Reflections... The past few weeks have been very interesting for me. This class has opened my eyes to part of teaching that I never really fully understood. The idea of Instructional Design seems like a fairly simple prospect until you really start to dissect it and understand all of it's parts and pieces.
Like the ice forming in the brook behind my house (picture to the right) Instructional Design is never the same from course to course (year to year in the case of the brook). The ideas of Fink, DC&C, IEEE, and Tomlinson & McTighe are all different, yet they are all Instructional Design. Each educator has the ability to use methods in whatever way they want to achieve their end goal - which may just be to create an educational classroom for their students where the students walk away with knowledge they didn't have before.
A revelation for me over the past few weeks is how much work really goes into preparing a successful course. While I'm sure, over time, the process becomes easier, there are lots of parts and pieces that seemed easy for me to integrate in (such as projects, readings, etc)...but now that I see there is a balance in Instructional Design, I realize how important it is to carefully choose the parts and pieces that go into the course.
The ideas of Evaluation and Assessment are the pieces of Instructional Design that still baffle me to this point. I don't really think I will truly understand the difference between the two of them until I am faced with making evaluations and assessments in my own classroom. While I still am a little "gray" about which is which, I do believe that they are both important parts of the Instructional Design process. I see them as checks and balances...to make sure that both you the instructor and the student are maintaining some grasp of what has been achieved and what goals need to be met.
The hardest thing for me the past few weeks has been the fact that I'm not an educator (yet) as some of my classmates are. The only experience that I have teaching is as a TA my senior year of college. I have learned SO MUCH from those who are educators in the class, but feel a little disconnected at times. I don't feel that I have a lot to bring to the table conversation wise because of that inexperience. While I know that it's good to have a mix in the room of educators and non-educators, I sometimes wish I was at the same level as those with years of experience.
I am looking forward to the weeks ahead...as I'm sure they will fill some of the holes in the Instructional Design process. This class has been nothing but informative...and I look forward to diving in deeper and learning more.
1 comment:
The hardest thing for me the past few weeks has been the fact that I'm not an educator (yet) as some of my classmates are. The only experience that I have teaching is as a TA my senior year of college. I have learned SO MUCH from those who are educators in the class, but feel a little disconnected at times. I don't feel that I have a lot to bring to the table conversation wise because of that inexperience. While I know that it's good to have a mix in the room of educators and non-educators, I sometimes wish I was at the same level as those with years of experience.
Meg,
I can understand where you are coming from, and nothing I can say will change the fact that you are the youngest in the class and consequently, have less experience than others.
Having acknowledged this, I can encourage you to continue to take in as much as you can, and see where it fits with your experience to date. And don't forget, you can always use the other courses that you are taking as a frame of reference for what we talk about.
And just think about how much you are learning and how different your conversations are already becoming as you learn this new language.
I look forward to hearing your voice as often as you feel comfortable sharing it.
Post a Comment