My ETEC565A e-portfolio

Welcome to my ETEC 565 e-portfolio and my first post.  So far my journey in MET has been and extraordinary experience learning with a compilation of diverse people of varying professions and time zones.  I look forward to continuing my journey with new and familiar virtual faces this term.

A little about me…

I go by ‘Riea’ and despite many attempts to change my name on Connect, it always reverts back to my given name so I’ve given up on trying to change it.  I’m a BC girl at heart and miss driving in the summer through the Okanagan and stuffing my face with cherries.  I grew up on the UBC campus and then moved to North Delta where I raised my kids, until three years ago my teenage kids and I decided to move to the other side of the coast to see where life would lead us.  We are enjoying the slower pace of life, easy commute and friendly people of Halifax.

I’ve always been involved in education in some capacity, starting with working in UBC at the English Language Institute; teaching English in Japan; teaching Gr. 9 Japanese; working as an Assessment manager for medical education and now working as a training manager for the Nova Scotia government.  During my career I’ve seen the rapid transition in technology in the classroom as well as in operations.  Yes, I’ve been through the pains of the revolutionary TeleReg transition to online registrations and sat in dark lecture halls taking notes on actual paper!  I feel like I’ve been given a really good vantage point to see technology unfold in education.

In my current job as a Training Manager for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in Nova Scotia, I feel like I’m mid point in a continuum of technology.  I grew up watching doctors paper chart and now I’m bringing doctors onto electronic charts.  I can sympathize with the headaches of change management, while looking ahead to how technology can help with the quality of patient care.  The process of going paperless is not a switch you can turn on, but a continuum of training, practice and change (repeat as needed!).

EMR is not new in Nova Scotia, but the training program is new so I have an opportunity to try new things, starting with implementing a LMS.   It’s a blank canvas, albeit a small canvas but it’s exciting to be able to start something new.  My knowledge of LMS is pretty slim, as I’ve only used WebCT and now Connect so I’m interested in comparing what the much talked about Moodle can do. I think it will be interesting to compare what other LMS can do and learn the limitations.  Because my work program is a provincial program, I am bound to use the prescribed LMS, which unfortunately doesn’t have discussion boards. so I would also like to learn different ways that follow the government privacy guidelines to have a forum where our learners can collaborate and ask questions.

I’m also interested in learning about assessment tools, especially in a program where most of the learning is voluntary past basic training.  There’s mandatory training to just get onto the EMR (for the IT to switch you one) but optimizing the EMR is a different beast.  Of course, it’s ideal for everyone to optimize, but with most physicians just struggling to keep up with their patient load, they have no time to take the EMR to the next level.  So, how do you assess voluntary learning and at what point on the learning continuum is it best to assess?  I struggle with these two questions the most because it impacts my very limited budget!

Through this course, I hope to be able to implement small palatable changes towards Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles.  I say palatable because I want changes to be small enough to make achievable goals, but big enough to satisfy people who have been waiting for improvements to our program.

References:

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. http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm

Ellaway, R. & Masters, K. (2008). AMEE Guide 32: e-Learning in medical education.  Part 1: Learning, teaching and assessment.  Medical Teacher, 30, 455-473.  http://www.dhpescu.org/media/elip/01421590802108331.pdf