Through almost all of the performance projects I put together for my portfolio, content knowledge was at the forefront. Understanding when to incorporate technology and how to incorporate technology go hand-in-hand. I learned that I can't just insert a tool anywhere I want, it will be more effective if it is there because it is absolutely the best way for the user to reach their learning outcome. With the Instructional Design performance being one of my first projects, I inserted technology all over the place, and learned through revising that just a little technology use, if purposeful, is just as effective. To one of my last performances, the Curriculum Project, where I carefully selected technology and incorporated it into a very real scenerio and received excellent feedback about how it helped students learn.
Due to this being my first project incorporating technology into a course and the course is meant for new first-year college students at University of Delaware, I decided to be very minimal in the technology incorporation. This will give me a sense of what aspects of the integration worked and will give the students an opportunity to learn about some of the technology resources available to them at the University, like the Canvas LMS, without overwhelming them. I think the use of a discussion board, like that used with the Common Reader module, will help extend a shorter class beyond the classroom, and help build a community for new students.
After completing my Needs Assessment, I wanted to come up with a formal plan to implement an ePortfolio program. By this point in the program, I have learned about effective technology integration, as well as information about a number of platforms that could be used for my plan. Combined with knowledge I gained from a professional seminar I took about helping students with major and career planning, I was able to build a model for an ePortfolio program, using Google Apps technology, which is available to all staff and students at University of Delaware.
My Curriculum Project is a series of screencast videos explaining to new students how to use important technology based around class registration at the University of Delaware. As one of the last projects in the Educational Technology program, this involves a high use of technology and is backed by several learning theories, such as cognitivism, learner-centered, and the multimedia principle. Unlike other project ideas, this one was executed in a real-world scenario and followed up with a survey of its effectiveness. I learned a lot from getting to implement a technology plan in a real-world environment and getting instant feedback from university students, which is an audience most of my performances wish to target.
My Action Research paper centered on UD's adoption and use of an Early Alert System, Blue Hen Success Collaborative. I have pulled data from the last 2 years the software has been used and discussed how this technology has impacted how I am able to help the students I work with succeed in their undergraduate career. I also include a survey of the field of academic advising and how technology is assisting, improving, and growing what an academic advisor is on a college campus. Through the exploration of the BHSC data and scholarly writing review, I have learned how to best use technology to improve my advising practice, but also solidified what I have been learning throughout the Educational Technology program, which is that technology are tools, not the solutions.