Reflection

While I was studying English and secondary education in my undergraduate work, I was also working as a preschool teacher at a child care center. This job showed me that my true passion is working on projects that improve the lives of children, and I’ve tried to work on projects that focus on this in one way or another since graduating from school. My work with the child care center made me realize that early childhood educators do so much more than change dirty diapers and wipe noses. They provide children a loving, safe place to learn and begin to experience life. And if staff are well trained, early childhood programs can be the gateway to a successful experience in elementary school and throughout life.

However, my experiences at the child care center also helped me realize that many early childhood professionals are not well trained, if trained at all. I know—I was a member of the untrained group. I felt the frustration of a person who loves their job and the people and children in their care, but does not have the necessary tools and resources to perform their job to the best of their ability. I know now that with better training I could have given the children in my care a better early childhood experience. However, most early childhood professionals do not have the resources—either in time, money, or transportation—to further their education. Therefore, they are often left feeling frustrated in their work, which in turn leads to the high degree of staff turnover in early childhood programs and decreases the quality of the care children receive.

Professional Goal:
High Quality Training for People Working To Impove the Lives of Children

My professional goal is to develop resources and training materials for professionals working to improve the lives of children in one way or another. I believe instructional technology and distance education has the potential to allow all people, regardless of their geographic location, to have access to high quality training and education. As I mentioned before, time, money, and transportation are some of the barriers to education. I feel that instructional technology holds the key to braking down these barriers.

Beliefs and Values: Why Instructional Design?

Though I believe that training is an important part of any organization, I do not believe that ANY training will do. We have all been in “those” classes, where it was clear that the teacher/trainer was very knowledgeable about the topic, but s/he just did not convey the ideas effectively. This can be the result of many different issues, but they can all be summed up in a lack of good instructional design.

All training must begin with the learner—what they know, what they need, what they feel they need, and their beliefs. Human beings learn through their experiences— the things they do and the stories they tell. We learn by doing. This impacts the design of information, activities, and assessments, all of which should be designed to increase transfer of learning.

Studying Instructional Design and Adult Learning at University of Colorado at Denver has allowed me to build on my experience with education, editing, and multimedia design and lead me to my ultimate goal of developing high quality, accessible, user-appropriate multimedia training programs for people working to improve the lives of children.