5302: Contribution to My Learning and the Learning Community

techytexasteacher
Dec 1, 2024
4 min read

Reflection on what is working and what I can do better:

As I have moved through this course I believe my Growth Mindset muscle has strengthened. I felt that I was able to moved from perfectionism and appreciate the learning process much more. After all, this is what the COVA approach is all about (Harapnuik, 2018). It is not about simply doing assignments and making a good grade... it is about the journey and the process to get there. Process over product. On that same note, I believe I could grow in this some more by talking to those fixed mindset tendencies that start to creep back in (Dweck, 2016). I also could document my educational journey better my including more blogs that are about my experiences and things I am learning. For instance, I had a real AI breakthrough about HTML coding for properly citing APA sources. This was something that had been pointed out by Dr. Johnson in my last round of classes. I I was so excited that I emailed her and we discussed me blogging about it, but I never did. This was not an assignment, but definitely something that could have been beneficial to others and deserves a place on portfolio. I also feel like my discussion posts could have a little more depth and research added. I felt like I did very well with this in 5303 and 5305 with the small group discussion format that those courses had. I tended to follow the trend of the discussion board in this course.

Key Contributions

Contributed to, helped build, and provided feedback to your core collaboration group

My collaboration group was: Cristy Silkin, Veronica Mata, & Ann Zastryzny. We had a lively

group text going and I also created a collaboration board using Mural.co for everyone to post their assignments and share feedback. Cristy, Veronica & I were in a group last round and used Padlet for discussions and sharing assignments, but wanted to grow ourselves and try out a new tech tool. We barely scratched the surface of all the features that Mural has and I believe this could be a fun thing for students to use as well.

Revised all assignments and reflected on revisions in this contribution to a learning activity.

All assignments were reflected on and revised accordingly. When I first got my Growth Mindset Plan back and got a less than desirable grade back I was crushed. I had worked hard on the assignment (as I do all of my work) and I had simply misunderstood the assignment. I was grateful for the opportunity to have time to reflect and revise the assignment. And really felt that this empowered my Growth Mindset more. We are never done learning or improving our work! When it came time to complete my Learning Manifesto I felt that relied on my core group even more and had some great conversations that helped me understand the assignment before I got started.

Completed ALL of the course readings, videos, and supporting resources.

All readings, videos, and resources were viewed and synthesized

Met the various course activity deadlines indicated in the calendar.

All activities were turned in on time.

Supporting Contributions

While I believe I met at supporting contributions I am going to put mine in a plus/delta table because I do think there are some that could have been done better.

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Took leadership responsibility in my base group and the course. I took initiative to create the group text thread and collaboration board. I also responded to the course GroupMe and answered classmates questions. Contributed to my learning and the learning of my colleagues by participating in ALL activities. I completed all assignments and participated in all discussion questions. Active contributions in the various course forums. I participated in the large course GroupMe and the class discussion board. Posted in a timely fashion so others could respond to my postings. With the exception of the last post I posted all discussion responses before the weekend so peers could respond. The last post was posted on Sunday morning, so peers still have plenty of time to respond, just not as much time as if done before the weekend.

Postings reflect breadth and depth of thinking with research to support thinking and are cited using APA. While my postings all cited the provided video or reading in APA, I believe I could have included more research to have more thought provoking discussions. I did this some at the beginning, but waned off as I noticed others were just including the weekly readings and videos. Additional postings were made that did not require research but were rather to contribute to the learning. I responded to my peers posts to contribute to both our learning, but I believe that I could have been more in depth and I could have done maybe even some additional blog postings to contribute more to everyone's learning.