PRINCIPLES, THEORIES, MODELS:

Course
EDTEC 544

Artifact: Supporting Documentation... The Key to Enlisted Career Success rapid prototype

Project Description
For my EDTEC 544 semester long project, I decided to focus on beginning a project that I had been thinking of starting long before I joined the EDTEC program. In my years in the Coast Guard, I have had many enlisted men and women work for me, and have always been motivated to assist them with their individual career development. One particular issue that I encountered early on in my career was that the majority of enlisted members that I worked with did not know how to provide appropriate supporting documentation to assist their supervisors with their enlisted evaluations (performance reviews). Most enlisted members provided little or no supporting documentation, creating a situation in which the members may not receive the best review that they could. I personally at one point held a position in which fifty enlisted members worked under me. Without good supporting documentation provided, how was I to properly mark them effectively, as I could not be everywhere and notice everything that they accomplished during the six month period between their evaluations?

EDTEC Standard
For this artifact, our instructor, Dr. Frank Nguyen, walked us through the whole instructional design process, from formulating an initial project idea, to content mapping and writing objectives, and also through designing the course and creating a rapid prototype for our courses. Also during this course, I was exposed to many different instructional theories such as Andragogy, Cognitive Load, Constructivism, and Behaviorism. We worked together in teams to cover one of the instructional theories, and presented our theory to the rest of the class. By conducting these webquests, the students in the class really got a more in depth understanding of some of the popular theories in use today. Also, working closely with my instructor assisted me in choosing the appropriate theories and methods to use with my own course that I was creating.

Problems or Opportunities
I did not really run into any problems in this course, as Dr. Nguyen really did an excellent job presenting and explaining the material to the class. If fact, the information that I was learning in this course was greatly assisting me with my ED 795A class, which I was taking at the same time. I got to immediately apply the lessons that I was learning in EDTEC 544 in a real world situation, which further assisted my professional development.

My Capabilities
Being able to choose our individual project, I was able to work on something that I am quite experienced and knowledgeable with. I was able to use my many years of experience in the Coast Guard, along with the valuable theories and methods that I was learning about in class, to design the beginning of a course that I will continue to develop and hopefully implement into the Coast Guard once I am finished with my Masters program.

Lessons Learned
I learned how to take a fuzzy goal or idea and change it into a course that is tangible and measurable. Also, I learned a lot about the best ways to train people, and that there is no one theory or method that can do it all. Dr. Nguyen taught us to really look at what are the best methods and theories to use depending on the course that you are trying to build, and that no one method or theory will work best on its own.