Milestone #4: Final Product and Presentation to Client

Image Source: AnnaRoseLeach

Prerecording of presentation  

On November 21, 2017 at 11:15 AM EST I will be presenting to my client, Dr. Cindy Zellefrow, via Carmen Connect.  To avoid any technological issues, I have prerecorded the presentation.  If there are issues on the day of the presentation, we will play the video below and I will be connected via phone.


Final Presentation to the Client

The final presentation slide deck is available here: Leach_Practicum Presentation to Client

The presentation was successfully given on November 21, 2017 from 11:30 AM – 12:00 PM EST; Dr. Cindy Zellefrow and Dr. Ana-Paula Correia were in attendance.  Here are a couple photos, courtesy of Dr. Ana-Paula Correia:

The presentation went well.  We were unable to record the session due to some technical difficulties and in order to respect the attendees time, I went on with the presentation without recording it.  Both attendees received the information well and provided valuable feedback.  During the presentation, I mentioned that for the survey, I wish I would have prompted the participants to explain more about why they selected neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with the statement “the module map is engaging”.  Dr. Zellefrow said that she would encourage me to ask all participants why, not just those that answered negatively.  This is a concept that Dr. Zellefrow encourages in her lectures as well.  When helping me with the PICOT question, she encouraged me to chose verbiage that was neutral instead of negative or positive.  Dr. Correia mentioned that the concept of engagement is difficult to measure and varies from person to person.  Given that the population of participants is from around the world, it would have been a good idea to define engagement before asking participants to measure their perception of it.

At the end of the presentation, I provide Dr. Zellefrow with the simple changes I would be making to the Module Map.  I will be:

  1. Removing the first objective because it is too wordy and pertains more to Module 1 than Module 2
  2. Editing the video to eliminate the first objective
  3. Removing all signs of the survey from the module map

I told Dr. Zellefrow that the changes would be completed no later than end of business on Friday November 24, 2017 and that I would email here when they were complete.  I told her that I wanted her to have ample time to get adjustments to other modules in before the start of the next session in January 2018.

I also provided suggestions on incorporating a similar layout into the other 5 modules that are part of the EBP MOOC.  Those were:

  1. Tie lecture verbiage to the lectures
  2. Include a simple video or voice over
  3. Order the information on the module map in the same order as the module itself
  4. Include differences in font size or bolding or underlining to break up the information and prevent the eye from scanning instead of reading

The suggestions were well received.

 


I will be sending a hand written thank you note on Friday, November 24, 2017.  I think that the personal touch of a hand written thank you is very valuable in a technology soaked society.  It shows personally appreciation for her time and wisdom.  Dr. Zellefrow was an excellent client and adviser during the practicum.  I would gladly work with her again and would recommend her for future collaboration with the MLT program.


Reflection:

The practicum experience was invaluable.  It brought to light my strengths and areas for improvement.  It provided me with a perspective.  Finally, it gave me further information for future research and career endeavors.  Dr. Zellefrow was a wonderful client.  She was willing to teach and lead simultaneously and we worked well together.  She provided me with expectations and allowed me the autonomy that allowed me to be creative and stretch my wings.

I found that my strengths are in project planning and time management.  Due to my prior career, I felt most comfortable in this arena.  I planned out the schedule along with Dr. Zellefrow and my own wickedly conflicting schedules; somehow we made it work around her trip to China and Arizona and my trip to Florida for a conference and vacation at Disney World!  It was refreshing to work with a planner-like-minded person such as Dr. Zellefrow.  My second strength was with the data analysis.  I had little trouble turning the survey results into a story to tell.  However, this also brought to light some weaknesses.

My survey construction abilities are weak and need some attention.  I found myself constantly concerned with the wording of the sentences.  Dr. Zellefrow was very clear in explaining that the population for the MOOC consisted of people around the world and that it was very important that the wording be clear.  My lack in confidence in survey construction and concern about interpretation made the survey construction difficult.  I will need to work on and research techniques for improvement.  My second weakness was in the presentation itself.  I felt prepared and rehearsed over and over.  I even prerecorded the session, but yet, moments before the presentation I just… choked!  Now when the camera started rolling, my nerved strengthened, but again in the middle, I began to feel nervous.  This seems silly in hindsight, but I will give myself credit, I pulled it together, reminded myself that I was read and prepared and moved forward.  I will also say that I am much better than I used to be, but I would like to have more confidence in my abilities; especially when I am prepared and having a presentation with people that I have worked with for 2 semesters!

Another component of this experience that I hadn’t considered was the perspective of an asynchronous course; not just a Massive Open Online Course, but asynchronous.  There are many challenges to consider.  The time in between instruction and activity.  The discussion boards don’t really seem to work.  People can access the material anywhere at anytime.  One thing that kept rining in my mind was how do you keep the Community of Inquiry: Teacher Presence going.  I think the voice over and video s help, but if the teacher isn’t readily reviewing the discussion or responding to emails, it may feel disjointed.  Of course, the student may know that going in also!

A second perspective was that of the Course Analytics component of Canvas.  I assumed all this time that instructors using Canvas had a plethora of information at their fingertips.  Information as to what module the student start and when they finished.  If they completed the video or stopped half way.  But this isn’t the case; or at least it wasn’t for this particularly MOOC set up.  I really wanted to know how many people started at Module 1 and got through it to Module 2, 3, 4, and so on.  But the only data available was at the aggregate.  It showed who was a participant and how many times they viewed the pages.  I could certainly make many assumptions about these data points, but nothing concrete could be extrapolated.  Which leads me to some future endeavors.  I have read about xAPI and am thoroughly intrigued.  I want to see what can be attached and create standards so that we learning designers have easily accessible data.  We should be making data driven decision about our instruction but without proper data how can we.  I wonder if that is why I have been so lucky to get into the MLT program.  Maybe this is my future…