Reflections on my participation in “LIS” 672, Instructional Design

Self-evaluation

I signed up for this course not knowing what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that I was leaning towards information literacy at a college level, and this class looked like the “best fit” for those skills in the LIS catalog. When I started the class I realized that I was going to learn an awful lot: it seemed that everyone was teaching and working on a PhD in education! (Now I realize I wasn't quite so alone... it just really felt like it at the time!)

I was most at home during those first, most theoretical, weeks. Since then I've been more sequential and precise than my previous education (philosophy, communication, and women's studies) require. I've learned a lot from classmates about educational theory and feel that the knowledge will be useful when I'm working on developing my own class.

As we got further and further into our individual projects I felt less and less part of the class. I did think that the projects were very useful to illustrate what we were learning (I doubt I would have understood what was meant by "task" without having comments on my project), but it also slightly separated the class into segments, sending us in our own directions. I think this is alright when it happens in class that are primarily lecture-based, but I felt that this individualized directions distracted most people from the discussions, which limits learning in a conversational-based class.

As the discussions dwindled, I participated a little bit less, too. I did work on my own, however, reading Learning as a Way of Being and Orality and Literacy, and pouring over Information Literacy sites (including several from the American Library Association). These activities weren't directly part of my class experience, but they were an important part of my perspective as I went through class, particularly during those weeks when I felt that I had less to contribute.

My personal expectations

I feel that I did use my inner resources and applied them well. I didn't have the classroom experience that a lot of folks had, but I do have a lot of experience supervising students, and helping them learn how to do their job. When I had something of value to add I always put it out there. (This is something that I rarely feel comfortable doing in a lecture-style classroom.)

I feel that I did meet my own expectations. I participated as fully as I felt that I was able to do. I added resources that I thought were relevant. I made use of class resources and blogs.

Design evaluations

If I were to begin the course with the knowledge I have now, I would probably consider doing a little background learning before the course, even if it were just going to coffee with a teacher-friend to get some basic theory under my belt, before getting started. After getting involved with my MLIS degree (where almost no one has a background in the subject matter) I'm used to a lot of background as part of any course. If I had fully understood this was an education class, I would have put forth some effort in the weeks beforehand to understand basic principles (such as constructivism). I don't think it hurt me to learn on the fly, it just was a little intimidating.

I also think that if I were to do this class again I would choose a project that was a little broader. When I came into the class I didn't have any foreseeable role in designing a course, so I picked the next best thing: a presentation. However, if I had known that I was going to be getting involved with the LIB100 classes at WFU I would have applied the project to that course. (I’d particularly consider the use of journaling a la Sue.) I think that this would give me a little more similarity in background to other classmates and would give me a better project to fully illustrate the concepts we learned.