The End of the Journey

After a long and busy trimester, the end of our group’s journey is here. It is with a great deal of gratitude and relief that I post this last blog.

Trying to produce a quality product during this summer trimester has been difficult. Like many of my classmates, I have been pulled in several directions. Luckily nothing has been traumatic, but conflicts with work, conferences, counseling, family life, and writing my dissertation have required me to be disciplined and organized in my approach to working on my final project. The project is a work in progress and I know it will be changed often as I put it into action when it is finally fully completed.

This trimester we put the instructional units we created in the last course into action. Although it was tedious to create them, I was happy to have a clear focus for what I wanted to do in the learning units I produced for this course. It was easy to copy and paste the objectives and assignments into the learning modules I designed for the course. More fun was the creativity in creating visually appealing layouts, using graphics, and finding support materials online for “going deeper.”

I enjoyed creating a podcast for the introductory unit. Less fun was the multimedia project. Using Adobe Captivate, I created a presentation on Sigmund Freud for the Psychoanalytic Unit of my course. However, I had a very difficult time pulling everything together and getting it onto the course management server. With the help of my classmate Diane I was finally able to post the presentation with synchronized lecture and playback buttons.

Speaking of Diane’s contribution reminds me to mention how much I appreciate her and all of my classmates. Though I have never met the majority of them, I respect them all and appreciate the support, encouragement and commiseration we shared throughout the entire certificate program. Having seen their early and final efforts, I can see how we all have grown. I know they will all be successful teachers and it has been a pleasure to have shared this learning journey with them.

I am also grateful to our instructor, Barbara, and course designer Jan. Both have been models of excellence in instruction.

As part of my final work I was required to evaluate my course using the Blackboard Rubric for exemplary courses. I rated most of my work as “promising.” I know my work will continue to evolve over time and with experience. As I put the class into action with students, I know I will evaluate what I have already put into the course and will make many changes. “Real World” experience will tell me what works and what needs to be changed. However, I feel that I have a good foundation and look forward to moving my course in the direction of excellence that I have experienced throughout this program.

Now I say good-bye to this phase of my professional development. I will take a brief time-out before I focus on my next challenge – finishing my dissertation. After that – who knows? Let the good times roll!

Image source
Let the good times roll!: http://www.leehansen.com/clipart/Parties/MardiGras/pages/good-times-oval.htm
Computer Friends: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/friendzspot/message/9194
Computer: http://www.smh.com.au/news/laptops--desktops/breaking-the-mould/2006/10/03/1159641329440.html
End of the road: http://tinydancing.blogspot.com/2007/09/its-end-of-road.html