Reflections

**Reflections** Reflection is an active process of witnessing one’s own experience in order to take a closer look at it, sometimes to direct attention to it so as to improve. This can be done in the midst of an activity or as an activity in itself. The key to reflection is learning how to take a perspective on one’s own actions and experience. By developing the ability to explore and be curious about our own experience and actions, we suddenly open up the possibilities of purposeful learning derived not only from books and experts, but also from our own work and our lives.

The purpose of reflection in this online design therefore was to allow the possibility of learning through experience, whether that was the experience of a meeting, a project, a disaster, a success, a relationship, or any other internal or external event, before, during or after it has occurred as I developed and implemented an online design. I could reflect very frequently on my work to bring high level awareness to my thoughts and actions for a better design.

**What I appreciate to have done so Well.** This module as a whole and this assignment in particular may come out as the one I have really given my best. I shall largely attribute it to the articulation and focus I got during the face to face and particularly the one on one discussion with Cheryl on how to develop potential ideas for online learning activity presentations. I have used the draft (see figure below) to come out with the whole e-portfolio and OLA.

**Draft Paper Cheryl used in the one - on - one discussion with me on day five (09/09/2011)**

My personal experience is that there is a correlation between the presentations we make and the final assignment. The clearer and focused one is during the presentation the higher the chances of performing highly in the final assignment and vice verser. I wish individual presentations on day six attract marks, then students shall always add in a little effort to deliver and get a lot of feedback to help in the final task

Secondly, using Dabbagh & Ritland's (2005) model for designing learning materials inculcates in you 'the designer' the patience and discipline not to jump into technologies prematurely. During my Exploration phase, I investigated the context in which I was designing the online activity, teachers' characteristics, learners' characteristics, The theory I was to use and Learning model that best fits the theory of which altogether helped me to rethink my ideas and beliefs I had come with from UCT. One notable example to share was my assumption that most university teaching staff had personal computers especially laptops which was completely wrong. The exploration revealed to me that only teaching staff who had recently completed Phd's or Masters or were undertaking them had personal computers. It was surprising that the Professors in the department were very ignorant and had low confidence using computers and also almost 80% of the teaching staff were not comfortable using MS office 2007 and MS office 2010 but very competent using MS office 2003. I also had to change my technology choice which was originally to use a Learning Management System (LMS) because the University had no LMS, even the website for distance education was not WEB 2.0 which promotes interaction but a static information giving website. Had I rushed into technologies first, i was bound for disaster in my online design.

The matrix for technological affordances (See Enactment) helped me to isolate which technology supports my Online Learning Activity. I had an individual debate between the wiki and Google Docs having ruled out the possibility of a LMS. The debate was never ending until the matrix helped me to zero to one when I identify that privacy of students marks was not possible in a wiki but I could use a Google Spreed sheet ([|http://bit.ly/osllxb]) accessed only by the internal and external examiners to award grades hence resolved to use Google Docs over Wiki spaces.

My other reflection is that this time around, I left UCT when I knew what I'm expected of. Thanks to the one -on- one sessions I had with Dr Cheryl. My presentation in the 'Student seminar' was also focused thus when I got back home, I was only looking at how to expand my ideas, make them scholarly and implement the project and has influenced a lot in my design.

**What I did not do so well** The content part is not very convincing to me due to the fact that my background is not in English/Literature or Language specialty. The question the colleague gave the students seemed O.K, but I had no input since I had never read the book 'Things fall Apart' or any literature book to completion neither did I get time to read the books. Thus my interaction or comments on the OLA is not there at all. Maybe when you design a learning activity in your subject specialty gives you a better insight to evaluate even the content details put forward other than being like 'a male tailor designing female dresses'.

But in general I feel I have pulled my weight

**End of the e-portfolio **

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