Week 7-LTEC 5510 Project Reflection

This project is keeping me on my toes! I feel as if I’m waking up, and going to bed every night, brainstorming about my project, and how I should incorporate the vast amounts of information into my course. I’ve started keeping a bullet journal, where I’m keeping ideas and concepts that I hear through the week, on television, or that I’ve come across while doing research online. I have a paper journal for written notes, I have multiple Google documents where I’m organizing a framework for the course, and I have bookmarked information that I’m circling back to online. This project has consumed me, from a standpoint of spending as much time conceptualizing it in my mind, as I have spent inputting information into the Canvas LMS. I have been pleased with Canvas so far, and haven’t found many limitations that caused me to change my original design approach. I can honestly say that I’m not working at the pace that I committed to in my timeline of my design document, due to these mental processes of getting my headspace “ready” before I begin inputting information online. Time management is something that I need to work on, in order to stay on pace for the remainder of this semester. This week, we conducted our second peer reviews of our project, and I find myself anticipating feedback from our peer reviews. I have made small revisions along the way, based upon peer feedback, but most of those are grammatical in nature. I’ve been meticulously completing each module as I work towards completing this project, and so the number of revisions needed has been drastically reduced. I really like this process, and feel that my peers have offered me essential perspective and wonderful recommendations to help round out my project in full. All in all, the feedback that I’ve received has been so positive and uplifting, and I find myself reassured, week to week, that my topic is one of value and interest. This gives me hope in my future as an instructional designer. It’s difficult to identify as an educator, when you don’t have a background in teaching, but through these peer reviews, I can see that I’m pre-emptively addressing questions and concerns that others with teaching experience share with me. While this isn’t my first instructional module that I’ve created, I feel that I’m learning so much through the process of building this large of a course. I have felt challenged, but have seen growth. I have felt uncertain, but have sought out answers. I have reached beyond my comfort levels, and I have received a great reaction in response. It’s been a wonderful wall to climb over so far, and I find myself feeling proud, focused, and motivated to maintain quality, and see it through to the end.