After a short time shadowing my mentor, Joni Tornwall, the other day I was energized by all the activity! Joni is the Manager of Instructional Services for the College of Nursing, and she is a woman on the go. Every hallway we passed and everywhere we went people were stopping to ask her various technical, project or policy questions. Scheduled was a meeting with one instructor to discuss the use of Top Hat but we also stopped at another instructor’s office to give some assistance with Google Apps. The variety, activity level, number of people helped and Joni’s attitude mirrors what a great day at work looks like to me! 

I was referred to Joni by a former professor. (Thank you Dr. Wanstreet!) Just two weeks ago, Joni and I met remotely. It was an encouraging and productive discussion about what I was looking for in an internship and what projects she could use help with. It felt like a match so I began working on the internship proposal for my school. We emailed back and forth a couple of times to be sure we had a workable contract, then Joni began to facilitate getting me setup with an email account, Carmen login, etc. She also sent me information regarding the projects I’d be involved with. 

Although this may change over time, here are our estimates for the amount of time on various activities with an average of 10 hours/week:

• 7-8 hours/week: Storyline based project with a professor helping to develop a case studies based learning program using videos and branching logic.
• 1-1.5 hours/week: The ODEE course development project that is developing two new online degree programs for the College of Nursing. Most likely just shadowing Joni to see process in action. Exposure to PIEmatrix and QualityMatters.
• 1 hour: May or may not assist with a Top Hat project

I’ll also be journaling my experiences and complete a final reflection paper. Since I do not have experience with Storyline, I have purchased (on-sale) a course from Udemy to help me pick up skills quickly.

In December, I will be the first graduate from the Master’s of Professional Studies in Instructional Design from Fort Hays State University’s virtual graduate school. I have many years of experience providing training in formal and informal settings but my formal instructional design experience has been primarily through my studies. This internship will be a wonderful chance to see if I’m able to put all that I’ve learned into practice in a real-world situation. My only concerns are that there will be more I want to do than I have time to do or that I don’t add value like I hope to. But, I’ll certainly give it my best.

So, here we go!