In reflecting on my experience in LRNT527 so far, I am reminded that I have held a number of roles throughout the course, the obvious one being student, but also that of colleague during our group project and Instructional Designer.
As a result of the variety of tasks, this process has been both comfortable and uncomfortable at varying times, with comfort centering on the feedback and collaboration aspects, while discomfort has centered on working on some challenging things and with unfamiliar tools. In our group work I felt we accomplished what we needed to and worked well together, meeting as needed, selecting and dividing tasks
With regard to comfort levels, all of the feedback I have received from fellow students and our instructor have been thoughtful and supportive, helping to alleviate any concerns regarding chunking or material choices, etc.,confirming useful directions taken in the design work for the Analysis Paralysis course. Simultaneously, their input and even looking at the other projects has raised important reminders and thoughts on content, particularly regarding using video for instructions, as well as adding greetings and an “about” section to the course. Upon reflection these changes will, I believe, boost not only the presentation but the engagement levels with the content.
At the same time, selecting the course material was nerve-wracking if I’m honest since I felt quite stuck selecting between several topics. Ultimately this problem was resolved through selecting to address my own analysis paralysis directly, but the initial process was uncomfortable. Similarly, and partly to cause discomfort through pushing myself, I chose to use a new-to-me tool, H5P. While the tool itself has performed wonderfully, not being familiar with the tool has led to a number of instances where content had to be recreated and/or moved around in order to ensure information was properly chunked. Ideally I would learn a new tool first, but that is not always practical, and pushing through, learning on the fly, and just working at it bit by bit led to the prototype being created. This helped make the positive feedback received, as well as the constructive criticism, all the more welcome.
Overall, it has been an extremely worthwhile course and I feel I am growing with regard to my application of the various learning theories, models and frameworks. As someone who prefers to learn by doing, being able to create something, critique it as you go, as well as receive feedback has been incredibly beneficial. I will need to flesh out the remaining content, build that out, as well as create a video for the Instructions section to make that easier to understand and less text heavy. This is definitely something I’ll be taking forward with me as we build out content at work.
Hello Jean-Pierre, thank you for sharing your reflection and especially outlining what was comfortable and uncomfortable about the process of learning-designing-learning-designing. Learning a new tool to create your content was a courageous choice and represents risk-taking which is a good part of a design process. I really enjoy supporting and hearing about learner processes of connecting learning theory, research, and models of design as these elements come together in the practical creation of something useful for the learning of others. I can see all of that in your post and appreciate getting to know you and your project during this course.