This is an exciting time, although I don’t seem to have the time to be excited. It is the end of the semester, which for me means it is the end of my 4 year Bachelor of Education degree! Wow I did it, well I assume I will do it.
With that said I want to take some time to reflect on my experiences in ECMP 455 this past semester.
We got off to a bit of a rough start with some scheduling conflicts but overall I had a good experience in ECMP. The class was stuctured with some face to face time and some online time together. I think this is a good idea as it is important for us to get used to communicating online in the class. As much as I consider myself a digital native I find that I learn better in a traditional environment. This could be because of the fact that it is the only way I have learned over that past 18 years of my life. Because of this I think meeting in a classroom together a little more would have been beneficial to someone like me, even just twice a month instead of one time per month.
I was really excited to take this class with Alec as it is widely known that he is kind of the guru of this stuff at the U of R and beyond. I didn’t have the greatest experience in ECMP 355 and I really wanted to get something more out of the class in 455. I think I did.
What ECMP 455 forced me to do was become my own teacher, I think this was done on purpose. What this allowed me to do was focus on the types of things I wanted to focus on in the class instead of being dragged through stuff that a) I already knew or b) that I didn’t care about. I was able to seek out the stuff that interests me and I was able to go about it in a way that suited me personally. This was great.
My favorite part of the class was that I was able to work with other Business educators to create a online learning resource. I have a blog post about it below so I won’t get into it too much but I really loved working on this, I would definitely keep this part of the class.
Mentorship was another part of the class that I found parts of it to be rewarding. I learned alot in a little amount of time just observing from thousands of miles away from others and it was a good experience overall. I do have some criticisms but I don’t want to get into them here.
If I had to give ECMP 455 a rating out of 10 it would have to be a 7.5. I think it is a great class and with a few changes it could easily be a 10!
In the future I hope to take other classes like this and continue to explore what is going on in the technology world. I have not had a chance to really look into it but if there are master level classes on educational technology I would be interested in taking some down the road.
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Isn’t that exciting, Mike. To have the opportunity to become your own teacher rather than be force fed what a teacher should be! Love being able to have my voice and decide what will work for me, what makes my best practices. ECMP has done that for me as well and although I found it to be a lot of work and frustrating at times, it turned out to be a beautiful thing and one of the best classes that I have ever taken!