Supra Badge Reflection

Overall Importance

The Professional Foundations in LDT Supra Badge represents some base level expectations for a professional within the field of instructional design. As a result of joining the MSEd in LDT program at Purdue, it has been consistently reinforced throughout my classes that ID professionals must effectively work on teams, must learn to utilize relevant and diverse ID models to design and develop effective learning experiences, must be adaptable and open to learning new technologies in order to stay relevant within an ever-changing field, and must practice the ethical use of materials and ideas in learning design in order to remain within a place of continual professional respect for the hard work and efforts of others. The competencies I have shown within this Supra Badge reflect that I understand and can apply these skills in the creation of learning experiences and artifacts that reflect my existing understanding of these concepts and my growing skills within the field.

Achievements within the Sub-Badges

ID Professional Communicator

This competency was made for someone like me because of my background in academic support and tutoring. The first competency in this Supra Badge is on soliciting, accepting, and providing feedback. This comes naturally to me, and the artifact I provided showcases how adaptable I am to asking for feedback, receiving and reviewing it, and also giving effective feedback to others. From all my years teaching and tutoring, I know that I do not know everything, and I willingly accept advice and evaluate it against how I have interpreted the assignment.  In all of my LDT classes, I have also respectfully and tactfully given feedback to others, framed around what they’ve done well and where they might consider other options.  The second competency in this Supra Badge is about delivering clear, engaging, and effective presentations. This competency artifact is one example of many presentations that I’ve designed to communicate material for learning in this program—in this case, a yoga workshop for new yoga teachers on how to effectively design and sequence a yoga class.

Applying ID Research & Theory

Before joining the Purdue LDT program, I had never heard of the Dick & Carey model of instructional design. I had only heard of ADDIE and seen its ubiquitous listing in job postings for ID roles. I jumped in head first with the Dick & Carey model and applied it to a topic I know a lot about—teaching yoga. My design document for the yoga workshop showcases an incredibly comprehensive understanding of designing a quality, learner-centered educational engagement for a topic that has become second nature to me. Learning this particular design approach helped me see how you can apply a very rigorous approach to an opportunity to communicate a learning experience, and since then in this program, I have learned many other learning theories and methods, like Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels method of program evaluation which is invaluable to an ID professional.  Practicing and appreciating the diversity of learning theory and design method approaches within ID, as a result of this program at Purdue, will help me adapt within professional settings when encountering a spectrum of needs for learners and project owners.

ID Knowledge, Skills & Attitudes

This was one of my favorite competencies to show because it was, once again, a melding of something I know like the back of my hand, but presented in a brand new way. I have been teaching yoga for 13 years and instructing yoga breathing (pranayama) techniques in both yoga classes and even in stress relief workshops for college students. I have taught dirga pranayama thousands of times but never as an e-learning module using Adobe Captivate. After creating this e-learning module in Adobe Captivate, I went on to create another one for another class and was able to improve my skills on the platform even further. Now, for my practicum project, I’m creating another e-learning course (not using Adobe Captivate) with the skills I’ve learned about how to adapt an in-person learning engagement into an e-learning engagement.

Ethical, Legal & Political Implications of Design

Because of my background as a college writing instructor for 15 years, I have well-developed personal ethics when it comes to academic integrity and the ability to communicate those ethics to others in a learning environment. Every English class I have ever taught has included instruction on avoiding plagiarism and concepts like Fair Use. This competency is highly relevant in the ID field because, in many cases, we are designing for others using materials that we did not create personally. I can see how this can get very tricky depending on the project and how honest and thorough an SME is with the materials they provide to you; therefore, it’s of ongoing importance for my professional life to always ensure I’m staying above the line in regard to personal integrity and ethics in design.

ID Skills Gained & Applying What I’ve Learned in the ID Field

Within this Supra Badge, the most important ID skills I’ve gained center around adaptability. I already have a substantial base for designing instruction because of my time teaching college English, my time as an administrator within academic support, and my existing instructional design experience (inside higher ed and in multiple other industries). I have adapted my personal knowledge into new modalities for delivery, and I have adapted my teaching practice into ID practice by using ID models, learning theories, and e-learning authoring tools to significantly elaborate upon the design of a learning experience I have delivered countless times before I entered this program. It has been continually reinforced in all of our classes at Purdue that adaptability is a valued skill in the field of instructional design.  Within this Supra Badge, I have shown that I walked into the program with a good base level understanding of these topics, and I have been able to grow and adapt that existing knowledge through the expertise of the program’s faculty and the coursework that has further developed my professional foundations in LDT. I will continue adapting from this base level as I enter the professional ID space upon graduation. I love growing personally and professionally—it is what drew me to teaching in the first place, and what made me decide to pivot into ID in the first place, as a natural next step in my personal evolution as a person who resonates with the need to effectively design and deliver instructional material to learners.