Reflection

__ **Reflection ** __

Well this has been quite a journey for me. I have to admit I never thought this course was going to demand so much from me. Online learning design is very challenging and yet so interesting. My first challenge was that I am a full time student in this course so I do not have a class that I could use to create an online intervention. My lecturers suggested that I create something for the Advanced Research Design course, which further terrified me, because I have very little background on research. I am very grateful to my course conveners, however, Andrew and Cheryl because they gave me useful suggestions and discreetly nudged me into the right direction. Another breakthrough was being given access to the Advanced Research Design course Vula site. I got an idea of what the course is all about and what is emphasized in the compulsory course which leads to the writing of a minor dissertation. Before I even thought of the technology, I was lost as to what to do. Fine I was going to do something about telephone interviews as a research generation tool. The question, however, was: what exactly. Initially I thought I would find a good telephone interview and a bad telephone interview and ask students to make comparisons and identify the good and the bad. However this just did not fit, I felt it was not something that masters’ students would find motivating and challenging. As I interacted with my peers and discussed my idea informally with them, the suggestion of something real and practically getting involved in the task seemed more appropriate. I then thought of using //YouTube// to find the ideal telephone interview. That proved fruitless because all I could find were employment telephone interviews instead of research based telephone interviews. This was quite a frustrating stage. My educator then advised me to talk to Dr Brown as she used telephone interviews extensively for research purposes. Dr Brown gave me access to a project site that she and a colleague had used for a huge research exercise on //Access and Use// of ICTs in South African Universities. I was totally thrown off guard, I did not know what to use or not.

It was Dr Brown who came to my rescue, again. I explained to her what I had decided to do, and she carefully chose the artefacts that she thought would be useful in my design. As mentioned earlier in this portfolio without the help of experts online design is almost impossible. The next challenge was the learning theory informing my task; fine I could easily describe it as behavioristic since learners were to acquire certain behaviours from the learning task, but it was not just drill and practice, they were dealing with a situational problem that they could actually deal with in real life situations. I then realised that though the learning theory informing the design was mainly behaviorist, there were also elements of activities informed by the situative theory My next challenge was the tools to use, especially the host technological tool. I knew the Vula wiki would give me link-ability affordances but I was not sure whether I could use it without creating a Vula site. I realised this was going to be impossible, because I had to upload the model artefacts on to the resources tool so that I could link them from the Vula wiki. I am not convinced, however, that a Vula site is necessary but I am sure the Vula wiki is the appropriate tool to carry the task and I decided that, if the use of Vula wiki demanded that I create a Vula site, so be it. I also had problems with the design model. The ADDIE model was the appropriate model because of the step-by-step nature of this task. My problem, however, was on the e-portfolio. I used Dabbagh and Banna-Ritland’s ILDF frame work for my e-portfolio as adapted by Hodkinson-Williams and Deacon for the EDN 5101S course in 2011, and I was lost as to how to explain the ADDIE models stages as I felt I had already done all this in other parts of the e-portfolio guided by the ILDF. I was wary of repeating myself in the different stages of the ADDIE model, however, Gustafson and Branch’s characteristics of Instruction Design to be employed in ADDIE model, refocused me not only on the e-portfolio but also on the online intervention. I can never exhaust all the challenges I faced in this intervention, but the most important thing is that they have all been learning opportunities. I have learnt a lot and I realised that you do not just become an expert learning designer by day, it takes a lot of practice, passion and dedication as well as assistance from the various stakeholders in the learning activity.