Personal Reflection: The Fourth Part Of My Transfolio Project

The fourth part of my portfolio project required the least amount of research and the greatest amount of courage. While I thoroughly enjoyed watching and participating in my colleagues teaching projects, presenting to my peers was unnerving. I am actually glad that I experienced this, because it will help me to understand my student’s point of view in the future. In this class, more than any other, I have formed relationships with my peers. I believe that part of it was due to the incredible immersion class that we had. We were able to begin to build relationships that could continue on through our discussion boards, online office hours and even outside of class. It was during this time where some of us began to rely on each other to help

Even in the creation of my asynchronous teaching plan, I found a way to create active learning activities that would engage the learner. A great deal of my research for my asynchronous teaching focused on interactive educational simulations. Aldrich (2009) spoke about educational simulation that allows participants to practice real-world skills, while receiving real-time, accurate feedback, but being low risk, as they do not affect real people. I have become so interested in the concept that I have begun to work with a friend of mine in IT who is willing to collaborate on designing an interactive web-based patient education program. I also included links to appropriate best evidence practice media and community based hospitals, health care providers and low-income assistance programs. Schlittenhart, Smart, Miller and Severtson (2011) found that the use of instructional videos was more effective than face-to-face learning for parent education purposes. This is information that could be included as a follow-up reinforcement strategy for face-to-face learners as

Trigwell (2010) in summarizing five related research studies stated “…an information transmission/teacher-focused approach to teaching is strongly and positively associated with surface and non-deep approaches to learning, and that a conceptual change/student-focused approach to teaching is positively associated with deep and non-surface approaches to learning” (as cited in Weimer, 2013, p. 33). This teacher-centered approach continues for many reasons, some of which include; faculty not wanting to relinquish complete control over the classroom and content, the fear that learner-centered teaching is more difficult, student and faculty resistance to the unknown, and the mind-set that many educators and students have regarding change and doing things as they have always been done (Weimer, 2013). Learner-centered teaching has been documented to have many benefits for both the learners and the educators. It is my plan to further my education in learner-centered teaching, as this is the kind of environment that I wish to provide for my