It's always good to pause, reflect, and think about how to CONTINUE growing. Where and what have I done well these past few months? Where do I yet have room for growth?
Growth is never-ending. For me, it will always remain at the forefront of my professional and personal life experiences. Below, I will break down a few components of my participation and completion efforts.
1) What is working and what can I do better?
When beginning these two courses, I was unsure what it meant to lead an organization through changes or what resources I would need to understand digital environments. I realized that these classes were different from everything else I had studied so far and quickly got excited for new ways to stretch what I know about education and was ready to put my learning to the test!
While working through each weekly discussion, I have been doing a good job making sure to engage fellow classmates. I’ve done this through asking questions within my post and also posing prompts within at least three other posts too. This creates a dialogue and creates a safe space allowing everyone to openly share ideas! It’s been great seeing what a simple question can do.
For improvement, I know that I can be more prompt about completing my readings ahead of time. If I work on this for my next set of classes, then I know I can efficiently complete assignments earlier to ask for feedback from professors and classmates which gives me a higher chance for success after a few edits before the assignment is actually due!
2) How did I contribute, build, and provide feedback to my core collaboration group?
It’s been great fun working alongside a strong collaborative team again for these courses. We mostly utilize communication through means of the GroupMe mobile application. For this class, John B. suggested the addition of a new group member, so our little team has now grown to nine students! Here is a list of the names within our team: Allison K., Amanda B., Edward S., Jess E., Jessica B., John B., Lisa W., and Nyjah J. Edward, Lisa, and Nyjah were NOT in the same courses as we were for this round, so most of the conversation was among the remaining six members. It was the perfect size for collaboration. Five of us even collaborated for the virtual podcast video! I created an outline for us to fill in our conversation ideas to keep the video succinct and on-track.
This time around, I also joined a Facebook collaborative group called “ADL 5304 - Leading Organizational Change” and I volunteered to be one of three administrators for the group along with Lori R. and Nicole B. The group has 46 members and I am sure more members will join at the start of our next course. It has been so great to share assignment topics and ideas, help with editing, and open up the floor to larger discussions.
3) Did I revise assignments and reflect on revisions?
Comparatively, I believe I have done the MOST revision so far with these two classes! With the video feedback provided, I have been able to specifically focus my edits and make all posts better through reworking which parts need special attention. This editing process allowed each assignment to get better and better!
I was also able to revise through the assistance of my collaborative peer group’s feedback! My team has been very helpful and willing to go the extra mile when prompts and questions arise. Through our group chat and exchanges within comments on Google Docs, it has been a whirlwind of making changes and updates to better my own learning. This has allowed me to reflect and be purposeful with my projects.
4) Was I able to complete the course readings, videos, and supporting resources?
Yes. Thankfully, it’s now an easy flow of accessing information from the Blackboard pages. I know and understand where the readings are listed for me to complete and the videos for weekly discussions are within the same online areas.
I have been able to get myself into the groove of watching the videos and later connecting this with my readings. I only wish I had more time to take detailed notes while reading! It has also been fun to click on the supporting links and online articles.
5) Did I meet the various course activity deadlines indicated in the calendar?
Thankfully, I was able to submit all links on time! For my next courses, I would like to try to start submitting work early in advance so that I have time to reflect and make additional edits before I know it will be graded. This way, I can further process each resource and continue to make connections!
These eight week courses sure fly by quickly! It’s been very helpful with I or someone else in my small collaborative group makes a homework calendar so that we can keep track of our assignment completion and stay on-track for getting everything turned in!
6) What about my additional accelerated ADL reflection?
When it comes to these two classes, I was able to connect them to each other through the lens of leadership within school systems. As an example, I was posting a variety of educational technology learnings from EDLD 5317 to my ePortfolio while also connecting leadership qualities to my Innovation Plan. It’s all overlapping!
I was also able to utilize information from the other class into several ePortfolio posts too, creating stronger connections to cross-class content learning. This has all allowed me to take a step back and see how the classes can correlate to one another, continuously interweaving with my Innovation Plan, reading, and research.
7) Was I able to take responsibility in the course by participating in all activities?
I was certainly active through several ways with my core group of peers. One way was by posing questions and responding to inquiries through our nine-member GroupMe class chat app. Through this I was able to create an outline for peers to complete with ideas and talking prompts for our video podcasting project!
I was also taking on responsibility by choosing to be a moderator within the new ADL Facebook group that I joined. This allows me to lead discussions and manage peer questions through a farther reach of forty fellow peers going through this Lamar University Master’s Degree program. What a great privilege!
8) Were forum posts timely, deep, research-based, and APA style?
When completing and replying to discussion prompts within the class online forums, I made sure to go through at length and review what my classmates were saying! It was great to feel connected and see how others are understanding these materials. All of my responses were thoughtful and reflective. My replies came from ideas surrounding the class readings and occasionally from a bit of my own mind and research.
One thing I would like to work on would be earlier completion of posts, so as to allow for additional back-and-fourth dialogue to occur in a timely manner instead of some days or weeks later replying to a comment. Sometimes it’s easy to miss that reply notification! So this is something I would like to work on.
Final Self-Scoring
In conclusion, there area a few things I would like to work on, including timeliness of completing my class readings. I would also like to work on posting replies to my classmates faster so that our dialogue can continue with more relevance.
I would grade myself 94/100 points.
Overall, I know that I am not perfect but I am also very proud of the work and research that I have done! Cheers to another round of successful learning and growing.
I continue to look forward to the continuation of this program.
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