I’ve struggled a bit with this course – not because of the content or organization, but because of my life circumstances right now. There have been several things that have taken the time I thought I had available away over the last 9 weeks, and some of them aren’t done with me yet.
This part of the experience has highlighted for me both how important organization is, and how profoundly important self-care is. Without those two things, I’m not sure where I’d be right now.
I’ve used reflective practice ongoing in my personal life. I have been keeping a journal as long as I can remember (the earliest one I have is from when I was 8), and have been a devotee of ‘morning pages’ since first reading The Artist’s Way (Cameron & Bryan, 1993) sometime in the early 2000s. Given this long relationship with the page, it only made sense that when I began my professional career that this would continue. In my first years of teaching, I took time to write after each class – what went well, what could have gone better or differently, and endeavored to make those changes. That frequent writing has become more sporadic in recent years, but my reading has become wider. Now I spend as much time reading as I did writing after class, and listening to podcasts that inform my work. Conversations with my co-faculty and articulation partners has become part of that reflective time, and given me a broader Community of Practice.
This digital learning project has been informative. There were new things in the discovery process, things that changed the end goal substantially. Thinking through ways to display and share my final Digital Learning Resource (DLR) has led to new ideas even yet, thanks to the recursive nature of reflective practice. Usually in my work, I co-create something with other faculty members and we change course along the way a time or two, but this was different in that the changes were reasoned and deliberate – I felt like there was less guesswork involved. Staying informed by the student/consumer voice has been so important. It’s been an ongoing learning that students’ goals for themselves are different than my goals for them, to the point where I’ve got a note on my monitor to remind me as I work.
I’ve been in conversation with other faculty members about this OER, about the implementation and roll out. We’ve embedded support for students into the first semester of school, and I’m so looking forward to implementing everything in a few short weeks.
References:
Cameron, J., & Bryan, M. (1993). The Artist’s Way. Sounds True Recordings.