Reflections on Coursework and Growth

Having knowledge about the different models that describe the essence of decision making can be overwhelming and simply just adds to the vast amount of information we already need to gather before making a decision. With NCLB, the advancements in technology, and the changing demographics of student populations to name a few, our educational system is in need of not only good decision makers but knowledgeable decision makers. This knowledge is not just about the decision at hand, but also the players, the action channels-the lines of bargaining and deal making, the organizational rules, etc. I realize there is much more to think about in each decision I make. This knowledge is also useful in analyzing past decisions in order to prevent future disasters. An example is illustrated in one of the papers I wrote for the course, A Bounded Decision.

I was particularly impacted by Herbert Simon's article on the current state of knowledge about decision-making and problem solving processes and the implications for management. He discussed the "thinking-aloud protocol" as a tool which has revolutionized psychological research and a method to understand how humans go about solving a problem. It occurred to me how we use this strategy in the ITS program in order to expose our students to expert thinking. We call it cognitive mentoring. While not explicit about including "thinking-aloud protocol" in developing leaders, I'm sure Simon would agree that this is a strategy used in creating leadership habits of mind.

Through student created discussion and activities, we took the ideas from the resources, synthesized the ideas, and applied them to the educational cultures in which we were working. The synthesizing activity I introduced was a Dave Letterman's Top Ten Ways You Know Model II, Organizational Behavior, Is NOT Working. I was amazed at the positive response and how new this concept seemed to the group. We use it all the time in ITS but I believe the class found it a challenging, refreshing, and beneficial way to negotiate the meaning of the assigned readings.

We did a lot of role playing in these sessions and through these I was able to think more deeply about the different leaders in my school, the decisions that were being made about technology as well as the interactions between Central Office, the School Based Technology Specialist Management Group, my Principal, myself and the teachers. Through this process I was able to determine what effective leadership means to me.

An additional outcome of this course was to participate in scholarly writing. All of our work was meticulously scrutinized through the scholarly eye of Dr. Brazer. I was truly appreciative of the feedback and the opportunity to improve upon my writing.

"Knowing through the windshield of a green Malibu". Every Monday in the Fall 2006 semester, Priscilla and I made the nearly two hour trek to the King George ITS cohort. Officially, I could say that EDUC 800 began at the intersection of Rt. 123 and I-95, just beyond our first Diet Coke stop and ended as we pulled into the school parking lot of the cohort meeting place. Unofficially, I believe that my way of knowing began with Priscilla in my Master's cohort in 2001-2002. I made lots of connections between what I had learned in ITS about technology as a tool that helps us to mediate between us and our world, how technology supports and influences our way of knowing and the foundational works on knowing that Priscilla chose for me to read in this course. More importantly, I believe that this experience with Priscilla served two purposes: to provide me the foundations of knowing that I need as a researcher and to provide me with the foundations of knowing that I need as an instructor in the ITS program.

Beginning with Descartes and ending with Chaos Theory, I see how the technology of Cartesian times allowed for the taking the whole and dividing it into parts for closer inspection and thus influencing Descartes' process of knowing. I see how the advancement of technology allowed for scientists now to look at small, seemingly random patterns of parts, and develop new ways of understanding our universe.

I truly appreciated the opportunity to read Kuhn and unfortunately because I was not able to enroll in Ways of Knowing earlier in my doctorate program due to teaching assignments, I have gone through most my program without understanding the notion of paradigm. This was a problem for me in that I had heard the word used in many different ways including in very casual ways that seemed to dilute the meaning behind the word. Not that I totally understood paradigms after reading Kuhn, but I think it was more because Kuhn defined paradigms in several ways such as worldviews and from the postscript, epistemological stances- which I see as a major use among researchers and the cause of the ongoing debate between methods, shared beliefs within a community, or exemplars. Reading Kuhn caused me to reflect on where my own perspectives lie and whether or not, even though I hold many of the beliefs in constructivism, do I fully embrace one particular stance?

From Snow, I learned the importance of bringing the two cultures of science and literature/art together to inform each other. Each discipline carries its own strengths and weaknesses. I think this becomes extremely relevant to researchers in making decisions about mixing methods and developing metaphors. To be able to combine the affordances of scientific thinking and artistic thinking, creates what Pink calls 'a whole new mind' and promotes the kind of knowing that is needed in the Conceptual Age.

Having read Vygotsky as part of my ITS experience and now as an instructor who needs to understand Vygotskian philosophy in order to support my ITS students, I appreciated Bruner's dedication to Vygotsky as an inspiration in "finding a way of understanding man as a product of culture as well as a product of nature." Bruner's description of the paradigmatic mode, which leads to the search for universal truths, and the narrative mode, which leads to a search for likely particular connections between two events, enlightened me in that I have choices in the ways I want to research and to give me justifications for the narrative mode.

