Reflecting on reflection

The art of teaching is just that, an art. Some people come by it naturally, and some have to work at it. To me, the key to becoming a good teacher is connected to how well we can improve upon each teaching experience. I realize that the last thing we want to do when we finish teaching is to evaluate how we did, but that is the best time. So, in that frame of mind, I look back at my experience as the instructor of a “Distance Education Tools” class at USU. I had 12 incredible (I know that sounds like a trite word, but I can’t come up with a better description) students. Some were in the MEd Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences program and had most of their classes taught at a distance, and some were MS students that usually had face-to-face classes. One of my students was even a Nutrition and Food Sciences MS major (he has a great blog with nutritious recipes and tips). Everyone brought a different level of experience and expertise that they were willing to share with all of us.

As part of the course each student was required to develop and present a mini-workshop on a tool that could be used with distance education. The students were required to go completely through the design phase from analysis to evaluation. To me, the most interesting outcomes came from their own reflections on their presentations. Each student was able to find ways to improve their instructional product as well as reflect on some of the unexpected outcomes. As I read through many of the students reflection/evaluation papers it made me wonder how many times as students we design instruction but don’t actually have the opportunity to follow it through to its intented use. So much can be learned about design when we are the ones that are teaching or training with the materials that we create. Practical experience as well as evaluation are mandatory to complete the learning cycle.

So now in reflecting on what I would change about last weeks class, I can think of a couple of things. First, I would start the first day with a more detailed and simplified discussion on Copyright issues. This came up the fourth day of class and so I worked hard to follow up on Friday with solid information, but it would have been better to have it clarified earlier.  I wish we had had a little more time each day for discussion of our topics. I didn’t want to take away from our mini-workshops but I felt that some of the topics could have been discussed during the day while we were waiting for presenters to get set up.  Maybe even a forum style discussion online would have been valuable. I loved reading the students blog postings after every class.  This helped me to know how students were feeling about the class and make adjustments or changes the next day if needed. Some form of formative evaluation is so valuable to an instructor, especially for a newly developed course.

Overall, students were pleased and excited about the things they learned and several expressed the desire to have taken the course earlier in their program. I definitely agree that many of the tools we learned about can make our lives easier. I enjoyed my experience and hope all of my students will join me on my continued journey of learning.