It was such an incredible journey with 5305 and 5303 courses. Honestly, I was overwhelmed with all the new courses’ information at the beginning. Both courses' structure was divided into three weeks’ modules, and it was not clear for me to follow what I was supposed to do. It took me 3 -4 weeks to get used to the studying style.
At the beginning of the course, I collaborated with my classmate Pedro Carrizales - we messaged each other repeatedly, trying to figure out what we needed to do for our assignments.
The most helpful resource was the GroupMe app. I think almost all participants from both courses were part of this chat. It was a great place to get fast feedback for my questions related to assignments. I shared my ideas, resources, links, and all that helped my classmates. It was also an excellent spot to chill and realize that everyone in a course struggled to balance work, studies, and personal life.
In one of our first assignments for course 5305, we had read an extensive list of statistical reports related to digital learning and blended learning. Three other classmates (Karin Stateler, Kimberly Purvis, and Danielle Lopez) and I decided to take the initiative and divide those reports between each other to make a quick summary of each of them. We presented our discovered summary information to each other via Zoom. And at the end, we posted our results for other students on the discussion forum page. It was a wonderful experience to work together. It gave us a classmate's unity feeling.
One of the obstacles for me during my ADL course was time management. All assignments have deadlines, and they should have been submitted on time. I have not been in this time frame environment for a while, so it took me a while to get used to following the assignments schedule and submitting it on time. I found that Google’s digital planning tools, such as Google Task, are beneficial for setting goals and tracking time. It reminded me that I need to devote myself to studying daily, which worked great with my busy schedule.
The most active collaboration started when I prepared my literature review. I worked closely with Kelven Wilson, Jas Galbert, and Chastity Crissman. All four of us were innovating blended learning models. So, it was easy for us to share literature sources and give feedback on our written works.
The main task for the 5303 course was to create an ePortfolio, which was something new for me. So, I used the tips of my classmates from the discussions forum constantly and shared my ideas about their works as well. One of the most valuable sources for getting ideas of ePortfolio was previous students’ examples.
I took part in all assigned discussions for course 5305 and 5303 and expanded my knowledge on course material with TED lectures and articles from www.harapnuik.org and etc.
During my course, I actively participated in all live zoom lectures and took notes of helpful information that could be applied to my assignments. In case I had some difficulty with my tasks -It was easy to communicate with both of my professors via scheduled zoom calls or by emails. I took their suggestions seriously to my work, and I made some changes.
Based on my collaborations with my learning community, I deserved an 86/100 for the 5303 course and 44/100 for the 5305 course. It was a clever idea to do both courses simultaneously since they supplement each other, and I will use the received information in my future studies.
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