Contribution to My 5317 Learning

Collaboration has been a key staple in my ADL journey. It has been an adjustment working so closely with my peers and challenging in some moments, but always rewarding. The collaboration I have participated in throughout this program has impacted the use of the collaborative learning of my students in my personal classroom. Collaboration has proved to be beneficial for creativity, engagement of lessons, confidence, and an array of other areas for myself and the students I teach. It is imperative for learners to collaborate with their peers because I have observed over the years that students are often more receptive and understanding of content delivered via classmates. This has also held true for me; my collaboration group has provided clarity on many aspects of our content and criteria for our course and it has improved the quality of the work I create.

Last semester I struggled with my collaboration amongst peers because the Educational Technology Leadership students entered our courses. I found myself getting lost in all the people because the core group I had been working with for the program was assigned to a different course, and the influx of people became overwhelming for me. This semester my group was able to meet back up in our 5317 courses. Although this was great news for me, as I reflected on these facts, I discovered I had room for improvement. I realized I become complacent in many situations and have a fear of going outside of my norm. I was terrified in my last courses to work with anyone and had to grade myself lowly because I did not have a core group to collaborate with; in this round of courses, I returned to my group, and I felt safe and comfortable sharing my thoughts and ideas again. Utilizing my growth mindset, for the last round of courses I must challenge myself to network with more of my peers because I will not have my core group once again for one of the last rotations. This will be challenging, but as an educator, I expect my students to step outside of their comfort zone consistently and I must hold myself to the same standard. It is unfair to ask them what I will not do myself. Although my collaboration with my peers has fluctuated throughout the ADL program, the growth mindset has instilled in me that everything will not be perfect and I must adjust as needed continue to evolve, and correct mistakes as needed.

For the 5317 course, I will grade myself an 80/100. My core group was Maria Lopez, Valerie Regalado, and myself. This group has provided me a great deal of support throughout this course, and the entire ADL program. We have assisted one another with sharing resources, clarifying misconceptions, giving mental and emotional support, and they even checked on me continuously while I was dealing with an illness. I also collaborated closely with Valerie to complete a peer review of our Publication Post Rough Draft Assignment. Her feedback was an imperative part of editing and revising my rough draft. I was able to utilize the sources, course readings, and videos to guide me through the assignments to create work that aligned with the outcomes of this course. Although I succeeded in those areas, I did not post discussion posts in a timely manner for the rest of my peers to collaborate with. With that, I docked myself twenty points. For the last round of classes, I will ensure I set a better schedule to complete every aspect of each course. This journey has been exhilarating and I am proud to have gotten this far.