Welp, here we are. Half way (let's be real, more than half way) through summer. That means I haven't kept up with my blog. I broke my new year's resolution. I had such big plans and expectations for what I wanted to do... but here I am, back at the blog, again.
First, let's explain a bit on what happened. My last blog post was the end of March. That's four months ago. Four months of no blog does not mean four months of no professional development or four months of not learning. It means four months of focused attention elsewhere. Around the time of my last post, I became part of a research group as part of one of my classes. Our class was looking at instructional design theory. Was it a theory? What is it? Does it exist? Long story short - the class really brought up some hard internal questions I was faced with. We decided to write up an auto-ethnography of our fears. Should be pretty easy right? We are all on the same page and we know what we are struggling with - wrong. As it turns out this project led to a lot of work. A lot of internal reflection and a lot of extra time dedicated to our cause - why students struggle with theory.
Second, as part of another research group, we started conducting interviews. Guess what happens when you interview someone as part of research? You need to transcribe those interviews. If anyone has transcribed before, you know it can be very tedious. After transcription means coding. So, now - I'm coding for a class project. I'm coding for a research team project. A lot of my spare time has been dedicated into focused attention at the research topics at hand.
Third, I get an opportunity I can't pass up. It means working with my ID2ID partner beyond the time frame of our program. It's a project I'm really passionate about and I really enjoy having and building a relationship with another instructional designer across the country. Without releasing too much information, this project started to take up a bulk of my time as well (more on that once it wraps up).
By now, the spring semester is over! Yay! I can get back to my new year's resolutions and go back to blogging each week and learning new technology tools every month. Wrong. I am teaching a course online. While everyone assumes teaching online is easy, it isn't. For me, I really try to get to know my learners. This doesn't happen overnight. This takes time and dedication to personalize feedback, give personalized discussion posts, reach out, guide your learners. By the time I start to feel comfortable with my students, it's time for me to pick up my summer quantitative statistics course. If you know me, you know statistics and Holly do not mix.
Oh, and let's add on a total reorganization within the University I work for. I now have a brand new supervisor, new co-workers, new meetings on my schedule, a new office... the list goes on and on...
As of July 25th, I am now doing the following:
Full time IDer (my full time job)
Taking a stats course
Doing a research project with my class
Doing a research project in my research team
Getting used to a new reorg'd position
Doing a side project
Participate in a writing group
Playing volleyball and softball
While these may look like excuses for not keeping up on my blog, I see a list of great experiences. Experiences that will (and are) helping me grow as an instructional designer, a researcher, a co-worker, a teammate, and more. What I'm trying to get at is I won't beat myself up for not meeting my resolutions or my goals for this year. I just found another way to make experiences and learn new things. You know what the best part is? I now have so much content and ideas that I'm just so excited to share with you. Here's to looking ahead!