"It's All Happening."
A Reflection on my MAET Journey
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Early in 2015, I made an important life decision to continue my academic career and applied to graduate school at Michigan State University. I was already working at the College of Education in the Office of K-12 Outreach at Michigan State University and had trouble deciding if I should earn my Masters in Media Information or Educational Technology. Since I was already working in an education environment, I decided to pursue my masters in Educational Technology [MAET]. In addition, the program was online and I would be able to work full time while completing my degree. My hope was that I would be able to apply what I was learning directly to my educational practice.
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When I applied to the program I had a very broad goal of wanting to have a better understanding of how to apply technology to educational content. Unlike many people in the MAET program, I am not, nor will I ever be, a teacher in the classroom. However, in my current job I work with a program that trains educational coaches and my team relies on me to have a clear understanding of how we should implement technology when it comes to instruction and the development of digital tools. I knew that this program would help me in accomplishing that task.
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Upon starting the MAET program, I was only expecting to explore learning theories and how they could be applied to technology integration. However, upon reflection, I have learned so much more than just theory. Through various courses in the MAET program, I have not only learned about theory but have had the chance to relate my learning to the outside world and my educational practice. This paper will explore a couple of major concepts that I have learned in various classes and discuss how these concepts have changed me as a professional.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED
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The first class that helped transform how I think about educational technology was Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education [CEP] 800: Learning in School and Other Settings. One of the overall themes for this class was to explore different learning theories and how people consumed information. Through projects in this class, I began to discover my preference for learning information through the social cognitive learning theory [SCT]. The SCT was developed and expanded upon by Albert Bandura and states that learning can occur when people observe others (Bandura, 1986). For one of the projects in this class, I was able to reflect back on a powerful learning experience I had prior to starting my Master’s degree. I chose to make a presentation about my study abroad in Greece and came to the conclusion that this was a powerful learning experience for me because I learned through the SCT. Instead of reading about places in Greece, I was actually standing there. For me learning about the SCT was profound and still influences how I learn and think about creating digital media. CEP 800 served as an introduction to the SCT, however, I would continue to explore the theory in CEP 822: Approaches to Educational Research and apply it to flipped learning.
Another class that had a large impact on me was CEP 810: Teaching Understanding with Technology. CEP 810 helped me change my thinking in two different ways: one, it allowed me to learn solely from an online resource (in this case YouTube) and helped me to think deeper about technology integration. For one of our assignments I had the chance to complete a Networked Learning Project. The overall intent of this project was to learn how to use a piece of technology using only YouTube videos. As I mentioned above, for my current job, I work to help integrate technology into professional development and one of the main projects we were working on when I was in this class was creating a digital handbook using Adobe InDesign. CEP 810 gave me the perfect opportunity to learn how to use Adobe InDesign and create a product that would be used in my current job. At the end of the class, I had learned how to use InDesign to create a digital handbook that incorporated videos, questionnaires, and offered opportunities for reflection. In addition, the networked learning project gave me another chance to see how I learned information through the SCT. Through watching YouTube videos, I was able to watch others create interactive handbooks, ask them questions, and discover new tools. To this day I still use YouTube to help learn how to use new technology and plan on using it to help me learn how to use Adobe Experience Design.
Learning about technology integration through the technological pedagogical content knowledge [TPACK] framework was another highlight of not only CEP 810 but all of the classes in the MAET Program. The TPACK framework seeks to integrate technology into education content, rather than separating it. Much of the time, when educators think about technology integration, technology is often tacked onto the end of the assignment and is expected to transform the lesson into something amazing. Unfortunately, technology is not a quick fix to anything. When creating digital content for educational purposes, the role of technology needs to be just as important as pedagogy and content. As Dr. Mishra notes (2012), “It is the interaction between knowing a technology, knowing pedagogy, and understanding a subject matter that makes for effective teaching with technology and focusing what can your technology do for your content” (p. 2). In other words, the content drives the learning and the technology is the avenue where the learning occurs. The TPACK framework has been extremely influential when I begin thinking about creating any digital product.
CEP 812: Apply Education Technology to Issues of Practice is the other class that has helped reshape my thinking in terms of reimagining online learning and finding a solution to a wicked problem through personalized learning. The overall intent of this class was to explore a wicked problem and work collaboratively with a group to find a solution. In 2013, The National Media Consortium identified several wicked problems of practice in education. These problems were considered “wicked” due to a lack of obvious solutions. Unlike well-structured and ill-structured problems, wicked problems “cannot be solved in a traditional linear fashion because the problem definition itself evolves as new solutions are considered and/or implemented” (Koehler & Mishra, 2008). One wicked problem identified was the task of reimagining online learning. The National Media Consortium [NMC] stated (2013), “How to make online learning realize its full potential is a wicked problem because we are not even sure of the questions we need to ask so we can begin to understand what to refine, and what to improve” (p.1).
