EDUC 763 Reflection
Having taught in a traditional, face-to-face classroom for 13 years, and having tutored special needs students for many years as well, I came in to this Instructional Design Class with many preconceived ideas about how online design and traditional design would be pretty much the same. I quickly discovered how much I had to learn.
It seemed for the first few weeks I took 3 steps forward and two steps backward as I struggled to take the focus off myself as the instructor and place it squarely on that of the learner. Once I was able to keep the learner at the forefront of everything I was doing, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.
In doing the section on chunking, it became clear to me how the devil is in the details. No matter how many times I checked and rechecked something, it’s still easy to miss a crucial piece. The benefit of having an excellent learning partner with a critical eye helped with this process immensely.
Finally, being challenged to learn new technologies, to continue to question each week through the use of forms the functionality of the course, and to align activities with learning objectives, have all served to pull me way outside the comfort level of my box into this wonderful world of eLearning and design, and I look forward to the continued challenge of learning and teaching in this world.