ETEC 565A – Assignment 3 – Introduction Module: Reflection

My reflection will focus on two main aspects: reflection, as the “teacher” of the course and, as a learner.

Background about the course

This is a course for our learning technology community. The members are faculty, not students. Face-to-face meetings are the main focus of the community.

The Canvas space was originally set up for session notes and slides, as well as for our members to experience Canvas as a student. At the University of Auckland, we cannot have “fake” students or manipulate student enrolments in Canvas. But, the Canvas student view does not offer a true student experience, especially for external (LTI) tools. As such, I intend to use the Canvas course space to provide a student experience for the members.

I hope to turn it into a community space, with more online resources for those who are new, or have missed the meetings. I do not expect high participation rate, but I have to start somewhere.

Reflection as the teacher

The bigger picture

I have learned that designing a course is quite an iterative process. It took longer than I expected! I thought the most important thing is the idea, then it would be quick. Once I have all the ideas, it would be quick, so I thought. That itself turned into an iterative process.

Although this assignment is only covering the introduction module, I have to consider the entire course first. What are the goals for the course, what information would be useful to include, what activities and assessments would make sense? I also need to consider how we utilise other features like the communication tools in the course in a meaningful way.

Decisions on course content

There is a page that briefly states what the purpose of the community is, what our aspirations are, and a call for action to join the working group. This allows us to communicate to new and current members about this group. I decided to include a page on how to get more out of this community, hoping to encourage participation. I included a few pages about how we will use the Canvas course space. This includes the purpose on the overall use, and on the communication tools and assessments. I kept the pages informative but not too long; hopefully the information is more accessible that way.

I have included the purpose of the assessments and the discussions, in order to explain why they have been set up. I also hope, to prompt staff thinking about what they might be able to do with it, other than just look at the interface as a student in Canvas. In this way, the information is where it is needed, and if they didn’t read the information pages, things would still make sense for them.

Hidden agenda

Fowler and Bond (2016) suggest “the tenets of connected learning are changing student learning, and they can also help move faculty development in ed tech from the closed setting of a course-redesign workshop to an open and networked community of peer-to-peer learners within and across institutions of higher education” (p. 57). For me, I see our learning technology group as an opportunity for me to be the facilitator and guide to support their professional development through their participation in the community. Being mostly seen as the learning technologist, this is one of the rare chances that I have at work to act more like the “teacher”.

So, wherever I can, I include activities not just for introducing existing or new technologies, but also follow on activities that encourage them to engage more and deeper.

Thinking process

I made an interesting observation through this process. I realised that when I am deciding what to include in the Canvas course for my “students”, I don’t think in learning theories. My thought process was more focused on: How can I make this experience more meaningful and more relevant for my learners? How do I include extra nudges to prompt them to think, reflect and to relate this experience back to their use of Canvas and other learning technologies in their own courses? I know this aligns well with the situated learning theory, where learning from authentic activities results in much better learning (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). There are other learning theories that align well with the design, such as the constructivist theories and the cognitive theories. Yet that’s not really how my thinking process worked.

Overall, as a teacher, I tried to make the learning experience meaningful and useful to my “students”. I think that is a good place to start.

Reflection as a learner

As a learner, I appreciated the opportunity for an assignment like this, where I can relate it back to work and make use of the output. This made the assignment more real and really exciting.

Building the course on Canvas has also helped me learn to think more about students.

As a teacher and a learner, I have learned to stop, pause, ask myself the why questions on each element. I then tweak or build accordingly. I have learned to always allow for more time. I have also learned to give myself a deadline to stop tweaking, as it can turn into a never-ending process!

I have gained more appreciation of our teaching staff and how they work in Canvas. I understand how one can be easily lost in the course once your full semester’s content is in there. The overall design process is not a small task, even if you are just tweaking part of the course.

I have also learned more about myself. I realised that this is something I really enjoy doing. Overall, I loved it! It was such an enjoyable process, even when I got stuck for ideas!

Reference

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32. https://doi.org/10.2307/1176008

Fowler, S., & Bond, A. (2016). The future of faculty development in a networked world. EDUCAUSE Review, March/April 2016, 56–57.

I have written versions of this reflection. So, to help me focus my reflection, it would be on two main areas: the rationale of the choices and decisions made for the assignment, and reflection on the assignment as a learner for me.

Reflection on the rationale of the choices and decisions made

I won’t repeat what’s already in our group assignment, a few highlights:

Using the Tony Bates’ SECTION model (2014) as the base framework to consider and select criteria for each category was an obvious choice. Che took the lead on that and it was quickly agreed as a group. Then it was the matter of going through different resources and literature, picking out items that meet our requirements. For me, the EDUCAUSE review article by Wright et al. (2014) was quite a useful resource for selecting the criteria.

Then I found myself being tempted to add more things into the rubric, so it is more comprehensive. At the same time, we don’t want it to be too long and complicated to work with, then that is impractical. I’m glad that our group agreed to keep things simple so that helped to guide the development of our final rubric.

On top of the requirements from the scenario, it was important to also anticipate the needs for normal use of an LMS, as well as for future use. After all, that is in the university’s best interest to ensure the LMS is future proof. Because, hosting multiple LMSs for different requirements is not a desirable position to be in.

Switching LMS is a costly business, in terms of time, money and resources! I reflect back to when the University of Auckland implemented Canvas, a huge amount of resources was provided. For 9 months, a full time equivalent position is placed in each of our eight major faculties, for training and support of the transition into Canvas. There was also the project team and the IT team supporting us through the process; plus 24/7 user support from the vendor!

Reflection on the assignment as a learner

I have learned a lot from working on this assignment, about the task itself, about working as a group and about myself.

I have more appreciation of those people who came up with the evaluation rubric for our own selection of LMS for the University of Auckland. It’s not a simple task and it is never “perfect”.

I really appreciate our group being super organized! We started the assignment very quickly and everyone works on their allocated tasks promptly. So, our group part was done days before the deadline! It is also one of the chattiest group I have been with so far in my 3 courses. So, I got to know a bit more about my group members, which is nice.

What I have learned about myself is that, throughout the process, I keep feeling like I might have missed something important. Thankfully, it is a group assignment, many pairs of eyes had gone through the list of criteria. I also had to remind myself, there is no “perfect” rubric, so we can only do the best we can. Then I remember Natasha’s feedback on my flight path about finding balance between trial and perfection, on my technology goals. Often, that is what we have to work with, what is good for our situation, is a good start. Likewise, for an LMS selection rubric, a good rubric is a good starting point. In our experience at the University of Auckland, aside from lots of scoring and sandpit testing, it came down to lots of conversations and negotiation.

Overall, it was an interesting experience doing this assignment. For better or worse, it had probably made me think way too much than I perhaps should have!

Reference:

Bates, T., (2014) Choosing and using media in education: The SECTIONS model.  In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Wright, C., Lopes, V., Montgomerie, T. C., Reju, S., & Schmoller, S. (2014, April 21). Selecting a Learning Management System: Advice from an Academic Perspective. Retrieved January 21, 2018, from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/4/selecting-a-learning-management-system-advice-from-an-academic-perspective