it was an essay-based course that look at the bureaucracy of implementing eLearning in higher education. They do warn you ahead of time about the nature of the course, but I was told by another student that it had aspects of canvas embedded into it, but I did not notice any.
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