1) How has each course contributed to your personal and professional development as an instructional designer?
Mastery: Month one helped me develop my previously limited understanding of the industry I was looking to get into. Because of this, I was able to develop a more accurate perspective of what the program (and future jobs) were going to entail as well as the types of opportunities I wanted to be looking for.
Strategies for Learner Engagement: I felt like I really flew through month two, which was a good confidence boost at the beginning of the program and put me in a position of success moving forward.
Visual and Verbal Communication: Month three showed me that my own background in web and graphics meant that I was well-prepared for this program and would do well in this field.
Corporate Training and Motivational Development: As much as I enjoyed the class, month four made it abundantly clear to me that I don't want a career in corporate training and development. I was made for academia.
Instructional Design and Evaluation: Month five was a study in perseverance for me. Writing is difficult for me, and it usually takes me substantially longer to produce writing of a quality that I am happy with that it does to produce nearly anything else. In most courses, I had to do a lot of writing, but the writing was interspersed with other design and more media-oriented project. Month five was largely all writing.
Digital Media and Learning Applications: Month six got me back into programming, which has long been one of my strengths, but one I had neglected in the midst of all my schoolwork.
Music and Audio: I have played around in GarageBand on my own for years, but I have long felt like I barely scratched the surface of what I could do with the program. During month seven, I was able to learn a lot more ab9out the 80% of the application I had never used and now feel substantially more comfortable with sound production as a result.
Filmmaking Principles: During month eight, I learned a lot about my own capabilities in times of high stress. Hurricane Irma hit in the midst of month eight, which meant a lot of traveling for me and a constantly changing work environment. Not only did this travel tire me out, but I had to reshoot a lot more footage than I would've otherwise. Because I was never in the same place, I had to reshoot the entire video for every draft in order to keep each video looking consistent.
Game Strategies and Motivation: Month nine helped me reestablish my passion for educational games and the potential that exists in the field.
LMS and Organization: Month ten showed me that in addition to games, I really enjoy working with and breaking down curriculum. This has helped guide me enormously in my job search and pursuit of continued education.
Media Asset Creation: The final project brought to my attention a lot of my strengths and weaknesses in the field. This has helped me feel more prepared moving forward and enabled me to be more conscientious of my own process.
IDT Final: Month twelve has made all the difference in how prepared I feel to enter the working world. While the rest of the program prepared me to be a part of the working world, the entry into that arena has always felt like its own hurdle, and the combination of this last month and career services has helped me to tackle it.
2) How well were you able to utilize the concepts and techniques you learned from the program (theories, systems design, interface styling, and the creation of multimedia content) as you designed, developed, and implemented your Final Project?
I think I did well in terms of utilizing everything I had learned in my final project. My biggest stumbling block for the final was that I was a little overambitious in what I could produce in terms of media in the time we were given, and I spent a lot of time trying things that didn't end up working the way I wanted them to, causing me to scrap them. In other words, design and develop went really well; implement- not so much.
3) Describe your most outstanding personal triumph in each course.
Mastery: My instructor for Mastery is one that I had previously encountered in the game design program and had not gotten on exceptionally well with. My experience and interactions with him during this course, however, we very different and a lot more positive, which I counted as a major success.
Strategies of Learner Engagement: I feel kind of silly saying this, seeing as this was only month two, but I think that the models of instructional design posters that I created are among my best works from this program. I was coming off of a year of working largely as a graphic designer, and I think that experience was evident in my work.
Visual and Verbal Communication: I decided to go above and beyond in my infographic project during month three, creating my infographic from scratch as opposed to just modifying the infographic we had been given. It took a lot of extra time and effort, but the result was an infographic that was much more consistent and accurate by way of the information that was being presented.
Corporate Training and Motivational Development: Month four gave me the push and the opportunity to finally start experimenting with Adobe AfterEffects. Although my final product for the course wasn't quite where I wanted it to be, I learned a lot about the program and got a lot more comfortable using it.
Instructional Design and Evaluation: Writing has always been (and will always be) a challenge for me, so surviving this month and the project it entailed was a personal success in and of itself.
Digital Media and Learning Applications: Month six helped me get my toes wet in respect to learning how to use AngularJS and JSON, which is something I had intended to do for a long time, but often got overwhelmed as to where to start.
Music and Audio: Month seven was another time where I made a point to go above and beyond for the project. I took my own field trip to do research for the Cracker video, and I feel like the extra effort clearly showed in the final product.
Filmmaking Principles: During filmmaking principles, I knew that if I didn't get creative, I had the potential to get bored really quickly while working on the how-to video. This is what led me to choose the glitter bomb greeting card as my subject, and I ended up having a lot of fun with it despite the number of times I had to shoot and reshoot the video.
Game Strategies and Motivation: During month nine, I had to work hard not to get caught up in the game design aspect in favor of the instructional design component, but I think I was successful, and I count that as a personal triumph.
LMS and Organization: It was during month ten that I was slowly starting to experience those first signs of burnout after going nonstop for so long. Despite this, I felt like I really upped my creative game while coming up with my assignments and assessments.
Media Asset Creation: Although I wasn't a huge fan of my final project as a whole, I was really proud of how my infographic turned out. I ended up taking a lot of what I had learned in month six and going more in-depth to create something I wasn't sure I was going to be capable of making.
IDT Final: At this point in the game, it has been really tempting to just let go and lose interest, but I've worked hard to make sure I haven't, and I count that as a triumph.