ePortfolio Course
- Spring 2022
- Course Number: EDLD 5303
- Course Title: Applying Digital Technology Portfolio
Contributions to learning and learning community.
I am giving myself a score of 93 out of 100
Crediting Group Members: Bethany Eisele, Lera Longbottom, and Rachael Lancon
Key and Supporting Contributions
Reflecting on this ePortfolio course my second of the ADL program, I can say with confidence that I worked throughout the semester to be sure I read all of the assigned materials, watched all of the accompanying videos, and followed the subsequent links. I would sometimes ask about a link deep down the links trail to find that not everyone link dived as deeply as I. It took a while to create a systematic method to go through the material to avoid getting lost. I am doing my best to adapt the skills, knowledge, and information I learn into my ePortfolio development and personal learning. I revised all assignments and reflected on being deliberate with the choice of content on my ePortfolio by taking complete ownership of my authentic experience, which helped me develop my voice.
I believe I helped build our core group by reaching out via course mail after our first class meeting. A few classmates contributed to the class conversation and just had a generally positive perspective that made me want to collaborate with them. After a few days of coordination, we formed our core learning community. Having worked in a learning community in the first course, I quickly jumped on creating a GroupMe channel for our group and set up a google drive so that we could share documents and collaborate. I made a “getting to know one another” ice breaker type document within the google drive to allow group members to share and start building relationships. We had cute short bios, including photos that allowed us to connect on a personal level. We gave information about ourselves, our ePortfolio platform, and our innovation strategy. Our core group was great about contributing to weekly group discussions and provided commentary on each other’s thoughts. As we discussed weekly content, we explored further our thoughts, our learning, and our ePortfolio development, leading to additional ideas, blog posts, and blackboard discussion posts. We each worked to give one another timely feedback on discussions and our ePortfolios. I created weekly to-do list to help our learning community keep track of course content, readings, discussion posts, group discussions, and blog suggestions from the weekly modules.
Sharing two classes with my learning cohort allowed us to get to know one another through class discussions. The last two weeks of discussion posts were the most collaborative our cohort has been. It was amazing to see the class come together to help one another with ePortfolio feedforward suggestions. The part that I think I could do better would have been to offer group collaboration sessions regularly for the whole class. I did post in the student lounge that I was interested in mentorship and mentoring opportunities. I connected with several classmates via course mail in the first few weeks of the course, but none grew into the mentoring/mentorship type collaboration I envisioned.
Learning Community Key and Supporting Contributions
I was able to take leadership responsibility in my group in various ways. First, by creating communication avenues and a place to collaborate, as previously described. Then, as the most experienced member of our group (which is quite humorous considering I had only completed one course at the time), I provided feedback on my learning communities’ innovation coursework.
I set up weekly zoom meetings for Tuesdays at 7 pm immediately following the class meeting. I contributed to all learning activities and opportunities and actively participated in the meetings and discussions. Through our group discussions, I was able to dive more deeply into the content of the weekly modules and reflect upon my learning process.
I attended a literature review information session hosted by the Mary and John Gray Library. I informed my learning community about it since I knew they were working on that component in their innovation course. I shared my thoughts, feelings, and struggles with my learning community. Their support through having a peer group discuss content, vent about frustrations, celebrate victories, and with whom to share the learning experience with has been valuable. I only wish for more; more collaboration, more discussions, and more interaction.
I still struggled to keep up with discussion posts once I had added mine to the LMS. However, I eventually figured out how to subscribe to the discussion posts and was able to respond in real-time to my classmates’ posts. I even created a discussion post in the student lounge and a blog post, hoping to help current and future classmates who struggle with this aspect. Had I figured this out earlier in the semester I may have experienced more real-time dialog about the course material.
The Advisor That Cares 