Final Online Teaching and Instructional Design Reflection! Hooray!!
What have you learned about course design and planning?
While finishing up the requirements for the MS in OTID I learned a great deal about prior planning in regards to course design. In the process I also learned that I am not a planner on "paper" by nature because I found I very often change my plans, design, concepts etc when I am actually in the building stage of design.
I completely see the benefit for both the client and designer when having pre-planning documents. This is an area I want to continue to work on because sometimes in the planning stage I cannot see the design in my head until I start working in the online learning environment.
I realize with the changes that were made to the OTID program in the last 2 years I have been given a great advantage for not only designing for education purposes but also for the business and nonprofit professional settings. Terms like Gantt Chart are not often used in educational design planning and I now feel I am better suited to design in many professional settings no matter the content.
How close was your final product to your planning document?
My final Accessibility Training was actually very close to my planning documents in terms of layout, however, there were a few content pieces that I changed and decided to elaborate on more once I saw the visual aspect of it in Canvas. I found that once I started designing this training that it could become a very large training and had to really only highlight big items for the purposes of time.
What new technology, if any, did you find yourself using to complete your module(s)?
I didn't utilize a lot of new technology because I specifically focused on digital tools that had accessibility statements like Thinglink, however, I did learn a lot about new HTML codes and how to apply them to making your online learning environments accessible to all learners. I found myself getting more comfortable with HTML codes and design layouts and using them when creating each module.
What lessons have you learned from this experience in applying what you have learned?
I learned that HTML is very tedious. I also learned more about accessibility in the online learning environment to help make myself more knowledgeable as well as more versed to help any clients I may design for so that their online learning environments are legally accessible to all participants.
What would you do differently?
I think I took on a very large project with my accessibility training and have really only touched on the big topics. There is so much more that could and should be discussed within the training and I can very well see this training becoming a full semester (or at least 8 week) long course. I know I need further direction and editing eyes to help me with this process.
What would you add/delete/expand upon?
I would most definitely expand on the examples of accessible content and provide more opportunities for reflection for participants to look at previous content they have designed and see how they would change it to make it more accessible.
I also think I would break up each of my tabs into different modules so that "accessible text" is it's own module with examples, "accessible tables" is it's own module with examples etc. I researched and researched and think there is still so much more that could be added to really help a designer understand accessibility in the online learning environment.
What was the most difficult/easiest component to craft? Why?
The design process and actually building the content was not difficult because of my experience working with designing courses in Canvas, however, finding really good examples of accessible content OR actually creating the accessible content proved a bit more difficult. I wanted to show a variety of bad, good and better accessible content and it really was a task trying to show case and highlight the best examples.
What makes you the most proud?
I am proud to be finished with the program. I am proud to have completed this MS (even though it took 4 years) while working, moving to two different states due to my husband job, having a 3 baby and finally completing this during a Pandemic. I have worked in the online learning environment for 10 years and have trained 100's of teacher to be effective online educators but I am very proud to have planned, designed and created an entire training myself that was not 100% knowledgeable of all items before starting. In the process of this training I taught myself a great deal about accessibility but also realize there is still so much more for me to learn!
