Jen Boisvert’s Blog

Very interesting question. I have been pondering on this question and here is what I came up with….I guess I am many things in relation to others, I am a student, employee, learner (as my dad calls me a perpetual student), sister, daughter, niece, cousin, and sister-in-law. I am a type of person who loves challenges, very detailed, doesn’t like to give up, always tries my hardest to succeed, dedicated, can be a perfectionist at times (OK, maybe a good amount of time), and loves to learn. I love deep conversations with friends and colleagues about education. I love to be surrounded by friends and family. I like to travel and explore other countries (going away next month, woohoo!!). I also like to stay on-top of technology. I am also the type of person who always thinks from the student perspective, which leads me into this course/my course.

While taking this course and designing my own course, I have learned a lot about myself. I have learned that it is challenging to be an instructor and that developing content from scratch is a bit tough. I am going on my learned knowledge from my courses and my experiences. I am constantly brainstorming and asking myself questions (from student perspective) like “Would I want to learn this? What am I going to get out of this course? Would I be able to complete the allotted work during the time frames I have provided?” I am constantly reflecting on my experiences as a student and the things that I liked and disliked in my courses. I always try and think from a student point of view, as they are the ones who are going to be enrolling in my course. I also have been in their shoes, so I know what it is like to be a student. This is a first for me as I have never designed a course before or taught. Seeing that I have no teaching experience, it has been a struggle to come up with everything from scratch. But, I am enjoying it and it is a wonderful learning experience.

I have two challenges so far in designing my course, one being still trying to come up with discussion questions that are engaging, interesting, and that really tie in the content and the other dealing with the slowness of Moodle (I try to be patient, but sometimes it just drives me crazy). But, I know I am not in this alone. These two challenges are a part of the process.

I have enjoyed communicating with Alex on Seesmic. It has been fun and Alex has been really helpful in brainstorming and conducting research on how I can incorporate this software into my course. After chatting with her a few times, I have decided to add Seesmic to my course as one of my learning activities. I am going to add this into the module on Preparing for the Interview. I am going to have students generate questions and practice role playing with each other. It will allow students to be able to respond at their (but keeping it within the timeframe), communicate with students in another form of communication, and allow them to gain experience as being an interviewer/interviewee.

It has been an interesting past two weeks and I look forward to the upcoming weeks in designing the rest of my course. Good night!

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So far, what has challenged me the most in this course is designing the learning activities for my course, Interviewing. Seeing that I have not taught previously (traditional or non-traditional) and only have experience as being a student, I have been having some trouble developing the learning activities. Designing the discussion topics has been the biggest struggle. From a student perspective, I have learned from my own experiences what I like best and least about discussion posts. Depending on the course and the topics presented to us, sometimes I learn a lot from them, while other times I don’t learn from them. I am visual and hands on learner. I get more out of applying information (well actually performing a task) than I do just reading. My mind tends to wonder. Keeping this in the back of my mind, I need to connect to all different types of learners as an instructor. I want to make my discussion posts meaningful and related to the content, but yet fun to learn.

One of Alex’s comments on my course design is to make sure that my discussion questions relate to the articles/textbook information. I have a few of my discussion posts done, but I am still have a few that I am having some trouble coming up with such as resumes and cover and thank you letters.

I am in the process of designing my rubric. I have created a few rubrics in the past for past courses so I am hoping to take some off the information off of them as well as come up with some new information. Creating a rubric will be extremely helpful when it comes to grading my students work. Having them done ahead of time will prevent a headache in the future. It will also allow my students to see what I will be looking for in a post or learning activity. I personally love when my instructors provide me with a rubric. Before I create the learning activity/assignment, I glance at the rubric to see what they are looking for. Once I complete the learning activity/assignment, I revert back to the rubric and make sure that my work falls under each category. From here, I at least have a sense of where I can expect my grade to be.

I am having fun designing my own course, but it is definitely a lot of work. Trying to design my course as well as complete the coursework is a bit challenging. I give developers and instructors a lot of credit. I didn’t realize how much work goes into designing a course from scratch. As this being the first course I have ever developed, I am learning and developing at the same time. Developing other courses will be easier as I will have had experience from this course.

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