Below are my reflections of how I have grown as a instructor through the Leading Edge Certification process, relative to the iNacol Standards, and how I plan to continue to grow as an instructor to better serve the needs of students in this exciting and challenging learning environment. I would like to preface my reflection with some clarification. I am not a classroom teacher (K-12) but a curriculum and development instructor for adults. I will mention students in my reflection but those students are really adults. I will also comment on the applicability of the standard to my work. I don't give exams or have assignments. My work with online learning is to support the work that teachers are doing in the classroom. The students in my courses have to complete hours not necessarily assignments or exams.
Standard A - As a online teacher I still have some improvement in this standard. I feel confident about the instructional delivery continuum and the state professional teaching standards. However, I need to spend more time truly understanding how to adapt my brick and mortar teaching style to the online environment. This class has been a great way to build my foundation but I plan on using my Personal Learning Network to continue to find ways to improve my knowledge in the pedagogy of online teaching.
Standard B - I am very confident of my skills in this standard. I have a technical background so I feel that my basic troubleshooting skills are strong and I have the ability to help users remotely not only face-to-face. I am a tech tool junky (admitted fault) so I am always looking at the latest and greatest gadget and app to try to figure out how to incorporate it in my work. To a fault, I need to spend more time using the same apps rather then jumping to the next great thing. But honestly...it is so much fun trying out new stuff!
Standard C - This standard is challenging. The ability to use a variety of instructional strategies, facilitating and monitoring, communication and differentiated instruction is challenging in the face-to-face classroom. This is an area I struggle with and am working on being conscious of not falling into the same old teaching practices that I have used for years. Part of the challenge is taking the risk to try something with a group of students and being ok if it fails. I have recently attended some very specific training on graphic organizers and the instructor challenged us to not just think of them as a gizmo in the classroom but as a tool to encourage student thinking and discussion. One of my 30 day goals is to implement one of the strategies that she suggested. I will do that in my face-to-face instruction but also implement that strategy in my online courses.
Standard D- Feedback! The research supports this as the most effective tool to improve student learning. It is also one of the goals that I have personally for all my work is to ensure that I am providing regular feedback to my students but also insure that the feedback I provide is meaningful. It needs to be specific as well as prompt. By ensuring that I establish clear expectations and outcomes my students will be more aware of the expectations I have as their instructor not only for academic needs but for behavior. One of the goals I had prior to the start of the LEC was to be better at creating discussion prompts but also ensuring that I am providing feedback to students in those discussions that is valuable. I have more work to do in this area but I have learned in this course that I need to create a variety of assessment options for student response and teacher feedback. I also learned that the feedback doesn't always need to be from the instructor but can be peer feedback as well.
Standard E- This course helped my learn so much more about the need to address academic dishonesty and digital citizenship very directly. I had not included comments on these topics in my course outlines and I appreciated the need to be more clear about these topics with my students. I will now include more details about these topics in all my outlines.
Standard F- This standard is the largest take away form the LEC course. The work that we did in the course around accessibility was wonderful. I had no idea of my responsibility to my students in this area. The Section 508 guidelines were new to me and I have work to do in my current courses to ensure that I am providing appropriate access. I also appreciated the tools that we learned about and used to help make content more accessible for all. I am continue to learn how to use those tools but I am sure I will get better as I have a lot of content to modify to ensure accessibility. More practice, more practice!
Standard G-I don't really have a great response for this section. As I mentioned I don't have assessments as part of my work. If I put myself in the shoes of a K-12 teacher I would consider this an area that I would need to really spend time working on. I would want to make sure that my assessments were realistic to the outcomes and timely. I would hate to realize too late that a student was struggling with content. I can think of some quick assessments that a student could submit to a teacher daily that would help me really understand how they are accessing and understanding content for my course.
Standard H-This is an area of improvement for me. I would like to include more polls and surveys in my courses to ensure that my students are digging deep into the content they are reviewing and not just have general discussion. As I create new courses I plan on experimenting with polls and surveys that will also allow me to determine if I need to followup with students in one of our face-to-face meetings relative to the online course they are participating in.
Standard I-As I mentioned in the beginning my students are completing modules for hours not necessarily correct or incorrect answers. I do try and modify the content each year based on a needs assessment that I conduct during a face-to-face session. I also work one-on-one with students who seem to be lost in the content relative to their personal background knowledge and interests. I provide a variety of options to students to read and discuss in hopes that one they select an option it allows them to have a more personal attachment to the content. For example: I ask students to pick from 5 different articles about teacher/student perceptions. They only need to read and discuss one article (I ask them to create a thread with that article in the subject) and then ask them to read the discussion of the other 4 articles. I hope in this assignment they feel empowered to pick an article of their interest but also learn about the other articles and their classmates in a successful way.
Standard J- I collaborate with some lead teachers to ensure that the content I am delivering is applicable. I am also adding a discussion group to the courses this year to encourage more peer to peer discussion and the creating of their own Personal Learning Networks.
Standard K- I realize that this standards is optional but it is the one that I am most involved with. I create and design all my courses in a Learning Management System. I utilized Haiku last year to design and deliver my first online courses In those courses I used text, video, web resources and subject specific discussions in its design. Having participated in the LEC I am excited to modify that course and create other courses to support the professional learning of the adults I serve. I plan on adding more variety to my content and as I mentioned in Standard J create an ongoing discussion forum for my students.
