5303/5305

Team work is always the key to success.

Self-Assessment Grade:

Overall participation was fabulous for everyone in my group as we all worked together to ensure the best learning outcomes for the group as a whole. I feel that based on my personal contributions for the EDLD 5305 course, I earned 45/50 and for the EDLD 5303 course, I earned a 93/100 . I expected to learn a lot from these two courses and enjoyed learning many new concepts. I had never heard of an e-portfolio before starting this course, and expected these types of sites to be limited to celebrities or writers or other types of people with large followings, which I blogged about in the “e-Portfolios and Their Use” post. I worried about taking two courses at once but these two melded so well that now I feel as if I would have handicapped myself to separate them.

Key Contributions:

• My group formed as a very large group with Kim, Sarah, and I leading the way on putting the group in place. We eventually broke down to a small group based on primary and secondary teachers. Overall, we kept the larger group in place and worked in the larger group as we needed clarification of an overall concept, but our smaller core groups were used for peer review.
• I lead the organization of the data journal assignments for the readings during week 2.
• I blogged about being organized for this course in my post of “Success Requires Planning,” but I feel that I needed to plan more than what I did for this course. Maybe it was just a massive endeavor with my first ever literature review paper. Even thought I was finished with the whole piece days before the due date, the time investment was underestimated by several hours. Thankfully, my group kept encouraging everyone and working on reviewing their papers to ensure we all felt comfortable on the day of submission.
• I completed all of the required course materials, and even dove deeper into Dr. Harapnuik’s own e-portfolio as well as looking at e-portfolios from the vast majority of fellow classmates.
• I ensured that all my work was turned in early for my peers to review as per the course guidelines. · I was thoughtful in posts on the discussion boards and tried to post promptly during each unit.
• I posted on peoples’ questions about help with their e-portfolios and specific questions regarding the work in 5305.
• All assignments were updated from the feedback received from Dr. Harapnuik: Proposal, Literature Review, and Innovation Plan.
• My website, although satisfactory, caused me great pains as I have decided to learn how to code in CSS, despite already being a capable HTML coder which I blogged about in “Experience in Switching Platforms”

Supporting Contributions: 

• I maintained constant communication in my group to make sure that questions were answered quickly and encouragement was given often.
• I was thoughtful in my responses to peoples’ posts on the discussion boards and returned to see other people’s messages to my posts. I felt that this discussion was very useful in my learning process as I used their insight to self-reflect on my own personal learning. 
• I often looked at the Blackboard mail to ensure that anyone with a question had been answered and gave feedback to non-group members, especially regarding their innovation plan and video. 
• I never thought I would make friends in a digital class, as I have taken many online courses in my undergraduate program, but the initiative on the professor’s part to encourage us to make a group really has been fantastic in forging what will possibly be long friendships.