Although McLuhan was an extremely difficult read, I believe that this was such an important piece of literature in my understanding of technology and how it amplifies and extends man. Technology allows us to reshape our knowing. I had often heard the phrase "the medium is the message", but to explain the phrase in terms of how cubism "sets up an interplay of planes and contradiction ro dramatic conflict of patterns, lights, textures that drives home the message by involvement" (McLuhan, 1994, p. 13) gave me a way to understand this phrase. McLuhan finally connected the knowledge I had learned about technology in my Master's program and provided an explanation for how I developed these understandings. It was taught to me in my ITs program but now I had a primary source to wrestle with and to extend my thinking in my own way. I believe that this is a book to return to as I extend my thinking and research on technology.

For my Ways of Knowing paper, I chose to explore Expert Thinking as a way of knowing. This was particularly interesting to me in my own quest to develop expertise in my field of instructional technology and to help my students become experts as well as to explore the role of expert thinking in research methods. I was able to review the literature on expertise including Pink, Levy & Murnane, and Bereiter & Scardamalia, whose works I had become familiar with through learning and teaching in the ITS program. This experience served to help me make connections with what I was learning about knowing and research as well as develop my knowledge as an expert in my work as an instructor in ITS. This was important because of the influence this literature has on the philosophy behind the ITS program.

Two additional aspects of my experience stand out. First, Priscilla incorporated the instructional strategies that she uses in the ITS program into this course. It showed me that the curriculum design of the ITS program is not just useful for the ITS program but translates to other content areas. Second, yes, we discussed the readings and yes, I did reflections that helped me to make sense of the readings. But what I believe impacted me the most is learning what influenced Priscilla's way of knowing. For several years I have worked with and learned from Priscilla and have always marveled at how much she 'knows'. Priscilla shared several stories about her own experiences which gave me insight into how she developed the ITS program and the foundations behind it. These experiences entailed both social interactions with a variety of personalities and thinkers as well as reading a variety of literature, all of which had an impact on her understanding of the intersection between teaching, learning and technology. When a mentor shares this kind of information and experience, it is a model to the mentee, and one that I will always treasure.

Upon finishing this course, I feel I have some knowledge about research in educational settings to take me into the other research courses. I was left though asking the question: Are there other methods of research?

The discussion and peer feedback was particularly useful and illustrated the value of talking through the data and gathering other points of view in analyzing the data. Each of us in the class shared our way of coping with the data and many times we tried out the recommendations. I had the opportunity to experiment with different kinds data organizing techniques. For me, I had not considered putting my data in a matrix in order to see connections but this method provided me with another way to look at my data. The collaborative effort seems invaluable in qualitative research and I would like to have the experience of working with another on a qualitative project for comparison.

An important thing I learned was the power of writing and how the process of writing down my thoughts no matter how random or incoherent at the time was a benefit to me as I analyzed my data. I was surprised that no matter how hard I tried to put my research aside, I would frequently hear the voices of my participants, which caused my attention to turn back to the study. I felt that I have been engaged in the project continually and I don’t believe that it is truly finished. Data analysis for this project took place during the Thanksgiving Holiday and as the relatives stepped over my analysis 'tools': 5' long matrix pages, white boards, colored markers, and pieces of cutout transcripts, my husband would remark, "Don't ask her when it will be done. All I know is that it's the kind of research that seems to have no end." Weeks of seeing me immersed in this study made it obvious to my husband what I had been taught in the Qualitative Research course: qualitative research doesn’t have a conclusion.

For my course research project, I chose to study The Policy Advisory Board of The Online Academy. In my exploration of online learning environments and how they find their way into schools, I discovered that the process takes time, persistence, and commitment. These types of innovations require a change in the mindset of our current educational system. Dr. Maxwell made me aware of Ernest House's book, The Politics of Educational Innovation. It was very interesting to apply House's theory to the actions of TOA's Policy Advisory Board. In the case of TOA this process began over eight years ago, when the school divisions began investing in the development of technology minded teachers through the programs offered at GMU. I also learned that there are many more questions to ask about the phenomenon of online learning environments and many opportunities for me to practice my new found qualitative research skills. However, I know there is so much more to learn about the intricacies of qualitative research that will only be addressed with advanced study.

I love stories and what I have found in qualitative research is a whole world of stories. In doing this study I felt like a researcher for the very first time. The act of conducting interviews, bringing in real people and real data was very fulfilling and a confidence builder. This was a transformation for me.

