My ETEC565A e-portfolio

My flight path was a simple one: learn about assessment tools, implement Chickering & Gamson’s Seven Principles and learn Moodle. I wanted ideas on incorporating learner assessments, peer leader evaluations and program evaluation within a provincially spread out program. I wanted to make our peer leaders happy by implementing achievable yet resource sensitive changes to our program. I wanted to learn Moodle because I’ve only been a user of LMS, not an author. That’s not too much to ask, is it? What I ended up learning was far beyond my expectations.

This course is unlike any other course I have taken, in that, you live the constructivist approach to learning, rather than just reading and hearing about it. Everything from the learning by using the tools to how the discussions were conducted was the essence of experiential learning. The discussions, in particular was an eye opener for me. Not only were the scenario based discussions relevant to the modules, but the way the instructor balanced interjecting and listening to the discussions was on purpose to facilitate organic learning. Too much engagement would have stifled sharing and too little would disconnect relationships. Even the fact that the instructor would let us know that he was listening to see how the discussion unfolds was a comforting but present way of generating learning. I have never thought that I had to learn the discussion forum as a tool, but I have learned how to use this tool more effectively and hope to be able to adopt this approach in my own LMS.

I expected that learning new tools would be a challenge, but I was challenged in ways that were also not technology related. In the digital storyboard assignment, I was surprised at how quickly I was able to learn Sparkol, a videoscribing tool but disappointed at how difficult it was to come up with a story. I felt that I didn’t have a story that I could tell that would be relevant to my workplace without having the story sound like a marketing ploy. My challenge wasn’t even technology related. However, during the Moodle quiz assignment, I had multiple technology issues while the content came easier to me compared to the storyboard. Moodle tested my patience when the enrolment setting caused error messages and I wasn’t able to log into the site at all. During my frustrations, I accessed so many resources and learned so many additional functions in Moodle that it ended up making my last assignment much easier.

The story of Dominoe by Alan Levine was inspiring but also overwhelming to think that there are over 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story. It would be impossible, not to mention time consuming to evaluate all the tools that are available to find the right one. I was encouraged that my classmates did a lot of the hard work for me, testing and reviewing different tools. The benefit of having a network of peers that share the same interest that could divvy up the workload was invaluable and noted that the peer network for my work would appreciate a forum where tested workflows could be shared.

While putting together the Moodle quiz, I saw assessments in a whole new light – from the student’s perspective. Gibb & Simpson’s article on assessment threw a wrench in my perception of what learner assessments would look like because I was wondering the whole time what the learners were hearing during the in class training. What did they hear was important to them? What corners were they cutting? Would the quiz address what I felt was important or what the learners understood to be important? This prompted me to re-evaluate our whole training program to understand training from the perspective of the learner role in the clinic.

In addition to learning the objectives of the curriculum, I also had several lessons on what it would be like to be in our learner’s shoes. Several months ago, our system experienced performance issues, which made news headlines because of the impact it had on clinics. Although I was affected by the performance issues, I wasn’t personally impacted like the people in the clinics. I sympathized and offered solutions, but I wasn’t living the nightmare, until I had similar experiences myself during this course. Several times, I would write posts, only to have them disappear or have errors and shut down. I had issues with Moodle enrolment which disabled me from doing any work in the application. I did all the things that I would usually tell our users to do: put in a ticket, reboot the machine, reset the cache, use a different browser, and change computers etc. but nothing worked. Finally I gave up trying to post something after ten tries. I realized that my level of frustration and despair would be equivalent to what our users were experiencing every day for weeks. I noted all the resources that I accessed such as discussions, emails, and websites and discovered that not all these resources that I was able to access was available to our users. I am now looking into incorporating the resources from my experience into our program. This was an unexpected learning opportunity but extremely valuable.

In previous courses I have always felt that the majority of the class consisted of elementary teachers and few people were in adult education. At times, I felt that the discussions were beyond my scope and I couldn’t relate. Somehow, in this course I didn’t even notice if there were elementary, high school or adult educators. The scenarios for discussion had a variety of backgrounds and although people drew from their experiences, the discussion probed further than our own educational environments. I hardly noticed where people taught which was refreshing.

Several months ago, at the beginning of this course, I was looking for a LMS for our program. During the course, I was informed that there is no budget for a LMS. Last week I was informed that I now have a budget to purchase a LMS. In talking with various team members, I was introduced to a consultant that specializes in SharePoint which is a tool that another team will be purchasing. I didn’t realize that SharePoint integrates with Moodle so I am taking a look at the LMS rubric that we did at the beginning of the course to see if Moodle meets our needs. In addition, I have met with my team and discussed how we can incorporate good practice in education such as encouraging connections between learners and peers; collegial collaboration; and engaging learning activities. We have just started to roll out hands on workshops led by peers with 30 mins at the end of each session to share workflows and promote discussions and incorporated follow up phones calls to learners and peers. We have a lot we still want to do, but I think we are off to a good start.

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

Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’
learning. Retrieved from: www.itl.usyd.edu.au/assessmentresources
/pdf/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson.pdf

Levine, A. (2013). 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story. Retrieved from: http://50ways.wikispaces.com