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By working together, my group decided that personalized learning could be a solution to reimagining online learning. Personalized learning can be defined as “student learning experiences [that] are tailored to their individual needs, skills, and interests, and that their school enables them to take ownership of their learning” (Childress & Benson, 2014). Personalized learning can be applied to reimagining online learning through the use of digital tools. One example is the development of personalized educational computer games. In a 2012 study, Dr. Hwang and his team analyzed a personalized educational computer game with the goal of improving student learning for two fifth grade classrooms. One of the main questions posed during this research was: Do students who learn with a personalized computer game have higher levels of achievement and higher levels of motivation than students who learn with a non-personalized game? What Dr. Hwang and his team discovered was that students who learned with the personalized game scored twice as high as the students who learned with the non-personalized game (2012). Overall findings indicated that the “personalized education computer game not only promotes learning motivation, but also the learning achievements of the students,” (Hwang, 2012, pg. 623).
TAKEAWAYS
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So far this paper has explored concepts that I was supposed to learn the MAET program. I was supposed to learn more about a wicked problem in CEP 812 and I was supposed to learn about TPACK in various MAET classes. However, when I look back on my classes I have learned some other things that may not have been the intention of the class or the program.
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One concept that was indirectly taught through the MAET program was the idea of “play.” In many of my classes, I was not only taught about the learning theories behind a technology, but I had the chance to actually play with a product that was developed using that learning theory. Since entering the MAET, I have been more willing to pick up a new technology and learn how to use it. In the past, I always had to have a set of directions or guidelines on how to use a certain piece of technology, especially when it came to integrating it into educational content. Now when I find a new piece of technology I want to learn, I am not afraid to begin to play with it and repurpose it for my educational context.
Another misconception I had upon entering the MAET program was there was no way technology could hinder learning. I was sadly very mistaken. Through my MAET projects, I have learned that technology can be very helpful when it is implemented correctly and should not be there just to have technology. For example, for one of my assignments we had the opportunity to explore technology that would be helpful for math and science concepts. After hours of playing with my piece of technology, I came to the conclusion that this specific technology could not be repurposed for my content area (educational coaching). For the assignment, I concluded that the digital tool would be helpful for certain content areas, just not mine. For me, it really helped drive home the idea that not all technology is helpful and the importance of selecting the correct piece of technology for my educational practice.
CONCLUSION
As my time as a graduate student comes to an end, I am reminded of an article I read in CEP 812: Applying Educational Technology from the New York Times on passion quotient [PQ] and curiosity quotient [CQ] by Thomas Friedman. In Friedman’s article he discusses how the world went from “connected to hyperconnected” in a very short amount of time and claims this is impacting every industry and school system. With technology constantly evolving, it is forcing the modern day workforce to not just be intelligent, but lifelong learners and maintain a certain level of passion for developing skills that are complementary to technology [PQ] and a curiosity [CQ] to develop new “products and services to employ people who are replaced by automation and software” (Friedman, 2013). Friedman’s ideas directly relate to how I feel about my work in the MAET program and my learning in general. Although my time in the MAET program is ending, my learning is not done. I still have to maintain a high level of PQ and CQ when it comes to learning how to integrate technology into educational settings if I am to remain current and creative.
(Adobe Experience Design, 2010)
I have already thought about three specific ways I can continue to expand my CQ upon completion of my degree. First, I need to learn more about coding websites. During my time in the MAET program, we have had the chance to create websites that do not require the user(s) to know HTML (such as Weebly, WordPress, or Wix). However, I have come to realize that many of those sites are limited to the type of content you can put on them. The second area I would like to know more about is how to manage a website through Drupal, Michigan State University’s new content management system. Currently, many of K-12 Outreach’s websites are ran on Joomla! and need to be migrated to Drupal, which I plan to learn how to use in the next couple of months. Another area I plan to explore is how to create mobile applications using Adobe Experience Design. Please see my Future Goals Essay for an expansion of these content areas.
When I started the MAET program, my job was to support technology integration within the Coaching 101 program, which is just one of the programs in the Office of K-12 Outreach at Michigan State University. Now, I am looking forward to a large promotion within my office upon completion of my Masters degree. Once this grant year ends, I will begin working with other programs in the office on a much larger scale. I look forward to using all of my MAET skills in my new position at Michigan State University. As Penny Lane says in Almost Famous, "It's All Happening."
Resources
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Adobe Experience Design. (2010). [Adobe Experience Design Logo]. Retrieved from http://www.adobe.com/products/experien
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall, Inc. 40-45.
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Childress, S., & Benson, S. (2014). Personalized learning for every student every day. The Phi Delta Kappan, 95(8), 33-38. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24374606
Friedman, T. L. (2013, January 29). It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q. Retrieved June 28, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/friedman-its-pq-and-cq-as-much-as-iq.html
Hu, D., Chen, W., Zeng, Q., Hao, T., Min, F., & Wenyin, L. (2008). Using a user-interactive QA system for personalized E-learning. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(3), 1-22. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.msu.edu.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/docview/201697299?accountid=12598
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Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2008). Introducing TPACK. In AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology (Ed.), Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) (pp. 3–29). New York: Routledge.
Mishra, P. (2012). Rethinking technology & creativity in the 21st century: on being in-disciplined. TechTrends, 56(6), 18-21.