Sarah+Final+Reflection

Final Reflection

When I enrolled in EDCI 786 Mobile Learning, I had a preconceived idea of what the course was going to entail based solely on the title and short description. Some of my ideas were right and others were the exact opposite. First and foremost, I learned that I was not as knowledgeable on the subject as I thought. In August, I thought mobile learning was using a cell phone to enhance a learning environment. Now that December has arrived, I’ve come to view mobile learning as a way to engage students by creating new learning opportunities.

For better or worse, I cannot for the life of me procrastinate. I am one of those annoying students who likes/tries to continually work ahead. Having only ONE lesson available at a time was killing me the first couple weeks. Then I realized the course might be being updated as the semester progressed and as I’ve been told countless times, patience is a virtue. In the end, I think this type of course structure actually helped me focus solely on that week’s lesson and not worry about what the next topic or assignment was. I also realized the need to be open to a new learning management system. All my previous courses were administered via K-State Online (KSU’s course management system) and followed a similar format. I was hesitant to learn that the course platform was a wiki and even more hesitant when we were asked to start editing pages of the wiki. Much to my surprise, editing was easy and I think using Wikispaces might be easier than K-State Online for several of our departments existing courses.

Early in the semester, I realized that compared to some students in the class, I was very new to teaching. I have never actually taught a class (I aid in program coordination) and just wrote my first lesson plan this past summer. Completing the projects helped me grasp what a teacher must take into consideration when creating lessons, learning units or courses. Up until a couple years ago, my mind functioned almost solely as that of a student and I did not take into consideration all an instructor has to undertake to make a course happen. Without ample teaching experience, an obstacle I am concerned about is how to reach different learning styles. Several of the projects for the course pushed me to increase my creativity and introduced multiple resources to help engage all types of learners.

About mid semester, after completing the Digital Images assignment, I realized that I have a new goal; I want to teach an online course in the coming decade. As I move forward toward this new goal, I’m most concerned about determining how much technology to integrate into a course. The online program that I currently work with contains a wide variety of students ranging from digital immigrants to digital natives. The technology available to students is also very diverse. A portion of the students will have excellent up-to-date technology (new computer, reliable Internet connection, etc.) while others may live in a very rural area where an Internet connection may be poor. I believe finding a technology balance that will not overwhelm the digital immigrants nor bore the digital natives and be easily accessible for all is essential, albeit potentially difficult. In a perfect world, I would like to set high specifications regarding the technology required to complete the course/program in the hope of providing an equal educational experience.

Providing education to students who are not physically located near an academic institution via online learning is one of the driving forces behind my pursuit to teach. Oftentimes the value of higher education may not be fully understood until an individual has spent time in the “real world” and realized, in some cases the hard way, the difference a degree can make. Being able to offer students a way to achieve a degree or certificate and not have to disrupt their lives by moving or not being able to work full time is what I have become very passionate about and I want to continue to pursue.

One of the projects from this class that I am most proud of is the MP3 lesson. Instead of creating an MP3 file via Audacity, I was able to make screencasts using Screenflow. These short Tips and Tricks lessons discussed how to navigate portions of K-State Online. The lessons were made available to faculty in the department and feedback has been positive. I recently recorded several more on topics based on faculty comments and demand. One Tips and Tricks lesson covered using a new wiki function available in K-State Online. I recorded the lesson after creating a test wiki and working with it for a couple days. After the lesson was made available to faculty, I quickly learned that I should have spent more time testing the wiki as I missed several major items and over winter break additional lessons will be created for clarification. I found out the hard way that time spent testing new technology is imperative.

It is amazing how the advances in technology have been able to increase not only student-instructor interaction in online learning, but also student-student learning. It has taken seven years for me to complete my master’s degree. Even though I am technically, an on campus student, I have completed nearly all my coursework via distance education classes so as not to interfere with my full time position. The first courses I took mainly involved the instructor providing notes or short audio files as course content supplemented with a textbook. There was hardly any student-student interaction. Jump ahead seven years and I’m able to learn not only from my instructors, but also from fellow students. I’ve worked on group projects with classmates in multiple states, received valuable feedback from other students who have years of experience and different viewpoints. The almost constant improvement in technology is sure to continue to change the way online classes are taught, and I hope to be able to be a part of that change.