Fall Semester, 2014

Sorry it has been so long since I posted, things have been crazy around here!

My first semester in the MSIDT program was Fall of 2014, and like the other four semesters, it lasted for 16 weeks. Six units are taken at a time, so there were two courses: IDT 505: Foundations of Instructional Design and Web Authoring Environments and IDT 510, Research Practices in Instructional Design and Technology.

As I have said before, it has been a long time since I had been an undergraduate, so there were a lot of things to get used to. I figured out early on that the syllabus is the bible for each course (I never looked at them in college the first time), and I was constantly going back to look at the schedules and the descriptions of the assignments. I made it a point to cross-reference it with the assignments the instructors gave us each week, so that nothing slipped through the cracks. I kept a separate planner (an old-school paper one) just for school assignments, which was (and still is) a big help.

I had forgotten how to read in a scholarly way, so it took quite awhile to get up to speed on streamlining the amount of time I was spending reading, and trying to make notes only on what was really important. I will be providing overviews of the books in future blog posts.

I enjoyed the web forums, and made sure that I posted on a daily basis, paying attention to threads that had few or no posts, so that everybody had a chance to get feedback on the work they presented. I was thankful that I decided to get a new computer (a Macbook Pro), as it was more robust than my old PC, and was able to run authoring software with no problems.

How did it all turn out? Pretty darned well! I put in a lot of hours (almost 30 per week), but I learned a lot and got grades I was happy with.

Stay tuned to the blog –- I will be writing about both of the classes as well as the texts we used in them.

Mahalo!

Rex