ID-2-ID Experience Blog Post:
Nick Artman & Kristin Bittner
To think that just six months ago, that we were total strangers is crazy. We’d like to thank the ID-2-ID Committee for pairing us together. We did our first “get to know each other” chat on Google Hangout back in mid-October. We quickly found that we were in very similar life stages – both married with very young children, both of a musical background, and both of similar faiths and involved in our churches. Nick was also finishing his PhD, which is something Kristin has considered, and it was great to be able to discuss this experience. Beyond the fun of getting to know a fellow colleague socially, we weren’t really sure what our expectations of the ID-2-ID experience were at the onset. We decided to check in weekly and share ideas, brainstorm, and just talk about whatever we were working on at the time. We also decided to enroll in some MOOCs to engage in some free professional development together. Maybe we would see some design ideas we could incorporate into our courses. We tried three different MOOC
platforms: Futurelearn, Canvas.net, and Coursera, with mixed results.
FutureLearn:The Power of Colour
Canvas.net: Design Thinking Hero: Creating Innovative Learning Design Solutions
Coursera:Design Thinking for Innovation by: University of Virginia
FutureLearn: The Power of Colour
Kristin:
I had previously taken a course on FutureLearn, a UK company owned by the Open University, and loved it. I’m trying to determine if I loved the platform, or the design, or the subject matter – what kept me coming back? I did not have the same experience with The Power of Colour. Was it because my workload didn’t allow me to spend as much time in his MOOC as I did my previous one? Was it a lack of intrinsic motivation? The first lesson was sort of “meh” so I found it difficult to proceed further. My work load was full of tight deadlines at the time as well, so I tended to frame time on the MOOC as “idle time” when I knew I had a million things to get done by a certain date. I don’t have this same outlook about other professional development opportunities such as conference attendance. Is that because I physically leave my desk to attend a conference? Is it the change of location and the mental shift that I am “out of the office” that allows me to engage in the learning experience differently? (Yes, I am always full of questions.)
Nick:
When we first took on this MOOC, I was excited to see how color became an important part of design. As a creative mind, this was right up my alley. However, I was very disappointed with the delivery and finished logging in about halfway through the course. The instructional content was presented in such a way that made it hard to follow. Not to mention that the videos were dull and uninteresting. Part of the problem is I am partial to high quality video, but the other is the content of the video was delivered poorly. All this to say, the MOOC had interesting content, but could have been presented in a more engaging fashion. In their defense, I had an external stressor that caused me to lose focus on the course. While taking the MOOC, I was finishing up and defending my dissertation. This definitely caused the course to take a back seat in my day-to-day life.
Canvas.net: Design Thinking Hero
Kristin:
This course was really enticing because it promised a gamified approach to learning design thinking. At first I was really excited about the gamified experience, but I found that I didn’t have enough consecutive time to devote to this way of learning. I was jumping in and out of the course between work tasks when I just had 15-30 minutes, and usually not in consecutive days. So I found myself “losing” the experience, having to remind myself again again where I was in the game, and it was difficult for me to latch on to the content. I also found it difficult when some of the pages had several paths out – that the training was not linear. Is this because I am old? Am I just used to learning in a linear style? Or is it purely because I did not have consecutive long enough blocks of time to devote to sections? I ended up abandoning the MOOC.
Nick:
Out of all the MOOCs we took, this was the one I looked forward to most. As an Instructional Designer, I’m always interested in seeing how I can package content differently and further my skill set. Also, one of my guilty pleasures is gaming, video or board games. However, after the first couple weeks, I lost interest in this course as well. I felt as if the gamification was too childish and my engagement level waned. The production level was much better in this course than in the “Power of Colour”, but the story was not engaging enough to keep me involved. Overall, it was a great MOOC, but not the right fit for me.
Coursera:
Kristin:
In a quest to see if I was just “getting out what I was putting in,” I worked diligently to engage in this MOOC. I set a reminder on my calendar and blocked off time to do the readings and watch the videos. I read every reading, even the supplemental ones, and watched all of the videos. All of them. And I just didn’t enjoy this experience. Too often, this MOOC was trying to sell me a book. I found that every time the instructor encouraged me “dig deeper” by buying her book, I felt put off. I finished the course, but did not feel satisfied.
Nick:
This is terrible to say, but I never even began this MOOC. After enrolling, I always set aside time to enter and engage in the MOOC, but external issues always seemed to get in the way. Whether it be work or personal, something came up that caused me to push this MOOC further and further away. Though, I feel that this is a huge problem with MOOCs. People sign up with good intentions, but life just gets in the way. We want to progress and experience new things, but it becomes difficult to find the time. For me, I think having an incentive to complete these MOOCS would have made a huge difference. Whether it be a certificate, professional development credits, etc., I think that having other extrinsic factors would have help motivate me to at least make the MOOC a priority.
Conclusion:
All in all, we became the statistic. Stereotypically MOOC completion rates are very low, and we felt that pressure as we worked on each MOOC. We wanted to take the MOOCs to further our professional development, to see if we could learn any new design tips and tricks, and it turns out that Penn State has us spoiled. It’s encouraging to take a course like this that is supposed to be innovative in it’s approach and see that what we are doing in our courses, is ahead of what’s acceptable. Even though our completion rate was low, it was very encouraging to know that as designers, we are on the right track. As for the ID-2-D, this was a great opportunity to share an experience among great colleagues. We found ways to collaborate at a distance while still growing as a team. If anything, we learned a bit about what not to do in our courses and became great friends along the way.