Contribution to My Learning and the Learning Community
Self-Assessment Score: 95/100
Throughout this course, I have continued to grow as a self-directed learner while supporting my classmates' learning. I would give myself a 95 out of 100 based on my participation, collaboration, completion of course activities, willingness to revise my work, and continued reflection throughout the course. I do not believe that growth requires perfection, and one of the most important things I have learned throughout the Applied Digital Learning program is that there is always an opportunity to reflect, adjust, and improve.
My core learning community included Amber Young and Ana Magaly. Throughout the course, I participated in discussions, reviewed my classmates' work, and provided feedback and feedforward to help strengthen their innovation projects. For example, when reviewing Amber Young's innovation project involving station rotation and technology integration in correctional education, I focused my feedback on how she could establish specific indicators to determine when her pilot would be ready for expansion. When reviewing Ana Magaly’s blended learning project for early childhood literacy, I encouraged her to identify specific measures of success that would connect her evidence more clearly to her innovation's goals. Providing this type of feedback also helped me evaluate my own work more critically.
One area that worked especially well for me was my willingness to use feedback to revise and strengthen my own innovation project and course design. My project has focused on student-centered blended learning, including station rotation, student choice, digital portfolios, and purposeful technology integration. As I moved through the ADL program, my thinking evolved from simply wanting to increase student engagement to creating learning environments where students have greater ownership, voice, and responsibility for their learning.
This became especially clear during the course's usability testing portion. I asked Jaycie Fuller, Creshia Small, and Stephanie Hernandez to review my Canvas course and provide feedback on the Start Here section and the first instructional module. Their feedback helped me see that even when a course makes sense to the designer, learners may experience it differently. I used their suggestions to clarify my directions, chunk information into smaller sections, add visual cues, and create greater consistency between modules. These revisions helped make the course easier for students to navigate independently.
I also continued to engage with the readings, videos, and supporting course materials and connect those ideas to my professional practice. One concept that has become especially meaningful to me is assessment of, for, and as learning. Rather than viewing assessment only as a way to assign a grade, I have learned to see assessment as part of the learning process. Assessment for learning provides feedback and feedforward, while assessment as learning requires learners to reflect, self-assess, and make decisions about their own growth. This course reflection itself represents that process because I am evaluating my contributions, identifying strengths, and recognizing areas where I can improve.
One area where I can continue to improve is being even more intentional about documenting my revisions as they happen. I often make changes based on feedback, classroom experience, or reflection, but I could do a better job of recording what changed, why I changed it, and the impact of the revision. This would strengthen my ePortfolio by making my growth and decision-making process more visible to others.
I also recognize that collaboration is most valuable when it is ongoing rather than limited to required discussion posts. Moving forward, I want to continue reaching out to colleagues for feedback earlier in the design process instead of waiting until an assignment is nearly complete.
Overall, I believe a score of 95/100 accurately reflects my contribution to my own learning and to the learning community. I completed the required learning activities, participated in collaboration and peer feedback, revised my work based on feedback, engaged with course resources, and applied what I learned to an authentic instructional setting. More importantly, I have become more comfortable viewing learning as an iterative process in which reflection, feedback, revision, and collaboration continually shape my professional growth.
Links to My Work: