The Do’s and Don’ts of Virtual Interviewing

As the weeks press on, I find myself marching into my final week of grad school. This is a time to reflect upon accomplishments as well as opening new doors. For me, grad school represents an opportunity for growth, change, and career transition, and that journey consists of polishing my interviewing skills. We’ve all seen the world make a drastic shift to remote working throughout the pandemic, and this has impacted how we interview too. Now with vaccinations becoming more widely available, and remote work starting to transition back into the office, let’s take a look at the do’s and don’ts of interviewing in todays’ global climate.

It’s important to recognize that we are now in a post-COVID world and with that, there are changes in professional etiquette that should be observed. When setting up an interview today, it could be virtual or face-to-face. Let’s take a look at the do’s and don’ts of virtual interviewing. Working remotely has shown us that our in-office environment and our home environments are significantly different. When setting up a virtual interview, be sure to schedule it during a quiet time in your home, when kids, pets, or other distractions won’t interfere with your time to make a good impression. Don’t make a bad impression by leaving on the television, background music, or a cell phone which may cause a distraction.

An important fact to remember, is that technology sometimes doesn’t work when you need it to most. Do plan ahead and make sure that programs and equipment are in working order before the interview. Technical skills are considered one of the top competencies that employers look for in new hires, and virtual interviews provide a easy gauge of your ability to make a good first impression. You don’t want to be “late” to your interview because you were downloading the necessary program. It’s also recommended to test your audio, video, and internet connection in advance, to ensure that your web cam and microphone deliver clear audio and video for your interview.

Another important do for virtual interviewing is to dress for success. It’s important to project professionalism, through appropriate business attire. It’s recommended that you don’t wear colors that might make you appear washed out on camera, or overpowering patterns and flashy accessories which can distract attention from your expertise. Also keep in mind the background setting of your home office, to ensure that you are the main focus during an online meeting. When a background is cluttered, it makes it more difficult to convince a potential employer of how detail oriented and organized you are.

With any interview, we must be mindful of our body language, but in the past, we could demonstrate our sincerity, leadership, and assertiveness through a firm handshake. In virtual interviewing, we must portray confidence without contact. When interviewing you do want to sit up straight, avoid fidgeting, smile, and keep the camera at eye level, in order to mirror a face to face conversation. Research shows that employers are more likely to remember what you said, if you maintain eye contact, so try to keep your eyes on the camera, instead of the screen image of the hiring manager during your conversation. A helpful hint is to write your talking points on post it notes, and place those on your computer screen to avoid shuffling papers or clicking around during the call. You don’t want to project that you aren’t prepared for, or invested into your interview, by shuffling through notes which might send the wrong message to a potential employer.

A critical do to focus on, is practicing interview questions in advance. Some common questions during an interview include the following:

  • “Tell me about yourself” – Don’t ramble on about yourself and your personal life, but instead, this is the time for your elevator speech, that focuses on your quantifiable accomplishments and experience that relates to this job opportunity. Don’t share an accomplishment unless it is relevant or impressive, and related to the job you are applying for.
  • “Why are you leaving your job?” – Don’t use this as a time for criticizing your current employer, but instead, focus on the next steps in your career, and the skills required for this job opportunity that you are applying for.
  • “What do you know about the company?” – Don’t show up unprepared for this question. The quickest way to fail an interview is by knowing nothing about a potential employer. Do look up the organization on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networking sites, and do research to learn more about the company. This is also a good way of preparing yourself for questions to ask about the job.
  • Tell me about a time you dealt with conflict when working with a team? – An employer wants to understand how you deal with conflict or difficult situations. Do come prepared to share one or two examples of challenges you have faced in your career. This is a time to demonstrate that you can “think on your feet” and solve problems.
  • “What are your salary requirements?” -This conversation requires preparation, and a good understanding of average wage for the position you are applying for, in addition to your education level, experience, and location. Don’t start this negotiation using your lowest salary requirements, but instead, start with the highest number, so that there is room to negotiate down to a number that you are both comfortable with accepting.
  • “What are your weaknesses? ” – This is the time for an authentic answer, don’t reply with “I work too hard.” Instead, you should share a negative aspect (self-reflection), but explain how you turned this into a positive opportunity for your prior employers.
  • “Why should we hire you?”- This can be an intimidating question, but it is also an opportunity to showcase your unique strengths that you can bring to this job opportunity. Do focus on the hiring company’s needs and goals, and explain how your skills meet their criteria.

And last, you do want to make sure that your research into the company has provided you with a few questions to ask at the end of the interview. We’ve all experienced the rapid pace of change during the pandemic, in our work environments over this past year. You can demonstrate forethought and critical thinking skills by illustrating to a potential employer, that you are thinking about your future with that company. Some questions that you may consider asking an interviewer in a post-COVID world might include:

  • How would you define someone as successful in this position?
  • What is the most important responsibility of this position?
  • What are the strategic priorities of the organization, and how have these been impacted by the pandemic?
  • How does this role support the company in achieving these priorities?
  • What are the main challenges and opportunities that this business faces?
  • How does this organization support lifelong learning of your employees, to ensure they are able to work in an adaptable and agile way in the future?
  • How often will my performance be reviewed?
  • What training opportunities are available to me in this position?

By asking questions, you help build rapport with an interviewer, and demonstrate your interest in working for the company. Remember that employers view your reactions throughout the entire hiring process as preliminary examples of your work quality and ethics. Interviews are just as much about you analyzing whether this is the right role and organization for you, as it is about the interviewer deciding whether or not you are the right candidate. Using this time to ask the most relevant questions, helps you ensure that you are making the right career decision for your success. Don’t ask questions about PTO, background checks, raises, or holidays during an interview, these types of questions are best reserved for the job offer negotiations. Following these do’s and don’ts will help demonstrate what a strong candidate you are.

In conclusion, don’t forget to send a thank you note after the interview. This important step gives you one last opportunity to be remembered, and stand out from the other candidates. Here are some helpful tips to help you put your best foot forward.

Social Media as a Professional Career Tool

In today’s age of technology, social media has become ingrained into our daily lives in one format or another. Whether we use it to check the news, keep in contact with our friends, or as a marketing tool, this technology has created a paper free method of connecting the world together in an online platform.

When we think of social media, we think of the colossus giant, Facebook – much like Kleenex became the universal name for “tissue.” There are several other players in this social media game though. We can think of social media as being divided into essentially 7 different categories, based on its intended use. There are social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which are used to connect friends, family, professional networks, and brands together. There are social review sites, such as Yelp or TripAdvisor, which take the guesswork out of consumer experiences. Image sharing sites, such as Instagram and Snapchat, allow users to create, curate, and share images within a network. There are video hosting sites, such as YouTube, Bitable, or Vimeo, where users create and share content. Another type of social media is through community blogs. Sites such as Medium, Word Press, or Tumblr provide a space to express and share thoughts that connect us to other users. Discussion sites, such as Reddit and Quora are useful spaces for sparking conversations or sharing interests and curiosities within sub-communities. And there are also sharing economy networks, where sites like Airbnb or Rover, help users find holiday vacation rentals, or other opportunities from pooling resources on a large scale. These types of opportunities wouldn’t be available without the use of technology as a means of advertising globally.

For the sake of today’s discussion, I will look at how Twitter can be used for professional development. As seen in the prior paragraph, the use of social media has expanded well beyond a method of sending messages to friends. There is a platform to address a wide range of professional and personal needs. From a professional standpoint, Twitter allows users to make connections with other professionals around the globe. This platform uses “tweets” which consist of short messages of up to 280 characters. The benefit of this format is that it forces the user to be concise and intentional with their communication, while providing the opportunity for that message to reach millions of people. Another advantage to this abbreviated format, is that it is more conducive to getting directly to the point, without oversharing personal feelings. Twitter uses #hashtags to connect users to topics of interest. This method allows for a focused search on related topics, career paths, network affiliates, specific companies or universities, to name a few. Another powerful tool to consider when using hashtags for professional development, is to check their ranking on hashtagify.me . By monitoring their performance, you can boost your own professional visibility more successfully.

Twitter can also be used as a tool for networking and building a brand. Social media gives individuals the power to have visibility and showcase your professional knowledge, creativity, or skills on a much larger scale. By creating strategic network connections, and tagging influencers for added visibility, or specific brands that you want to connect with, Twitter becomes a powerful tool for marketing. In addition, by using graphics, photos, or videos to support your tweets, you create eye catching and memorable content, which will provide more information to those you are wanting to connect with. And for those looking to make strategic connections with those businesses or groups trending on Twitter, you can check out https://www.tweeplers.com/ for the top 20 trending twitter users in the United States.

Specifically within the realm of education, Twitter can be used as your personal learning network (PLN). Educators are synonymous with being lifelong learners, from earning their teaching degrees, to the continuous professional development required to maintain certifications. This ongoing pursuit of knowledge also requires collaboration between other educators, who are willing to share information, resources, or provide a review for a fellow educator. A PLN helps educators connect all over the world, through blogs, discussion groups, online learning, and chatrooms. Twitter can be used as a PLN, where educators can share challenges and questions or exchange ideas and encouragement with others in the field. Here are several ideas and hashtags that can be used specifically for educators using Twitter as a PLN.

I currently use several different social media platforms, from Facebook, Google hangouts, twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Between all of these I have found that they connect me socially, professionally, or creatively to like minded individuals that I’m looking to connect with. As I am working on completing my Instructional Design portfolio, I am discovering tools to help me with professional development. Some that I’ve discovered are the Bitable platform, which can be used to assist in creating professional video presentations. I would consider this to be more of a collaborative tool, rather than a full social media platform, however, they do have a social media presence on Facebook, which I’ve joined, in order to collaborate with other creators and learn more about their services and products. Bitable offers a free version, which provides users with animated video templates that can be customized and edited for your specific purpose. On a larger scale, and with an annual subscription, this platform allows for features such as collaborative video editing, royalty-free images or music, studio-quality animations, as well as chat and email features within an unlimited sized professional group.

Another platform that I’ve discovered for multimedia content creation, is Wistia. This company makes a marketing software subscription based service that allows you to create multimedia content to use on social media or other platforms. Their goal is to help you create content to build your brand and reach your target market. While this is not a social media platform, a free subscription gives you access to a company learning center where you can subscribe to a Wistia blog, podcast, and learning community on the topic of creating multimedia content.

A social media platform that I have recently signed up with, is Academia.edu . This site is touted as the biggest academic social media network, with over 114 million subscribers. It allows you to share research papers and see the impact of that paper and research, through likes and shares. You can connect with scholars in your field, and follow their research work as you build a professional online community. You can search for your research interests, download public papers, and request private ones as well. It is important to note that there are legal terms and conditions associated with some publications, which may not allow public sharing, so be mindful of any publishing terms in advance. I will also point out that I wrote a paper about cyberbullying during my masters program, and once I logged into Academia.edu, there were several recommended papers presented to me on the topic of cyberbullying, due to my prior research on the topic. I can see that this could be a valuable community when conducting research.

Facebook Privacy

In order to maintain a professional persona, we must take into account the “relaxed version” of ourselves that is often depicted on social media. Does this portray a side of ourselves that is less professional or more controversial, through the eyes of a potential employer? It’s important to be cognizant of these choices and reflect upon the public image that is made available to the world through Facebook.

This doesn’t mean that everyone should shut down their social media accounts, as they move up the professional ladder, but privacy is key, when it comes to Facebook. Let’s face it, employers use social media as a tool for vetting potential job candidates, in order to double check against first impressions. A post that reflects a long overdue, night out on the town, may present a different impression through the eyes of a potential employer.

There are several ways of optimizing Facebook security that can help protect us from sharing too much. The following method will help optimize Facebook settings:

  • Log into Facebook
  • Click on the “account” (down arrow) tab at the top right corner of the main page
  • Open the “settings & privacy” in the drop down menu on the account tab
  • Open “settings”
  • Select “privacy” from the left menu options
  • This opens a menu which you can personalize, but I would recommend “friends only” on everything in order to ensure that this information is not viewable by any one outside of your friend network.
  • Within the privacy section, you can edit privacy shortcuts, your activity, as well as how people can find and contact you. Each of these areas has additional privacy settings that can be customized.
  • Additionally, within the “profile and tagging” menu under settings (on the left side menu), you can adjust who can post and tag on your page, in order to prevent unplanned sharing on your page.
  • It’s also a good practice to ensure that your profile picture captures you appropriately.

By taking these steps above, a job seeker would prevent oversharing during a standard job search. Our individual ideas about how we use social media varies from person to person. While some people never share anything personal online, others don’t have a filter and share everything. When we are searching for employment and putting our best professional foot forward, it’s important to be mindful of the limited perspective that a new employer has on our persona. A spontaneous post that conflicts with something said during an interview, a conflicting attitude about a corporate policy, or a strong opinion that competes with a corporate culture, gives room for doubt in the mind of a potential employer, and could potentially cause them to cast judgement and loose interest in you as a candidate.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a form of social media used for building and expanding your professional network. This platform is not used to exclusively connect you with your friends and family, but rather to connect you with other professionals beyond your personal network. The social component of LinkedIn may look like a job posting, news and announcements about a company expansion, or even academic programs to help you succeed in specific careers. In contrast to this, a Facebook feed may appear as a meme with words of affirmation, self-care tips, a personal reflection, or a political stance about current events. Being aware of the etiquette of using each type of platform helps ensure successful outcomes on each type of social media. In addition to these features, LinkedIn tracks those in your network, and notifies you of work anniversaries or other important milestones that help keep you professionally connected. Using the messaging link allows you to reach out to others with private messages to either inquire about a job posting, congratulate others on their work anniversary, or make a new connection with a potential employer.

As a tool for professional networking, LinkedIn has been very useful to me. This platform allows you to search for jobs using titles, locations, company, or skillset and narrow your search further by either location or by the option of working remotely. As you search for jobs, LinkedIn uses your search history and profile to make recommendations for other job opportunities that may be of interest to you as well. It serves as a “personal assistant” to search for job opportunities, even when you aren’t there to search yourself. Other social media platforms may provide a link about a job posting, but this platform is dedicated to your professional pursuits.

Another useful feature that LinkedIn offers is LinkedIn Learning. This is an upgraded feature that I’ve been able to access as a benefit, through my employment at UNT. This platform offers training and full courses on just about any area that you would want to know more about. From professional development to technical training courses, LinkedIn Learning has it all.

I currently use LinkedIn to search for Instructional Design jobs that are currently hiring, even before I’m ready to begin my job search. This allows me to see other jobs in the field, and special areas of training that I might need to learn more about. In addition, I also discover important details about salary range, technical skills, and companies that hire Instructional Designers. These features make LinkedIn an excellent tool to use as a professional networking platform.

Writing Styles

Throughout history, civilizations have used numerous evolutions of writing systems as a method of communication and documentation of complex concepts and financial transactions. As people have evolved, so has our need for thorough methods of written communication. When we think about writing today, the genres and mediums where writing occurs appears to be vast and limitless, however, there are several writing styles that guide us in how we create published works today. Some of these writing styles are descriptive, narrative, analytical, persuasive, argumentative, scholarly, academic and expository, and I will explore each of them below.

Descriptive writing is poetic and connects with the readers five senses. By using description to portray the appearance, smell, mood, taste, or feel of something, it adds awareness and presence to the importance of that item to the story. This style of writing encourages students to broaden their vocabulary by describing a person, place, or thing in a way that invokes a mental image of what the author wants to portray. This style of writing is found in poetry, diary entries, or nature writing, to name a few.

Narrative writing requires several elements in order to weave together a compelling story. There must be a theme, and main character with well-defined personality traits, and well-developed supporting characters engaging with the main character. Narrative writing also includes a setting in which the story takes place, and a style in which the story is told through dialogue, description, and action. In addition, there must also be good use of vocabulary and literary elements such as symbolism, simile, and metaphor. Typically, the narrative style is used for writing such pieces as novels, screenplays, biographies, or mythology.

Persuasive writing is a form of non-fiction writing which has a mission: to win you over with a particular point of view. This writing style is designed to present evidence to support an opinion, and to logically and emotionally appeal to you, in order to win support, or justify your call to action. The goal of this writing style is to deliver information, and use facts to selectively build a case. Persuasive writing may be seen in academic papers, editorial writing, advertising copy, product reviews, and even letters of recommendation.

While it sounds similar to the prior mentioned writing style, argumentative writing has a different objective. In argumentative writing the author takes a formal position on an issue or topic, and supports that position through research from credible sources. The components of an argumentative paper include a thesis, which states your argument; several points of discussion to support the argument and provide evidence as to whether the thesis is true; and cited credible sources within the research paper. This writing style presents a single issue and discusses the most important arguments for and against this topic. While persuasive writing uses personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions to appeal to an audience, argumentative writing uses facts and data to generate a thesis statement and support an argument.

Expository writing is used to inform or instruct readers about a subject or instructions about how to do something, without trying to change an opinion. This writing style is interested in presenting facts, through quotes, links, illustrations, tables or charts, and key data points. It doesn’t strive to present a bold opinion, but rather gains its credibility through delivering straightforward information. Some examples of this writing style include news articles, nonfiction books, textbooks, scientific and medical research, instruction manuals, and cookbooks.

Analytical writing is the ability to look at a statement, argument, character, or theme, and decide whether or not it has merit. The credibility of an analytical writer comes in their ability to identify and dissect the subject matter, and then offer an argument about it’s meaning and merit. This writing style doesn’t assess specific content knowledge, but rather it tests critical thinking, the ability to articulate and support complex ideas, while also constructing and evaluating arguments and sustaining a focused discussion. This writing style requires students to read, comprehend, and analyze.

While there are different writing styles, there are also different purposes for writing. Academic writing is a formal and objective writing style which is used for empirical fieldwork or research, conference papers, essays, term papers, reports, and part of a students body of academic work. Some of the characteristics of academic writing include the consistent use of citations, avoiding contractions, use of formal language or technical jargon. In addition, academic writing is not written in first person, and always follows the MLA style guide for formatting and citing. As also seen in the several of the descriptions above, academic writing should be clear and precise, well-sourced, consistent and focused, and formal and unbiased. The aim in academic writing is to convey information in an impartial way, while basing arguments, and support for those arguments, upon evidence. Scholarly writing communicates original thought, whether through primary research, or through synthesis. It should always present the authors unique perspective on the research presented.

References:

Hasa. (2016, August 17). Difference between academic writing and general writing: Features, choice of language, use. https://pediaa.com/difference-between-academic-writing-and-general-writing/.

Scholarly Writing: Overview. Academic Guides. (n.d.). https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/scholarly.

What Is Academic Writing?: Dos and Don’ts for Students. Scribbr. (n.d.). https://www.scribbr.com/category/academic-writing/.

Career Goal Changes

Career changes are hard. I have been working in academia for over 15 years now, but not in the field of Instructional Design. Since I began the M.S. program in Learning Technologies, in August of 2019, I have been searching for my unique path in Instructional Design. As I peruse LinkedIn jobs in the field, I can’t help but to notice that there are many technologies, certifications, years of experience, or work history that seems to be missing from my resume. I came into this program determined to succeed, and I have actively challenged myself with opportunities that pushed me further, throughout the duration of this program. Currently, I am participating in an internship with Dallas College, which has afforded me the unique opportunity to explore different facets of career paths within an academic instructional design team. I’ve been able to write scripts for video production. I’ve shadowed the ID’s while meeting with their SME’s on new course design projects. I’ve also had the opportunity to collaborate creatively about hosting webinars, and I will be meeting with the creative team next.

When I entered into the program initially, I found many parallels between my current job duties and that of an instructional designer. While there are many differences, I see myself in a support role to educators, and I feel confident working in the space where I create a dependable bridge between my skills and their goals. This masters program has provided me with expertise in learning theory, educational technologies, pedagogies, and the impacts of psychology and behavior towards learning.

As I continue to develop my skills in this field, I find that I am drawn towards two key areas of Instructional Design. With my background in graphic design, I am challenged by the idea of removing the designer from my self-identity. I have always enjoyed working creatively, and I feel that I would sincerely enjoy working as part of a creative team, developing multimedia content for educators. Throughout this program, I have always enjoyed the workflow of audio and video development for multimedia. In addition to content creation, I thoroughly enjoy working collaboratively with educators, on course design. One of the projects that I developed in this program, is currently used as an eLearning presentation in a UNT Ecology course. I enjoy the process of conducting in-depth research on a wide range of topics, which is necessary to design a full course. The ability to continue learning through every project, is an exciting prospect to a lifelong learner!

While I’m still seeking out the perfect path for the next chapter in my career, I feel excited by the opportunities that his degree has brought to me. I enjoy the process of learning, and feel confident that I will find the intersection where my knowledge will align with educator and students learning needs, and I’ll be able to use my expertise to improve learning outcomes for students. I want to use my voice as a life long learner, to help others find their unique journey towards success. My goal is to use technology to bridge the gap in accessibility in the classroom. I also want to add depth of knowledge and confidence to the students learning from my course designs.

Week 13- project reflection

Time marches on, and here we are, on week 13 out of 16! I can’t believe how fast this semester has flown by. While I still find myself chasing the hours in the day, to ensure that I finish this project, I am slowly but surely nearing the finish line. I have been polishing and refining my course all throughout the development process, so I don’t think there will be too many outlier issues to resolve once I get all of my content written. This week I was able to finish up module 6 and most of module 7 as well. I went back into the prior modules that required multiple journal entries over a period of 4 weeks, and I have extended those projects into the timeline of the remaining modules, which has provided me with nearly 50% of the content for module 8. I still need to write the quiz for module 7, and finish the remaining details on the overview page, but that should finalize that unit. I will be busy over the Thanksgiving holiday break, finishing up all the loose ends on my project, but I can definitely see light at the end of the tunnel now! I was concerned that there would be a point in the development of this course, where I lost consistency with the voice of delivery, but I am proud to say that it’s remained very consistent and robust throughout. I found myself curious about the amount of writing that I’ve done on this project, and I went in and did a word count, and I’m nearing 30,000 words written on this course from beginning to end. The fact that I’ve chosen to write my own content instead of linking to outside documents has been the biggest contributor to my delays. I must say though, I wouldn’t change anything at this point, and am feeling quite proud of my commitment to see this project though to the end. I am certain that I will complete this project, fully in alignment with my original design document. I won’t have an opportunity to conduct a formal evaluation in a real world setting, but I have invited a couple colleagues of mine to review the course, so that I am able to obtain an outside perspective. One of the people that I invited to review it, is an editor and technical writer. The other is an assistant to a College Dean, and has worked in academia for over 30 years. I wanted to take the time to invite as much opportunity for critique and perspective as I possibly can, before closing out this project. While there are still a few milestones in front of me, I am excited to see the finished product, and feel hopeful that I’ve created a course that has the potential to be so beneficial in today’s world.

Week 11 project reflection

What I’ve learned from this project development, is that time marches on swiftly! I am running a bit behind schedule on the completion of my course development. This week, we were scheduled to have 3/4 of our course completed, and I’ve developed 5 out of 8 of my learning modules so far, which puts me closer to 63%, rather than 75%. From what I can assess, a large component to my timeline barriers appears to be the fact that I’ve included large swaths of written instruction and content on each of the learning modules. I wanted this course to have a personalized presentation, and not just a regurgitation of information that they could have otherwise found themselves online. My goal was to present information in a way that would help learners build and develop skills for metacognitive development, as well as techniques to apply these skills within their academic domain, and beyond. I worked hard to present a scaffolding of knowledge that built from one module to the next, and then circled back to prior modules for review and refresh, in order to deepen that knowledge even further. I wanted learners to have specific exercises that they experienced and tracked over a period of time, so that they would have time to self-assess whether there was benefit and value added to their life. The researching, writing, organizing, developing, and refining process that I’ve incorporated throughout the development of this course will help ensure that there are fewer edits and changes needed from my peer reviews, but in turn, it’s taking me longer to create each module. As stated in my prior blog posts, I feel confident that the most time consuming modules were the first 4, which I’ve now completed, except for a few minor edits. I have all of my research completed on the final 3 modules, and will commit to spending evenings and weekends between now and November 22nd, to complete the development of my course before the holiday break. This puts me, at most, one week behind schedule.

From the standpoint of challenges, I haven’t faced too many challenges with this project, once I determined how to get started with Canvas. Since that time, I have thoroughly enjoyed this process. It has become a passion project, and one that has been rewarding to me from the standpoint of my peer review feedback, and my own personal gratification in how it’s coming together. When I first started researching this topic, I wasn’t fully convinced that it would be a valuable topic. However, the deeper that I dove into the facets of metacognition, I can now see that this is a critical topic for today’s learners. While I don’t have a background in teaching, I feel that I’ve successfully pulled together the necessary components needed to effectively teach on this topic. I have worked very hard to put myself into the role of the teacher, the SME, and the student, to seek out any “holes” in knowledge that I needed to address in order for learners to make connections with the content. While I’m running marginally behind schedule at this time, I will work hard this week to add to the final learning modules. I will continue to self-assess my time management skills in order to continue to improve and work efficiently and effectively.

Week 10-project reflection

My project, self-care and self-regulation for metacognitive development in high school students, is moving along at a steady pace. The amount of writing is heavily weighted on the first four modules of my project, where vocabulary terms and introductions to key elements of the course are first being explored. These modules have required a high level of time management from me, in order to meet deadlines this semester. I have extended my weekend with 2 vacation days this week, and I’m dedicating full work days towards completing the next 3 modules of my project by Tuesday. This will bring me to module six of eight, and will put me back on track for the 3/4 milestone and peer review next coming weekend. I feel confident that I will be able to complete my project, as submitted in my design document, but it will require some focus and commitment in order to stay on track with writing the course, creating the job aid, developing a final presentation video, and conducting peer reviews over the next month. I am confident that once the first four modules of the course are complete, the pace will pick up and move quite a bit faster than the first half of the development has taken. The evaluation step of the project poses some complications for me, because it’s designed for high school students, and is a 16 week course, so there won’t be time for a class to fully test my course design before the end of this semester. I have built in assessment and writing assignments for students to self-evaluate their progress throughout the course though. My plan is to work closely with my peer reviewers and take their recommendations into strong consideration, as I work to polish up the final details this semester, prior to my presentation. I will also send the link to my published course to an educator colleague of mine, and ask for them to review my course, in order to gain additional feedback and insight as to what will and won’t work well, from their professional perspective.

Week 8 Project reflection

My project is coming together nicely, in my opinion. I’ve received some excellent feedback from my peer reviewers, and I’m working on incorporating their suggestions into my content as I work through the project. Some of the constructive feedback which I’ve found most helpful was the suggestion to make my Piktochart graphics downloadable. I’ll have to look into my options within Canvas, to see what flexibility I have for these document types. I do agree, that it would be beneficial to provide printer friendly documents as a study guide for students. Other edits that were suggested, include a few grammatical adjustments, and formatting the headings to the same size on all pages. All in all, I’ve been working very hard to get a near finished product on my first pass with each peer review. I’m excited to say that my primary reviewer, even went so far as to say “your module 1 is near flawless!” That part really made my day, when I read her review!

When I think about a three week timeline on corporate ID projects, I feel a bit overwhelmed by that timeline. On the other hand, I look at the magnitude of project that I’m taking on this semester. I’m not merely a designer, I’m also the subject matter expert, the teacher, and the researcher for the curriculum. I am spending hours each weekend researching each topic of my course, module by module, and carefully curating the details within the curriculum based upon the appropriate age range and course relevance, while working to provide a scaffolding approach to learning, in order to help students encode the content to memory. I am also working hard to keep the tone of the course consistent from module to module. I want students to want to participate in this course, and discover affective tools and strengths that they have within themselves. I want students to discover abilities that they didn’t know that they had, and witness growth and change over the timeline of the class.

As I’ve said on prior reflection posts, I find myself waking up thinking about this project, and reflecting on content that I might have missed, as I lay my head down at night. I’m hopeful that this project can one day be used to help people manage their emotions, needs, and thoughts. This planet has had a stressful year, and I feel that the topic is of utmost importance as we move ahead with global healing after COVID. If Im seeking a silver lining to the pandemic, it’s the hope that it forced us all to be more mindful and learn to prioritize our own well being again. Life, pre-COVID, felt like it contained blurry lines between reality and social media. We weren’t living our best lives, and we weren’t doing a great job of being present in the moments that make up our life. By stepping back, and applying some healthy guidelines to our lives, maybe we will all come out of this mess, with more happiness, balance, and perseverance.

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