As another semester is about to come to an end, I always get myself overwhelmed with mixed emotions. There’s the greatest feeling of accomplishing yet again another milestone, the indescribable feeling of relief that I made it and I am becoming closer to finishing the program. There is no denying that although this is already my 3rd semester with ADL, I still felt challenged, the anxiety and stress at times were unbearable, but through it all I persevered, I survived, and most importantly I take with me a load of new discoveries, wisdom, and experience.
EDLD 5389 (Developing Effective Professional Learning) was an adventure for me. Through the whole course, with the readings, discussions, assignments, and other resources, I saw myself playing multiple roles. As the course was intended for learners to plan and implement an effective professional learning community, I had to primarily assume the role of the facilitator and presenter. But to make my PL proposal as effective and realistic as possible, I used my own experience as a PL participant to assess what makes it successful, and what factors contribute for a PD or PL to fail. With every assignment of this course and aside from the resources provided, I would do my own Q&A session. I ask, I answer. I read, I reflect, I contradict and agree to disagree with myself. To accomplish the proposal for effective professional learning, I did a lot of reflection. True enough, experience can still be your best teacher.
With every assignment for this course, as I receive feedforward and feedbacks from both Dr. Grogan and my peers, I reflected and reconsidered my work and revised it accordingly. For instance, I started making my discussion posts with references as recommended by Dr. Grogan. I have also followed my peer’s comments on the content of some of my assignments, adding more details and answering all required information. We have also helped each other with the overall layout of our ePortfolio, including how to add certain document files and applications.
I have also taken the time to complete all readings, videos and resources. I have broken the suggested materials into sections and researched further on more supporting readings especially on how I can apply it to innovation plan (Blended Learning).
I was intimidated and a bit hesitant to post and comment on discussion boards when I first started with the program. I am quite the reserved and quiet one in class, but I realized learning is meant to be shared and heard. For this course, I was more involved with the weekly discussions and really appreciated the exchange of ideas, sentiments, and opinions. The (physical) distance among us was insignificant every time we shared our post or impart comments to a peer’s post. Now, participating with discussion posts has become part of my learning. It keeps me grounded to share how I feel and understand others by reading their posts. It has become influential for me to be more open to different perspectives and see the world far beyond my horizon.
Throughout the last few semesters, I have met, constantly collaborated and made new friends with a group of wonderful enthusiastic learners. Together we have a learning network in GroupMe where we share each other’s triumphs, struggles and even our daily highs and lows. The GroupMe learning community was created by Terri and me. She though had to drop for health reasons, so I ended up inviting fellow students of the class to join me which has been successful. We are now a growing community of 23 members that communicate and support each other’s learning. I have personally collaborated with Claudia, Sabine, Nadin, Nelly, Misma S, and Gauri. We have grown together as a group since we all started with the program almost the same time. We share ideas, discuss upcoming assignments and other requirements, or update each other with useful resources and information. When questions or concerns arise, we provide clarifications, look for answers together or just show support. We are all open to suggestions, feedback, feed forwards because we have become each other’s cheerleader and source of inspiration. On several occasions, I have been meeting with a small group through Zoom to discuss our respective assignments and share constructive advice we can each consider. It has guided me to improve my work and better understand the requirements. I was also able to give recommendations, answer questions or concerns if they have any, and also get some inspiration for future tasks. With every opportunity to collaborate, we have created a very meaningful and fun learning community. We may at times feel overwhelmed with deadlines here and there, but this support group has encouraged me to keep going and just enjoy the learning journey.
If given another opportunity and more time, I would have loved to collaborate with more peers, get to know them and their respective innovation plans. It would be great to be given the chance to extend my learning network with educators from different areas. Also, if there was an aspect I will try to improve on, it's to be more proactive in terms of seeking assistance or clarification on something I do not completely understand. I still tend to be passive, not having the right words at the right time, or sometimes I choose to procrastinate until it's too late to ask questions or comments from others (professor and peers). But with a growth mindset, I will continue to keep working on this area, and move forward with hopes to get better.
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