Quantitative methods have opened up a whole new world of questions I can ask. Like Dr. Maxwell, Dr. Dimitrov emphasized the importance of using the proper language in both asking the question and presenting the results. I was able to practice writing questions and results in my final quantitative project. While this project contains some fabricated data as allowed to increase the size of the research population, I believe that I obtained results that made sense.

From this experience I recognize how valuable it would be to have a course on survey instruments and measurement. I am not aware of any research courses offered in GSE that address these issues.

This was the first class in the program that I had to rewrite my notes after each session. I attribute this to my success and maybe a lesson to take onto the rest of my courses. As I go to store all of these notes and handouts in my PhD coursework box down in the basement, I see that 811 has been treated with a respect not given to my other classes. It reminded me of my time as a Health Physicist when I taught others not to fear radiation but to develop a respect for it and how I encourage teachers today not to fear computers but to develop a respect for how they can help us. I laugh now as I look at a button I created for the staff at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center some 20 years ago: Radiation is Your Friend. Upon completion of this course, SPSS and Quantitative research certain feel more user friendly to me and I am eager to learn more.

EDRS 797 was timely, beginning just as the first issue of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research was released as well as a new book on the multimethod approach. This indicated to me that I wasn't the only one attempting to know this particular issue. While multimethod approaches have been used for decades, the buzz in among the research community and methodologists seems to have evolved most recently as a result of the debate over scientifically based research. Also, this course immediately followed my Ways of Knowing experience and I was more prepared to explore and be aware of the ways of knowing in multimethod perspectives and hopefully to better understand my own.

I read a lot in this course and I critiqued a lot in this course. I was exposed to multiple perspectives in the readings. I reviewed the various foundations and beliefs of positivism, constructivism, realism, etc. and the debate among the paradigms and then had the opportunity to wrestle with my own perspectives in discussions with my peers. We all came to the same conclusion in that we are not committed to a particular perspective, which could be a result of our lack of experience or that we embrace multiple perspectives which might serve us well in being open-minded in our research. I learned how multimethod approaches do not simply happen at the data collection and analysis stage, but also in the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, the research questions, the strategies to deal with validity, and the conclusions. However, I also learned that there are a variety of ways mixed methods are used in research and while an integrative approach can result in a robust study, it is not the only kind of mixed methods design. It all depends on the research goals and questions.

Given various options for assignments, I chose to focus on my interest in the quality of online courses and develop my ideas for research on that topic. It was a good opportunity to experiment with how mixed methods might be integrated into my study in order to expand my research questions and explorations, to collect a variety of data, to address validity threats, and to strengthen conclusions. The three memo assignments (Memo 1, Memo 2, Memo 3) formed the basis for my dissertation planning. In the context of taking this course, I was able to see how a mixed methods approach might impact my study. In my case, weighing the benefits of adding multiple methods by changing my dissertation research questions or collecting a variety of data to address validity threats over the costs, more time, helped me to make some decisions for my own dissertation proposal. Each memo served the purpose of refining my idea. I was thrilled that Dr. Maxwell asked to use my matrix as an example in subsequent Mixed Method Research classes.

I believe this experience opened my eyes to the current debate in methodology as well as provided me with strategies to become a better researcher regardless of the methods that I choose.

I was not very comfortable with the way the process was working and felt a bit void of ideas. My lack of confidence in working on this project was very apparent to me and I wondered why. I had just started a new position within the county as a School Based Technology Specialist. Although this is a leadership position, I didn't feel much like a leader with all the new things to learn and lack of self confidence that goes with the start of any new job. Also, I began working half time for the ITS program...another new step in addition to applying for the PhD program. I believe this had a great affect on my feelings about working on this course. The lack of confidence and feeling that I didn't have the background knowledge to work on this course led me to accept more of the ideas of my collaborator. Actually, it really wasn't a collaboration at all but two people who really didn't know what to do. I feel that I needed a better model of scholarship.

I did however do alot of reading on teacher leadership. I again read The Hero's Journey and attempted to develop scenarios which would allow the students to apply what they learned in the readings. I introduced myself to online resources such as Educational Leadership.

This course made me evaluate my abilities to develop courses, to review what I learned about designing learning opportunities and to reflect back on what I learned in the ITS program about design and leadership. Designing for teacher educators is not a different process than designing for young learners as I was attempting to do in the elementary schools, but the course needs to challenge graduate students and I was not confident in the end of this course that I was able to do that. I needed more guidance and instruction and a better teaching model for creating courses.

From the review of literature I did in EDIT 797, I had a good idea about the leadership foundations that we needed to teach in this course such as definitions of leaderships, kinds of things teacher leaders do, teacher leader qualities, the process of developing a leadership plan, current research and literature on teacher leadership, challenges and types of problems teacher leaders face. But I wasn't so sure about the activities we should design. When we all met together to discuss the outline of the course, things started to move very quickly.

While I was mainly an observer to most of this planning process, I absorbed it all like a sponge. The key was not only to design using the FACTS model but also to create the background building and synthesizing activities that were aligned with current types of activities, familiar to the students. Creating a robust scenario that developed throughout the course and challenged students to apply the knowledge they learned situated student learning in a realistic task: participation in various teacher leader activities that addressed problems at the troubled but fictitious Waltham School.

By assisting in the development of the course in two online environments, Blackboard and Web-based using the Community of Practice Learning System (COPLS), I advanced my web design skills and feel much more confident in my abilities.

Understanding the instructional design process not only by reviewing strategies I had learned in my Master's program, but by actually participating in the design of a graduate level course is the foundation for my specialization. Deeply understanding the FACTS model to design and the COPLS design for course delivery are essential in my part-time position in the ITS program because these are the foundations of the program. These are also the methods I firmly believe lead to successful student learning not only for technology integration but in other content as well.

Everything I know about portfolios, I have learned from Bill Warrick. From just a Masters student in the ITS cohort, to my work with The Online Academy for Teachers, I have learned how to design and troubleshoot in a web environment. In designing my doctoral portfolio, I was able to visualize the road ahead. Not only will my portfolio serve as a record for what I have accomplished and a summary of what I have learned, it will also serve as an organizational tool during my doctoral program.

What I didn't expect to learn in this course is how to teach the process of online portfolio creation. For over a year, I have mentored graduate students in putting together online portfolios for their Masters program. This course has given me a framework to follow that has helped tremendously as I explain the process to other students.

Update: My earlier portfolio reflection on this course lacked one major component: the process of reflection and how it plays in important role in assessment, making connections to learning and practice, and self improvement. Since the Fall of 2004 I have led graduate students in the ITS program through portfolio creation with much more confidence. However, my focus has been less on the mechanics of portfolio creation and more on the reflective process. Our students are masters at telling us what they did but they have a very difficult time reflecting on what they have learned. With each cohort we think about ways to scaffold this process. We've used the What? So What? and Now What? to prompt them. Using cognitive mentoring to lead them through how I would approach a reflection, providing them with a sample of a good reflection and evaluating reflection pieces that are missing elements have been methods I've used to guide students through the process. Experience from the Advanced Internship with our third semester students made me realize that in order to help them grow in the reflective process, I needed to continue with prompting questions to help them assess their own learning.

I see how the reflective process is integral for both the instructor and the learner. The best way to find out what the student has learned is to ask them to tell you. Looking back is necessary to move forward. But reflecting is more than looking back on what was learned, it is understanding how the learning connects to practice.

Even with all of this practice through my own reflective portfolio and teaching students, I still find I am learning about the process and find much room for improvement. I am not an expert in webpage creation and was thrilled to learn from Priscilla in December of 2006 how to have my artifact links open in a new window! Also for preparation of my first Portfolio review, I decided to revise my portfolio design. A sample of my previous design shows why. Yuck!

Since the beginning of time, which for me is defined by my new professional direction in Instructional Technology and Curriculum Instruction, I have been greatly influenced by Dr. Norton and Bill Warrick. I tend to think of myself as an evangelist for the ITS program because my beliefs about teaching and learning are deeply rooted in the ITS philosophy. However, I realize the need to expand my thinking and experience with other faculty in Instructional Technology.

Advanced Instructional Design provided me with a clear framework of the differences in the instructional strategies used in instructional designs. From comparing and contrasting Objectivist designs with Constructivist designs, I saw the value of each design and how each is used.

Although this course focused on Constructivist methods, I felt the need to defend the use of the efficiency model which is aligned with Objectivist principles on the basis that from my experience in K-12 environments, background knowledge needs to be taught. However a good design can appropriately incorporate the background knowledge using objectivist methods while incorporating knowledge application activities through constructivist methods. I was pleased that I was able to enlighten some, challenge others with this thinking and found that those in the class who were practicing classroom teachers, agreed that designers of learning opportunities for students needed to work within the educational system while also finding ways to incorporate constructivist ideas.

I also appreciated the vast amount of literature we were exposed to as we learned about the different Constructivist instructional strategies. Throughout the course I was introduced to the work of a variety of researchers who studied or developed instructional strategies within the situated learning models. These included Apprenticeship, Cognitive Flexibility Hypertext, Microworlds, Case Based Reasoning, Problem-Based Learning, etc. Understanding the theory of Constructivism and the different instructional design strategies that are aligned with Constructism from the perspectives of different researchers in the field added to my background knowledge. I now have a wealth of solid literature and resources to use as I research and write about online design environments.

The final course project allowed me to think about how I might provide a learning environment for teachers to learn how to be moderators in discussion board environments. Since many school divisions are pushing the use of course management systems such as Blackboard, I thought I would use Blackboard as the delivery. In order to create a prototype that was easy to access for review, I simulated a Blackboard environment through my created webpages. The instructional strategy that I chose to use for my design was Apprenticeship. I felt that this strategy would be more accepted in the public school environment because it is a strategy that might be more familiar to teachers. I justified my choice in my final paper.

The final paper allowed me the opportunity to use the literature I had reviewed in this course and other Instructional Technology courses as support for my argument that as designers of learning opportunities we must consider the environment in which the design will be used. In my case, I chose the public school system.

The instructional strategies used in this environment must be carefully chosen if one hopes to be successful in promoting the use of constructivist methods. Those working in these environments, teachers, principals, and students, have not had the experience with many of the instructional strategies I learned in this course. My experience has taught me that It is difficult for teachers to imagine incorporating some of these strategies into their own practice. Therefore crafting and modeling designs that have familiar elements are ways to introduce teachers to constructivist instructional strategies. I believe that working within the system and taking baby steps in providing constructivist experiences can lead to successful change in practice and adoption of instructional strategies which use constructivist principles.

When I worked as a health physicist in the Hispanic area of Torrance, California, the nurses at the medical facility would call my succinct but thorough workshop on radiation safety El Enchilada Entero- The Whole Enchilada. Everything they needed to know about providing care to "radioactive" patients while keeping their exposures as low as reasonably achievable was learned at these workshops.

The Online Academy for Teachers (TOAT) was my El Enchilada Entero. In this series of courses, I collaboratively designed and evaluated course material, learned the material designed by others, and mentored six graduate students through the program. This also gave me experience in the diffusion of a new innovation. I have learned through my own online teaching experience that online instruction requires additional teaching knowledge and skills. While many of the virtual high schools across the U.S. provide some instruction to their online teachers, TOAT is the only comprehensive program that provides education to those who wish to be online instructors. It is the only program that builds an understanding of virtual schools, attends to the building of virtual relationships, the skills required to support students in developing self-regulation, and developing the skills that support content understanding.

Current literature on online learning in K-12 environments (Maeroff's A Classroom of One), online learning designs (Norton's COPLS design), mentoring (Daloz's Mentor: Guiding the Journey of Adult Learners), self-regulation (Zimmerman, et al. Developing Self-Regulated Learners), and developing a thinking classroom (Tishman et al., The Thinking Classroom) fostered a deeper understanding of the processes happening from the student, teacher, and designer point of view. It is from Daloz that I learned the importance of "attending to the whole lives of students". "Knowing what is important to our students as individuals, we can more readily help them find connections between the lives they live and the subjects we teach." Even before reading Daloz, I had subscribed to this thinking, easily in my face to face practice; with more effort in my online practice. It was left unsaid in my mind until reading Daloz. I add, "and allows me to better help them do the same with their own students."

Even though the focus of the progam is on virtual high school environments, I was able to make connections to my own practice as a teacher educator in both online and face to face environments. I realize that there are theories of adult learning (although I do not have experience with these theories), however, in the online environment, I see how the strategies used with k-12 online learners must be used in the same way to build virtual relationships, self-regulation and content understanding in adult learners, graduate students, teachers, etc. Additionally, we use The Thinking Classroom in the ITS program to model and develop strategies with our teachers to use in their own practice. I clearly see how

Learning the ART of mentoring has influenced me the most as an online instructor/mentor. The ART of mentoring describes the strategies a mentor must use in order to build the relationships, promote self-regulation, and support conceptual thinking. Assessing, Responding, and Targeting have given me the terms to use and better understand what I do as a mentor. It has put mentoring strategies into language that helps me articulate what I do as a mentor. It was an AHA! moment when I read Priscilla's ART of mentoring for the first time. It described exactly what I had been doing in my mentoring over the years. Now I had the language to describe it in a scholarly way. It also provided me with an organized system in which to practice and improve my mentoring skills. With each piece, Assessing, Responding, and Targeting, comes questions I must ask myself in order to understand each mentee email and proceed appropriately and effectively with learning always the goal.

For the mentoring phase in these courses, I began with three mentees. This mentoring experience was far different from others in that the mentees were learning to be mentors and they were motivated to learn about mentoring. Therefore, not only their work, but their responses were thoughtful and carefully crafted. They challenged me to be a better model with each email. My best mentoring experience so far was with Robin. Had I known that she was a past Virginia Teacher of the Year, I might have been very intimidated and less outgoing with my communication. I may have hesitated to question her, thinking...afterall, if she was brilliant enough for that honor, certainly she was brilliant enough to manage this course. But none of this information came up in conversations, which were robust and thorough. Together we discovered that her learning experience of online mentoring was making her a better classroom teacher. This became the topic for my EDRS 810 proposal. As she now sits across from me as a colleague, overseeing The Online Academy for Teachers, I see that our relationship in this course did indeed impact her in some way and that I consider a great success in my mentoring book.

I've also experienced the most difficult mentoring situations in this course. I inherited three more mentees and experienced my first failure as a mentor. I could not get this mentee to finish the courses. Yes, I know about student responsibility and all of that, but this course makes you feel like super mentor, nourished with knowledge, tools and strategies to guide even the most difficult online learner. The fact of the matter is not every online student will be successful even with the best mentor, just like in face to face instruction.

Just as we have extended the Integration of Technology in Schools Online Certificate Program, intended for practicing classroom teachers, to those in other fields, I see a great use for The Online Academy for Teachers for those not connected with the Virtual High School but who wish to be serious about the quality of online instruction that they provide to their students. There is a lot of online instruction being done by those with little experience and as an educator, it is a big concern for me.

EDIT 797-Web-Based Learning (WBL) is a required course for all graduate students enrolled in the Integration of Technology in Schools (ITS) cohort program. It is a three-credit hour course designed to assist students in exploring and developing expertise with the various aspects of web-based learning. It also models ways in which these tools can be integrated into the teaching and learning process. The course is conducted online using the Blackboard course management system. Because the course relies on the use of Internet resources, it is necessary each year to update links and redesign portions of the course to reflect what we are continually learning about teaching in online environments. In addition, the faculty in the ITS program have collected data and held discussions with students to better understand their learning needs as this is the first exposure to online learning for many of our students. In the past, discussions and interactions have not been as robust as we would like to see, so I prior to the Internship, I planned to use my skills and knowledge about online interactions to improve the course.
The following learning objectives were met for me during this internship:

1. Expanded my knowledge of online course design and the resources available
2. Collaborated with faculty experienced in online course design
3. Gained experience in using a course management system as an instructional delivery model
4. Gained an understanding of the components and tools of Blackboard
5. Learned how to effectively administer an online course
6. Developed skills at providing technical support to online students
7. Learned how to become an effective facilitator and moderator in group discussion boards
8. Gained experience in modeling and teaching students the art of online facilitating
9. Gained further experience in teaching content in an online environment
10. Revised a course syllabus, learning objectives, course organization, several materials used in the course and some aspects of the course delivery. In the past all facilitating for discussion forums rested on the shoulders of the student, each taking a turn every two weeks as 'guest facilitator'. During the Internship, I modeled good facilitating techniques for the first week of each student's turn by being responsible for the topic discussions. I also modeled the use of good prompting questions for the discussion board and maintained consistent email contact with each 'guest' facilitator to encourage and support.

Now that's the official stuff from my Internship proposal. All of this translates into the fact that being an instructor in an online environment, just as in face to face environment, takes an incredible amount of time and effort. The difference is the time and effort are distributed over a period of time. Did I spend more time teaching in this course than I had in previous courses such as EDIT 504, a face to face class? No. It only felt like it because due to the flexibility we offer students through this environment, I needed to returned to the course periodically throughout the day, nearly everyday, in order to keep up with discussions, questions, and concerns.

I got really good at this too if student comments are any indicator. Many of the students asked if I ever slept during the entire summer session because I had managed to create the notion that I was ever-present. I did this by bringing in the one-on-one mentoring techniques I learned and practiced in the COPLS environment. I responded to their discussion posts and emails promptly. One student was consistently amazed that I answered his emails morning, noon, and night within minutes of the email being sent. I had learned his work habits, and yes, this is very possible for each of the 30 students. I anticipated when some might have problems or when they might be working. I used their learning schedules that they provided at the onset of the course to help guide me. Integrating mentoring techniques I had learned from the coursework in TOAT into the Blackboard environment was one change that I deliberately set out to make in my Internship. Past student comments on the WBL course indicated students wanted more of an instructor presence in order to feel that they had learned.

I also wanted to model for the students that online courses are not easier than face to face courses. This is a myth we frequently come across and by modeling good work habits and explicitly voicing the need for participation, I hoped to show students that online graduate learning requires the same amount of work that they are putting into their face to face graduate studies. What I suspect is that some of these students were not putting in enough work in their face to face studies. Many were surprised when I compared the hours of work necessary to complete the 6 graduate credit hours for the online summer session with the 6 graduate credit hours for the face to face spring session. By putting it in terms of 5 hours of class time and 15 hours + of homework time most got the point.

All of this is dependent, of course, on the robustness of the online course. I am by no means an expert in online design and teaching, but I do know that I have some experience in both. Blackboard is a course management system available to educators including adjuncts throughout the University. How is online learning being used across this University? What happens when online courses are used by instructors who do not have any experience in online learning, teaching or design? What is the impact on student learning when instructors integrate online learning as part of coursework? These are some of the questions that arose in my mind during my Internship.

During my Internship, the students were also enrolled in another online course delivered through the COPLS design. Priscilla and I wanted to know how the experiences in these two very different designs compared. This led us to colloborate on a paper entitled, Comparing Two Online Learning Environments: A Classroom of One or Many? This paper has been accepted for presentation in San Antonio, TX at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education conference in March 2007. I once again gained practice in using qualitative methods to analyze student questionnaire data. The collaborative experience of working on this project with Priscilla was like none other. This was the first collaboration for me in which the data analysis and conclusions were done working side-by-side, not only talking through the data, but actually writing together. For me it was great moments of observing expert thinking at work as I listened to Priscilla share her thought process with me. I believe that I absorbed more than I can possibly articulate and really, I believe that I will know more about how this impacted me as a scholar when I start my next research project.

I was very excited to take this course because I completed it just prior to my trip to Macedonia for the first workshop we are doing there. It was the opportunity to go to Macedonia that steered me towards a minor in International Education and this introductory course gave me some good insights into how international projects should ideally be developed. This course allowed me to use the planned Macedonia workshops as the context of my learning.

I was introduced to the vocabulary of International education. I soon discovered that there are many definitions out there in the literature for the term International Education. Other terms such as social justice were equally multi-defined. As a small class of 6 including Kabba, we wrestled with these definitions. With limited amounts of experience, it was difficult to settle on one particular meaning. I decided that I would investigate this further in my next International Education courses.

I also was exposed to International journals and research and the different methods of researching issues in International Education. I have joined the Comparative and International Education Society in order to keep current in the field.

While I might not have a clear definition in my mind about what International Education encompasses, I did learn that understanding perspectives was of great importance. This seems like common sense but in reading about and discussing various projects and issues I saw that many development projects do not take into consideration the perspectives of those the projects seek to help.

This course focused on understanding the contributions of Non-Western cultures to education. We each were assigned an indigenious culture and created activities and discussion questions to help the rest of the group understand the educational methods used. In this way we attempted to compare methods and to see how similar or different these methods are to our own. For example, I chose Africa and asked the class to develop some Poor Richard's almanac sayings for education in the same way that African cultures use proverbs to education their children.

We studied Islamics, Buddist, Hindus, Confucious and the Chinese Education heritage, Aztecs, North American Native Americans, and African cultures. The most interesting however, was the study of the Roma. The Roma culture is very exclusive and the information we had came from outside sources.There is no research on the Roma by the Roma. I wondered about the perspective and if the information we had was valid. It certainly didn't paint the Roma in a positive light and from stories we had gathered from the news about various countries trying to deal with their 'Roma' problem, it appears that this culture is considered the bain of society. I will be very interested to see how the Roma are treated in Macedonia since this is one of the minority groups in the country.

Understanding these perspectives was a way to open my mind to possibilities in education and how these perspectives must be considered when proposing any developmental project in other countries. Knowing the deeply rooted traditions of a culture and its reasons for and uses of education (for example, traditional Chinese educational thought and practice was used to ensure stability) can inform those who wish to share knowledge or promote the ideals in the Millenium Development Goals.

The main activity in this course was the completion of an International Education Project Proposal. I decided to use what we had created for the Macedonian workshops and to see how it fit into the assignment. This required me to review the literature on educating teachers, technology education, and the connections between globalization and developement needs. The International Education Project Proposal gave me good practice for any future proposal work I may do. Upon completion of this project, I was left with questions such as, our reasons for being in Macedonia, if the participants would be receptive, and what kinds of cultural differences would we face. I did know that since this project was based in good pedagogy we would be bringing them some methods that have been used successfully in the U.S. Only implementating the project would help to answer some of my questions.

Aha! I finally have solid definitions to the terms and concepts used in International Education. Although there are still many variations of these terms, we as a class of four, including Kabba, developed definitions from what we found in the literature. Therefore, when I am asked what is International Education, I can answer: All educative efforts aimed at fostering an international orientation in knowledge and attitudes and seek to build bridges between countries.

It was also important to define social justice as this too is a very confusing term and leads to many misunderstandings. In listening to discussion on social justice in faculty meetings to how it is used in the literature and teacher education, I found that ideas about social justice varied from person to person. We defined social justice as the belief that individuals belonging to a social group have the right to equal and fair treatment under law and the universal declaration of human rights.

Because of our small class size, we were given the opportunity to design our learning and choose various issues of social justice for discussion. We chose issues of poverty, gender and minority, and language and culture. We each developed a workshop to address the topics. In my Poverty Workshop, I shared an interview with one of my Macedonians friends about her perspective of poverty as well as my husband's perspective. Each had grown up in what I would call poverty but from their perspectives, they were not poor. The conversation focused on what poverty is and how it impacts education. I decided to involve the group in the creation of a Webquest in which we could use with others to better understand poverty in the world and how perspective makes a difference in our ability to understand the concept. We spent a lot of time discussing the use of Webquest and the format rather than our Poverty Webquest. I believed though that offering them a tool in which to reach others was very beneficial to the learning of the group. In addition, I found many resources to use in the future including articles, various web-based comparative tools offered through different agencies and the coolest map from the World Bank which illustrated what poverty looks like globally.

Since there were only 3 students in the class we decided to do a collaborative research study with the hopes of submitting it for publication. Our qualitative project focused on immigrant practicing teachers in the Washington D.C. Metro area and their perspectives of social justice and equity. After my transcribing of those 6 hours for the Qualitative Methods course, I thought it would be a long time before I did another interview. However, as I mentioned in that reflection, I must practice the techniques in order to become a better researcher in qualitative methods. I found the interviewing and transcribing much easier this time around. Because this was a collaborative effort, the data analysis experience was much richer with the addition of our diverse experiences and backgrounds.

The conclusions of our research only deepened my lack of understanding of the meaning of social justice in that the perspectives of the participants in the study were not focused on social justice issues but on the positive contributions they had made in this country. It was like we introduced them to the notion of social justice and if they hadn't participated in the study, they may never would have considered issues of social justice and inequality. I realized that a much larger and more diverse sample should be studied in this situation, but I am not sure that even with a larger sample population, we would come any closer to understanding perspectives of social justice.

While we were satisfied with the article in terms of meeting the course requirements, we plan to meet over the summer to shape it up for journal submission.

This course provided me with new perspectives including how difficult it is to judge one's ability to be social justice- minded and how our own experiences as a nation have influenced our ideas about social justice, the baggage we carry...while those outside our country may have a completely different view of what social justice means. I believe this is very important in International Education and a question for research to investigate.

I was particularly excited by this topic from the start because Peace Education seemed to have little connection to anything that I had studied or done in the past. I was thrilled to explore the literature and was amazed that each day, something new appeared. I soon learned that I was entering into a branch of education that is experiencing changes in definition and philosophy and within weeks, something new would appear in the literature or in the news. I also began to see connections to my work and learning experiences, which I did not expect.

In my paper I had both overt and covert goals. Overtly, I wanted to find out everything I could on Peace education. I wanted to "get to know" the players involved. I was excited to see a familiar face in Gavriel Salomon, who I first became acquainted with in his research and writings on technology, cognition and learning. I was also drawn to Betty Reardon and her distinctions between education and training. Also, the work of Elise Boulding and her understandings about technology and its impact on developing a civic culture supported what I have learned about technologies role in society.

I also wanted to learn the language of peace education. Along with Ian Harris, I embraced the definitions of peace and education that Salomon and Reardon had to offer because they most closely matched my beliefs about peace and therefore I was able to better understand what these meant. Another overt goal was to learn about the different contexts in which peace education is carried out as well as the different strategies are used. I wanted to see if technology had any connection with peace education. Most important, I wanted to find the weak area in peace education and from my point of view, that occurs in teacher education.

Covertly, I wanted to practice reviewing the literature and making decisions about what is valuable to my knowledge construction. I wanted to practice my interview skills, although this goal has yet to be met because I was not able to meet with Dr. Ndura or Dr. Nasser. Through email, however, I was able to practice asking questions of Tula and then deciphering the broken English responses. My most important covert goal was to make connections to my own experiences and coursework and to see what that all meant. While I did not set out to explore how the FACTS (Norton, 2001) model of design might be used in designing peace education curriculum, it came to light as I explored connections between peace education and teacher education and the similarities between teaching teachers about technology and teaching teachers about peace.

This was the most information I have ever put together and while some of the contexts overviews may not seem important, I wanted to write about what I had learned for possible use in the future This project has inspired me to think more deeply about creating coursework for peace education and teachers.