Communication, Coordination, and Cooperation-the big three of collaboration. Working within a learning community has big challenges and great benefits. In a program designed specifically to exploit those benefits, it has been challenging since I am taking classes one at a time instead of two at a time. I scramble to get a new group almost every semester. Most of the students in this program have been moving through in a group and have stayed in that group to collaborate outside of class. They have built a core of trusted educators that they rely on. I have been fortunate to share my experience with Tosha for a couple of different semesters and I have been grateful when our classes have crossed over. Although each class has a very generous group on TEAMS that is willing to add you, I am still on the outside of the circle of a very established group. Having said that, I will say that I still feel that I have contributed to our learning in that pairing with Tosha. We have shared all assignments for feedback/feedforward.
I have watched all the class recordings (multiple times) since my teaching schedule goes into the evening and I am not able to attend the synchronous sessions. I have watched and read all the course readings, videos, and supporting resources. I have posted on time for every discussion board on time although I do feel that my breadth and depth of response posts have not been nearly the quality of my peers. I often feel like I have imposter syndrome in this program even though I am doing my due diligence in preparing, reading, and reviewing. I believe this is due to not only all the very well-read high quality educators in this group but also because of the very specific subject that I teach. My journey to education was from my profession as a radiographer, not the traditional route of educators. I do feel like a great teacher but I certainly have learned in this program that I have miles to go even after 20 years. I will credit the quality of my cohort and the instructors in this program for the immense amount of progress I have made in the way I have transformed my teaching and understanding. It has been a joyful process and long overdue.
I fully believe that collaboration is the best and greatest way to learn, adjust, and understand. I am fortunate to be in a program that collaboration is in every part of what we do. Very similar to having a K-12 grade level team, the radiography faculty work for the greater good of the program. They have also played a role in refining my work and redirecting me when necessary.
Finally, having met all the key contributing factors but falling short on one of the the supporting factors, I would rank my work in my learning community as 85/100. The decrease in score based on my breadth and depth of responses on the discussion board and also because I probably need more than 2 in my group. I look to improve both of those areas next semester.
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