My ADL journey

When I started the ADL program 12 months ago, I did not expect that my perspective on online learning and education would change so much and that I would grow and evolve to become a better educator. For this reason, I feel that it was a great choice for me to take part in this program.

From the very beginning of the first course, this program allowed me to become a self-taught person, to give me ownership over my choice, and a voice with a genuine opportunity to learn (COVA). COVA allowed my personal development.

In my program, I had to identify a problem in my organization that could benefit from a disruptive innovation strategy. To support my proposal, I evaluated a range of different academic sources, including journal articles, books, and web-based sources as part of a literature review.

I then created a plan to implement the proposal. This first course, in the beginning, felt overwhelming to me. This was not the dynamic that I initially expected of the master's program and forced me to redouble my efforts. But this program was so well designed that I feel that I successfully learned and applied the growth mindset - and did well at implementing COVA. It was especially useful in challenging periods of the program.

Throughout this program, I was encouraged strongly to network and realized the importance of developing networking groups. The group that I worked with during this course was very helpful. Together we compared experiences, checked each other’s progress on assignments, and offered feedback to each other. I was encouraged to join and participate in various networking groups as well. This was a great way to meet people, discuss relevant issues, make connections, share fresh ideas, get career advice and support, and build confidence.

I was also involved in creating and understanding my project's 'why', 'how', and 'what' statements guided my purpose during each step of my innovation plan, and it created a sense of urgency in stakeholders. I learned strategies to influence my team members to overcome resistance to change and welcome innovation through communication, collaboration, and ownership at every step.

Each step of the program reframed my beliefs about education and learning, and I saw this reflected in my Learning Philosophy, where my main focus is preparing students to be lifelong learners and critical thinkers. Defining myself as a constructivist, the possibility of creating significant learning environments will allow me to create courses that provide my students with the right conditions to develop their passion and imagination, and where they could see themselves as their resource for personal and social development.

According to L. Dee Fink (2003), Significant learning environments are the results of the integration of situational factors, learning goals, feedback and assessment procedures, and teaching and learning activities. With this in mind, I developed a plan for the International Business class where the ePortfolio was to be implemented. I integrated all the components in a cohesive way where learning goals, activities, and assessments are aligned to create significant learning, working backward to plan the course. In this way, I was able to keep my end goal in mind and focus on designing cohesive activities and assessments where students flourish in an engaging environment. I also paired the desired results of the course with assessment evidence to develop a learning plan using the Wiggins and Mc Tighe (2005) UbD model.

As I continued to work on the International Business course, I applied instructional design principles to develop the 15-week course outline, where each week included learning outcomes, required readings, video resources, and weekly assignments. I followed this up with the implementation, using Google classroom to build the layout while keeping the design as simple and easy to navigate for students as possible. Finally, I developed a usability test, putting real users at the center of my course to get their real-time answers.

The ePortfolio implementation in the International Business course will start this coming fall. I am confident that the results of its implementation will convince other skeptical instructors of the Business department that it is worth considering its implementation.

Finally, in concluding this program, I developed an action research outline, literature review, and a research plan that focuses on the question of whether or not using an ePortfolio increases a business student's level of employability as compared to those business students that do not use one in any of their courses. I hope that with the data collected throughout this project I will be able to show other instructors adequate evidence of the benefits that an ePortfolio can bring to their students for job application purposes.

References:

Harapnuik D. (n.d.). Digital Learning and Leading. Harapnuik.org. Retrieved July 15, 2022, from: https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=7012

Wiggins, G. & McTigue, J (2005). Understanding by Design (2nd ed). Alexandria VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.