Facilitation Innovation

This summer of learning has been so wonderful! I was hesitant about taking two courses this summer knowing I had full-time work obligations and my four children out of school, but I am very glad that I pushed forward with these courses. The Instructional Design and Developing Effective Professional Learning content complemented each other well. These courses were also of great interest to me. In my organization, my role involves planning for and facilitating professional learning. My innovation plan also centers on incorporating blended learning into professional learning. These two courses helped me to make significant progress towards being prepared to pitch and implement my innovation plan in my organization. 

Throughout each course I was able to complete all the course readings, watch all the videos and met all calendar deadlines. Until this point in the ADL program I have had a core collaboration group, but as we have progressed through the program at different rates, we were not all in the same courses. I still worked with Shay McDonald and Rebecca Rodgers in EDLD 5318. I also branched out and collaborated with my peers in the ADL Cohort Collective GroupMe chat and Lamar EdTech Summer ‘23 FaceBook group. I was a contributing member of, and helped build, these groups. I provided feedback to several members of these groups, including Mesha Shuptrine, Kelly Skillingberg, Valary Patterson and Dawn Short. These peers, and others, provided me with feedback on my work. I was able to make some helpful revisions to my assignments based on their feedback.

One of my goals in past courses has been to be more active in the BlackBoard course discussions. I felt that I achieved that goal this summer. I was able to post responses to each discussion in a timely manner. I also revisited each discussion several times to monitor the comments and further participate in the discussions. I am glad I made that effort because I felt like I got to know my peers better during this summer term. It was interesting navigating these courses with some peers who were coming from a different learning track. I felt like I was able to offer them support and encouragement as they adjusted to the learner-centered and outcome-based learning that happens in ADL courses.

One thing that was different in EDLD 5318 was the format for course discussions. There were only three discussions after the ‘Introduce Yourself’ discussion. While they included supporting videos, the expectation of these discussions was to post completed assignments for peer feedback. I did not like this format for the discussions because it seemed that this undermined the need for a core collaboration group. It also made it so there was really no place to discuss the supporting videos and synthesize the concepts that we were applying to the course assignments. I hope that this format is not repeated in subsequent courses. 

As I wrap up my summer courses and prepare for my final three ADL courses this upcoming Fall semester, I am reflecting on all I have learned and how my innovation plan is developing. My goal moving forward is to focus on the connections among all of the concepts I have studied and to analyze how I am applying each course’s concepts to my innovation plan. Here we go!

See below for evidence of collaboration in various forums: