Immersion, Spring Semester -- Weeks 13 & 14

Me as T/TAC staff persona Marlena Driver

Final Thoughts

Can this really be my final blog entry for the Immersion program? I can't believe how much the team accomplished in a little over 9 months and how much I have learned. We had our final presentation for the client Monday night. In attendance were GMU administrators, Immersion alums, and local ID professionals. The client and T/TAC staff at the presentation were impressed with our final result. I presented on the results of our usability testing of the Virtual Collaboration Center prototype. I also provided a demonstration of the current iteration of the prototype and gave a persona "walk-through" of the Training Collaboratory.

Looking back, I can't believe how much I have been exposed to during my experience in Immersion. Camtasia, wikis, blogs, Facebook, etc. All this exposure to Web 2.0 has even impacted my leisure time activities. Instead of taking a break by plopping down in front of the TV for 15 minutes, I play around in Facebook. I am willing to try emerging technologies whereas before I would have preferred to lurk. Heck, I even have a virtual resume and portfolio. I now have friends I never met face-to-face, and the number of my virtual friends keeps growing.

Above all, I had some things confirmed - I am a process person at heart and Instructional Design is all about process. When I first started grad school 1 1/2 years ago, I was completely scared not knowing where this would take me, but I am feeling confident about my career prospects for the first time in years. I have also realized that I need to keep my mental muscles fit by exercising them regularly through education. Does that mean a Ph.D. is in order? Stay tuned ...

Immersion, Spring Semester -- Week 1

... And we're off?

So the new semester began on Tuesday. The iTeam met and we processed the results of our Fall Semester work. We identified our new team roles (which will actually rotate this semester) and refined the responsibilities of each. As of this week, I will not be the Project Coordinator. Yippee! My assigned role is Scribe. While Scribe is not the most exciting role to undertake in this process, I welcome the change with open arms.

After meeting with our Immersion advisor, it appears that our client not only did not participate in our end of semester presentation, he probably didn't even view the presentation since then. So at this point, who knows what his feedback will be. We did make our intentions clear to our advisor -- we actually want to do some instructional design this semester, and not get bogged down in crafting some scheduling form for the video conferencing resources available to the T/TAC audience.

Our advisor also reviewed the syllabus for this semester. Included in our deliverables is a collaborative paper that focuses on design research. Considering that we didn't discuss design research very much last semester, this task seems a bit daunting to say the least. What is design research? Good question. That is something our team is asking as well -- but I did find a resource that was a little helpful to provide some sort of a context as we ponder this question.

Immersion -- Week 3

Define ... Collaboration ...

In my Advanced Instructional Design class, we had a discussion related to the Merrill/Jonassen "Reclaiming Instructional Design" debate. In his position, Merrill claims that "groups don't learn, individual's learn". However, Jonassen feels that people "collaborate to construct meaning". But how does one define collaboration? Is it the act of interacting with another person, or is it the mere interaction with objects in your environment? Gibson's Affordance Theory suggests that how a person perceives and considers possible action with their environment influences knowledge building. Is a mother telling a child, "Do not touch the stove, it is hot," signify collaboration, but the act of the childing touching the stove to discover that it is hot an individual experience; or is the mere act of touching the stove a form of collaboration? I feel that your interaction with the environment around you impacts knowledge acquisition. As I was hunting around for some additional information on collaboration, I came across this interesting blog post that suggests that for some collaboration, especially in the corporate setting, is a form of social control. Hmmm ... I'm not sure how the constructivists would react to that statement. What do you think?