Contribution to My Learning Community

Image by Wix.com

As my first semester in the ADL program comes to an end, I am reflecting on everything I’ve learned so far and all of the work that was done within the last eight weeks. While I believe I worked very hard the past few weeks, I also recognize there is much room for growth. I firmly believe we always have a chance to improve, the work is never truly finished. For this reason I am giving myself a 41 out of 50 in the 5305 Disruptive Innovation and a 85 out of 100 for the 5303 ePortfolio course.

I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work alongside such a talented and hardworking group. These ladies were always willing to help, when any of us had a question, the entire group collaborated in a timely manner which is amazing considering we all have very busy lives. Faith Lopez took the initiative to reach out and actually started our collaborative group along with Janeal White, Kimberly Marshall and Paige Shaw. Paige also took initiative by reaching out to me and asking if we would like to work together, we agreed that the more the better for collaborating, so I added her to our group. We set up a group chat outside of Blackboard, we met on occasion and shared our work. We not only gave each other feedback, but also reached out to each other ready and willing to help specifically to navigate through the ePortfolios. I believe we have a solid foundation to continue to grow as we progress through this program. One way I will improve is by taking more time to look through my group's ePortfolios and really reflect on their amazing work and various perspectives by leaving comments on their blog posts. You can view their ePortfolios here:

Faith

Kimberly 

Paige

I completed almost all assignments by the deadline and anxiously waited for feedback from both my collaborative group and professor. With this feedback I work on improving my assignments. For example in 5305, I adjusted my Innovation Proposal with the suggestions given to me by Professor Harapnuik as well as revisited my Literature Review and added more in text citations were necessary for clarification. I also submitted my Implementation Outline on the discussion labeled Sharing your Innovation Proposal for Feedforward. 

As for 5305, I am revising my blog posts from this semester in order to make them easier to follow and making sure my citations are correct, per the suggestions from my Check-In post. From class I remember hearing that font size is very important so I am making sure everything on my ePortfolio is easy to read. Since the Check-In I also made major changes to my ePortfolio in hopes for easier navigation. First I added a new Homepage that also described some of the elements on my page such as the Innovation plan and Blog as well as my about me page that can be clearly found through links. I added pages for the elements of my innovation plan and added a few more details such as a recent post section. 

I believe I completed most of the readings and watched all of the videos for both 5303 and 5305 and I attended all of the meetings for both courses. I tried to be as active as possible during our meetings as well, I would share during our breakout rooms and sometimes share during our whole class discussions. I also attended one of the Q and A sessions because I found them very helpful. Even if I did not ask a question, I would get a deeper understanding of the assignments from listening to others ask their questions. One thing I will be working on improving over the next few courses is the online discussions and being more active in them.

Overall, I believe that this has been a great start to the program. I have used tools that I never have before such as AI. I also learned the potential of tools that I had already used such as Wix.com. I was able to explore many ideas that I can use in the classroom, which is the reason I started this program to begin with. Although it took some adjusting to this approach to learning, I can see many things I can gain through this authentic learning experience.