Professional Development

Blackboard Certification

I have learnt a lot since I started teaching in 2020. In my role as an EdTech I have been involved in two Blackboard certification courses. 

The first of these courses was focused on the fundamentals of digital teaching and learning. In this course, I learnt about learning theories and their implications for contemporary teaching & learning practices. I also learnt about the learning principles that underpin digital teaching and learning. I learnt about what makes for effective digital teaching and what it means to be a successful digital teacher. I learnt how to create effective learning content and explored tools that one can use to create dynamic learning content, as well as synchronous and asynchronous collaborative learning tools. This course provided me with an incredible introduction to the world of online teaching & learning and made a valuable contribution to my professional development as a lecturer. 

In 2021, I did the second course in the Blackboard certification series. This course is focused on designing digital teaching and learning. In this course, I learnt about ways in which to create meaningful discussion forums and how to develop effective questions using Bloom's Taxonomy. I learnt about best practices for creating online tests and assignments, and how to create effective digital rubrics. I picked up some very interesting tips on how to integrate various communication tools to keep learners motivated and engaged. I also learnt some strategies for facilitating group work activities on the LMS and ways in which to prepare learners for group work and encourage participation. This course was extremely informative and relevant to my teaching practice and role as an EdTech. Therefore, it definitely contributed to my professional development, not only as a lecturer but also as an Educational Technologist assisting other lecturers.  

Learning from my successes and failures

A lot of my professional development has happened in the classroom. I have learnt so much over the past two years & I have grown in confidence hugely. 

There definitely is still a lot of room for improvement and growth. I learnt so much from teaching ICTC6212 last year and I plan on doing a lot of things differently this year. I think that I overwhelmed my students with too much information and too many resources. The idea that simple is always better was reinforced in a big way. What I thought was helpful was actually counter productive. Things that were simple became complicated and many students were very overwhelmed. I uploaded too many resources onto VCLearn. Furthermore, my ICE Tasks were also too conflated. There were multiple "mini tasks" in one ICE Task so instead of students doing one task properly, they did several tasks poorly. This will be discussed further in my reflective analysis, but my point is that I am definitely learning and developing through my experiences (both my successful and unsuccessful experiences).

Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education

This year I will begin a postgrad diploma in Higher Education through VC online center. I have been wanting to study further but in the field of education not commerce. I wanted to pursue a qualification that aligns with my role at VC as the Educational Technologist and as a lecturer. I feel that the term "lifelong learner" is thrown around very often these days, but I do feel that it's important to continually evolve and develop. Through this qualification, I hope to gain a deeper understanding of the teaching & learning process in the context of higher education, as well as gain deeper insight into education theory and its application. I also hope to strengthen my ability to promote student learning in my own discipline.