Personal Course Reflection

Reflections of IT 648

Telecommunications in Education, IT 648 has taught me a lot of valuable instructional technology skills that I already have started to incorporate throughout this course and as well as other courses this semester. The main component I believe I have gained from this course is a basic understanding of different technological tools as well as how they can enhance student learning by integrating these tools within the curriculum of a course. I have always enjoyed incorporating technology within my lessons and presentations however after taking this course I realize I mainly utilized them for “Edutainment” or visual purposes. Technology in fact can enhance visual presentations and entertain participants and/or students however to really impact student learning and achievement, technology integration is necessary.

Personal/ Course Strengths and Challenges

This was the very first fully online course which presenting some learning adjustments for me. Though it took me only a few weeks to adjust to online presentations, course discussions, and assignments initially I thought the course would be similar to every other course I took. I found my strong points within the class to be the ability to independently work, learn from my peers, learn how to utilize new technology tools, and have the opportunity to engage in intense discussions with my peers. I really enjoyed the flexibility I had within the course to work at my own pace, and develop projects based off of course supplements and resources. I believe this experience provided me an opportunity to develop professional skills and work habits that will make me successful in the future. I also enjoyed reviewing peer projects and weekly discussions with my peers. What surprised me most in this course was the relationship I developed with my peers. Though we never met each other, I would often think how each would respond to discussion questions. I enjoyed debating topics with them and viewing their assignments. I learned a great deal about the technologies we utilized and gained creative ideas of how to improve my own work through my peers. Finally, I have gained a confidence in my ability to quickly interact with new technologies. While I was unfamiliar with each of the tools we worked with I was able to quickly pick up the skills needed to successfully complete my assignments. This gave me the confidence that, if given a new technology to incorporate within my career, I would be able to step up to the task and help develop meaningful content that would impact student achievement. I enjoyed the opportunity to experiment with these technologies and hope to continue to learn new technologies throughout the rest of my program!

Course strengths would include intense work assignments, meaningful discussion based applications, and communication with my professor. Though I felt overwhelmed with assignments on multiple occasions, I really felt the assignments given in this course were relevant and meaningful and impacted both my educational experience and my appreciation for technology tools that can be used within education. Each project gave me an opportunity to personally grow but also discover how these tools can be utilized by reviewing previous projects, peer projects, and constructing personal projects. I also appreciated the in-depth responses and communications between my peers within the course and myself. Each week our class was given specific questions to discuss within a threaded discussion board. Not only did these questions make me research new topics and develop personal and professional opinions on computer-based technologies but also the opportunity to read my colleagues’ perspectives and constructive comments on my perspective. This assignment generally took a good deal of time each week but I feel the learning achieved through collaboration and communication with my peers was quite remarkable. I appreciated their feedback and learned a great deal from each of them.

Finally I really enjoyed the open communication between my professor and the class. Each week we were sent a list of learning activities, current projects and discussion questions. While these interactions were both appreciated and welcomed I really enjoyed two specific communications, which were a summative post to our weekly discussions and personal feedback on our assignments. Each week after all students had completed their individual and peer posts, the professor would create a post highlighting great thoughts and suggestions that occurred and give a summative wrap up to the discussion as well as best practices associated with that question. I looked forward to viewing these posts each week and felt it was a great way for the professor to engage within the conversations without guiding or controlling the output of the discussions. Online courses can also be challenging when students do not get feedback in regards to completed assignments and projects. The professor within the course gave great feedback in regards to the strengths exhibited as well as some suggestions for further development within each activity we participated in. This allowed me to gage where I stood within the course and how I could improve my skills within each technology tool we worked with. I enjoyed receiving this personalized feedback and appreciated the time the professor took to provide each student with this information. 

Areas of improvement for me would be developing better programming skills. Some of our projects allowed us the ability to work with code. I found myself at times frustrated with the limitations of the free technologies such as limited background, templates, etc. as well as the inability on my part to figure out how to alter such items to create and design pages (both Web pages and Blogs) the way I imagined them to look. As far as the course goes there are no challenges I saw as I really enjoyed the course. I believe one enhancement to the course would be supporting each technology with a research based resource list supporting the use of the computer-based tools we utilized within the course. Though we were given lessons and additional resources to enhance our knowledge on each tool, I would have enjoyed the ability to see what the research says about each tool we utilized. Additionally, there was some subject content (ex: Wireless and Satellite technologies) that were particularly challenging for me. If possible it would be great to have face-to-face, synchronous Q&A time, or synchronous video to discuss these types of technologies to develop a better understanding of them.  

Future learning goals

My future learning goals include taking as many instructional technology courses that I can, developing a knowledge base on technologies I am starting to utilize, and completing individual research projects incorporating instructional technology theory and practice. Each semester as I continue to learn more about technology I appreciate the diversity as well as the numerous types of computer-based instructional technologies currently within education. I hope to continue to develop a base understanding of applications, hardware and software to give me a good foundation to build a technology career upon. I would also like to look into taking some computer science courses to expand my knowledge on computer programming, as I believe it would be a resourceful tool and knowledge base for me to have.

Currently I have not conducted any individual research on any technology-based tool. I believe another way for me to learn more about some of the tools utilized within the course would be to conduct research on the benefits/ challenges of incorporating it. Similarly with some of the current technologies being utilized I see a lack of research being conducted at the University level to determine whether or not collegiate student learning is being impacted by technology-enhanced education. It is my intention to start investigating how technology can enhance student learning as my major is higher education administration and I now see the importance of administrators having such knowledge bases.  

Classroom Integration

There are many ways I intend to implement these technologies within the classroom. The first way is to educate students on proper resources on the Internet. This would include web searching activities and introducing students to alternative Google search engines. I also hope to incorporate a cross content blog incorporating discussions utilizing not only my subject area but also various disciplines. I believe making cross discipline connections is essential to student learning and provides a type of cohesiveness to the content being taught. It will also allow my students the ability to engage in meaningful discussion with one another and invite others to share within that educational experience. Furthermore I see how integrating WebQuests, video, and online presentations can enhance student learning and increase student motivation and engagement.