Tech Notes

Pursue professional learning that deepens expertise in the ISTE Standards in order to serve as a model for educators and leaders.

Prior to joining the DEL program, I knew nothing of the ISTE Standards for Coaches. What I have found in this program, while exploring the standards in further detail, is an articulation of practices and “life-lessons” that I had developed over my work experience, but never had time to think about until now.

In many disciplines, it’s important to stay on top of your craft.  Nurses take continuing education credits to stay on top of their craft.  I think in the same way, as an administrator, it was and continues to be important that I stay up to date on my craft.  Sometimes this work has taken place in formal spaces that allow me to think and reflect on current practices and why I do what I do, like the Digital Education Leadership M.Ed. program, the Learning Labs I took this past summer from Educause, called How to Create and Teach Engaging, Equitable, and Inclusive Online Classes and Meaningful Online Learning, or the course I took through ColumbiaX called Inclusive Teaching: Supporting All Students in the College Classroom.

Other times, I need to learn skills in order to do my job, so when I first started working as the Associate Director in ETM, I took a Blended Learning Workshop through Educause as well as Applying the Quality Matters Rubric, as well as any online training possible for the technology my department supported – things like Canvas (Learning Management System), PollEverywhere, TurnItIn, Panopto, and others.  While I may have known or could “spelunk” my way through a tool, as the Associate Director, I was now the campus expert and I needed to learn a lot in order to step into the role I was assigned.

While I had all these resources, I also want to say that there’s a lot of space for informal learning (on the job training) to improve myself.  This came through watching faculty teach, picking my colleagues brain when there was something I didn’t understand, showing up to forums or faculty gatherings to hear what’s going on, asking about faculty perspectives when they came to the office for help, or even culling tickets to find out what kinds of issues and questions did faculty have.  

I strongly believe that it’s both the formal and informal learning spaces that are critical for administrators like myself to pay attention to and that I wouldn’t be able to do my job as well as I could, if I didn’t jump on the opportunities that presented themselves and if I hadn’t adopted such an open mindset when learning how to do my job.

In addition to the work above to improve myself, I think as a coach and administrator, that it’s also important to put on professional development opportunities that other educators or students can also learn from and for me this came in interesting ways when merging learning practices with business practices, for ideas like Creating a Knowledge Base in your Classroom or encouraging all parties in a team or classroom to Create Accessible Content because Assistive Technology empowers all learners.

Not only do I want to improve myself, but I want to model good practices and help others improve their own practices so instructors and other colleagues can make changes and create more student-centric learning opportunities for all learners.

Actively participate in professional learning networks to enhance coaching practice and keep current with emerging technology and innovations in pedagogy and the learning sciences.

I will be honest; this is an area that I struggled with and continue to struggle with.  I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to networking (I was a business major as an undergraduate student and networking was emphasized a lot) and meeting other professionals and when I stepped into the Associate Director of ETM position, I had a strong case of Impostor Syndrome and I’m not sure I’ve completely gotten rid of it.  Even before I switched positions, I felt like there were so many other qualified people who were doing or exploring interesting EdTech topics and that I was behind.  While I made connections with faculty and staff at other institutions, attended conferences and met many people, internally for me, it felt like a battle for me to see what I could add to the conversation and see that my own experiences were worth contributing.  Here were people who had doctoral degrees and master’s degrees and I had 10+ years of experience working in IT, an interest in teaching and somehow became an Associate Director. You can probably tell that it’s still an internal battle as I share my thoughts now.

So, what do I do with this indicator and my own anxieties?  First, I think it’s important to find a group of people that you trust, for me, it was my colleagues in ETM.  My supervisor and the instructional designers I worked with, never made me feel stupid and always made time when I had questions that I needed to get another perspective on.  It really helped to have colleagues who had a literal and figurative open door for me.  Second is if you can attend professional development with those trusted colleagues. I’m so glad I got to attend InstructureCon three times with my colleagues. That social and emotional connection just made it so much easier to be in an unfamiliar place with hundreds of other people who for me, all felt like they knew what was going on. I’d say attending with my supervisor was a highlight for me because we got to know each other more and I got to bounce all sorts of things off their head in real time while I was learning.  I don’t have a third point for this paragraph – my supervisor put together this great list of people he thought I should follow on Twitter, so my twitter following list got a little longer and I tweeted a bit more than before, but I still have reservations when it comes to dialoguing with strangers online.  Maybe one day, I’ll overcome these reservations.  For now, I’ll continue to be that one lurker who reads posts but doesn’t post back.

Establish shared goals with educators, reflect on successes and continually improve coaching and teaching practice.

I think as a coach and as an administrator, when working with others, that it’s important to be on the same page. This isn’t just communicating well about what you are doing, but sharing the same goals and working together to accomplish them.  If each person is doing their own thing and has their own agenda, it’s difficult to be successful and in some cases completely derail the project.

In Seeing my Goals through to the Finish Line, I explored which strategies were most effective in ensuring goals could be met and the strategies I felt were most effective were setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound), focusing on things you can control, having check-in dates and deadlines, facilitate communication by developing trust and cooperation among team members, foster emotional intelligence and empathy across all parties, and develop a process to review.

I think these strategies hold true even after changing positions.  Since stepping into my role, I’ve already participated on a major department project and have another on the way.  Even though I joined the team and project part of the way through, I think the reason I was able to have such a smooth transition was because the people and meetings were already structured in a way where many of the strategies I listed above were already in place.  

Looking back and what I wrote, I do think there are a few areas where I could improve, such as creating more explicit goals using the SMART Goal framework and using my check-in times to identify good work that’s already happening and being more encouraging towards those I am working with.  Sometimes, I get caught up in the pace of things and jump straight into meetings too, instead of taking time to see how everyone is doing and making sure that we’ve heard from everyone on the project.

In addition to setting good goals and expectations, I think it’s also important to have a good understanding of your purpose and mission.  I was able to explore this more when I created my Digital Learning Mission Statement but also in many opportunities when I needed to explain how ETM worked with other areas on campus to support faculty and adjuncts on campus.  It gave me a good understanding of ETM’s Mission Statement and actually one of the first assignments I turned in for the DEL program was in EDTC6100 – the DEL Orientation course, where each of made a mindmap, that connected SPU’s mission statement to the School of Education’s Mission Statement.  Upon completion of that assignment, we also wrote a reflection. These activities allowed me to think about things from the perspective of a past and present student at SPU, alumni, and employee and allowed me to think be more open and intentional when it comes to metacognition activities like reflection.