Reflection

Introduction

I came into Master of Education in Education Technology program skilled in graphic design and media production but was lacking formal instructional design skills. I remember a job interview as I was leaving Peace Corps that showed my weaknesses in stark relief. I was fresh off of classroom teaching for two years and developing professional training materials for another year. I thought I was prepared to take those skills into the professional job market. I applied for an instructional design position at a national nongovernmental organization and was able to get through the first two rounds of interviews. In the third interview I talked about my experience and aspirations and things were going well. That is until the interviewers started asking me about Bloom’s Taxonomy, ADDIE, Kirkpatrick’s Levels and other ISD related knowledge. I stuttered and stammered and tried gamely to talk my way through the questions. I just couldn’t fake it and while I had the passion and some experience, I just didn’t have the background knowledge. I was obvious I was not going to be a final candidate for that job. I have grown in many ways over the two years in this Masters program:  both personally and professionally. I have added soft skills as well as technical knowledge. That growth will allow me to ace my next instructional designer interview. No more asking “Kirkpatrick who?”

Portfolio

My portfolio represents significant work created over the two years that I have been in the EdTech program. I had actually forgotten how much work was required. Tallying up all of these artifacts quickly jogged my memory and it was clear how how far I had come since taking my first class, EDET 652. Looking at the work created in that class I can easily see that my academic rigor was weak even though my critical thinking was ready for graduate school. I remember feeling lost in those early classes and talking to my wife about how I wasn’t sure about how I would get through the program. With the help of my professors to shore up my weak areas and my colleagues to support my musings and thoughts in our class forums, I was able to create rigorous work of which I am proud.

Lessons Learned

• I fill the silence. The program had us working in groups quite often and we are all busy professionals with families. This sometimes led to group members not participating fully. I could not deal with the lack of movement or communication, so I would step in and cheerlead the team while prodding them forward. This was a great insight into my character and helped me become a better student and instructional designer.
• I am a better writer than I thought. While I still have a long way to go, my writing has proven to be good enough. Writing big long papers was the part of grad school that I dreaded the most. In my professional career I have created and worked on more physical or tangible items. Much less writing about it and more doing it. As I leave graduate school, I am confident that my written communication skills are both improved and even better than adequate.
• The biggest lessons I learned all related to the nuts and bolts of instructional design. Being able to run through a model and produce coherent and relevant work will be what gets me my first job in the field. I am confident that I can take a subject and work with the stakeholders to design a course/module that will measurably achieve the desired learning outcome.

Difficulties

• Graduate school is hard and requires a significant time commitment to learn and digest the materials and then produce quality content. During this two year program, I received two promotions (i.e. more responsibilities) at work and my wife and I had another child. While difficult (and maybe even a bit crazy), the added complexity just inspired me to improve my time-management so that I could succeed at my job, my schooling, and my parenting. I didn’t lose my job, kept my grades high, and my children still have all their arms and legs. I call that a win.
• I was not the typical student in my cohort. The majority of my classmates were school teachers who did not have an extensive technology background. I was the opposite with 20 years in technology and a few years in education. This meant I was swimming upstream in some classes where the rest of the class was well prepared and visa versa. So I had to work extra hard to keep up and then fight to give enough attention to the simpler tasks like making a GIF. To handle this I would try to go above the requirements to improve rather than maintain my technology skills.

Successes

• Every time I was able to take a problem and resolve it through instructional design, I felt like I was a success. My internship was the best example. I interned with the SPCA in Aiken. They had a resource issue where their trainer did not have enough time to work with all of the new volunteers. We worked together to brainstorm a solution and that was to take the initial simple lessons and put them online.I developed a course that used training videos to emphasize basic knowledge all volunteers should have. I created handouts and materials to support the learning. That way by the time the volunteers got to her in-person classes, they had a strong foundation and were better prepared to learn in larger groups and in less time.  The feedback from the staff and volunteers was positive. I was even named volunteer of the month. And as luck would have it, my family ended up with a dog.
• My first research paper was one of my proudest moments. I had never written anything as rigorous in all of my previous schooling. As I read the description, I was shaking my head and getting more and more worried. I followed Dr. Grant’s directions and went through the project step-by-step and I realized that I had the skill for that assignment and any other assignment that came my way. It was a real breakthrough for me.

Regrets

• I regret not focusing more in my technology classes. As I mentioned before they were review for work I had been doing professionally for years. Rather than running through assignments quickly and moving on, I should have spent more time supporting my classmates. Helping classmates would have allowed me build my training skills while increasing my subject knowledge.
• The discussion forums were my least favorite part of the classes. I understood why they were used but the inorganic communication grated on me. I never phoned it in on the forums but I do believe I could have given more focus to them.