FA13 – W200 Teaching – Self Evaluation

This is my first semester of teaching W200, an undergraduate course. For me, it is not only a challenging mission that I want to accomplish, but also a great opportunity for me to improve my education profession and instructional skills. 

First, let me first evaluate my strengths and weaknesses in teaching this technology integration course. 

After my first time teaching of W200 this week, I reflected myself that classroom time management is my first priority that I need to improve for this class. Some unpredictable things can happen in class some times. Therefore, I need to learn how to solve problems (students’ questions or technical problems) as fast as I can and not delay on my instruction schedule as possible. Most importantly, students should be given enough time to do their hands-on activities and practices to process the knowledge and skills they are learning. Also, giving enough opportunities to ask questions is something I need to do more in my class. I believe that as I teach more, I would know how to keep the class rolling more.

I believe that being a good educator is not an easy job. From my own perspective, a good educator should be knowledgable about the course content with lots of authentic examples for students from different backgrounds and needs. Although I think I can be familiar with the course content, the skill that I also have to improve is to know what students in each subject area need and to give specific examples related to their subject areas or grade levels as useful and helpful feedback. Another instructional skill that I need to improve in my teaching is to ask good and inspiring questions that can trigger students to think deeper about what they are learning and why it is important to them.

Although this is my first experience teaching undergraduates and my teaching knowledge and skills are still developing, I am confident that I have passion and motivation to teach W200. I think I have enough patient with solving problems for my students and trying to use different ways to engage my students in their learning journey in my class. I am looking forward to learn from my mentor, senior instructors as well as my students.

[WEEK 1] SELF-INTRODUCTION

Hello everyone!

My name is Yin-Chan (Janet) Liao. I come from Taiwan and I am a first year residential doctoral student in IST program at IU. This is my second semester in IST program. Although lots of things are still new to me, I am getting used to the learning environment and have met so many superb people in this program. R541 is my first experience of having a course combined with residential and distance students, I look forward to meeting and interacting with not only residential students, but also distance students online.

In terms of my teaching and learning background, I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education with one-year teaching experience as a practicing teacher in Taiwan. Before coming to IU, I studied in Learning Science and Technologies Master’s program at University of Pennsylvania for one and a half years. Now I am working in Teaching Technology Lab (TTL) on the second floor of School of Education. As one of the TTL staff, my responsibilities are to assist students to better use technology tools in their learning as well as to support AIs for better technology integration in their teaching in W200.  It’s always been a fantastic journey for me experiencing different cultures and working with people from different countries with various backgrounds in the U.S. 

In my free time, I love to do outdoor activities when the weather is nice. Playing golf, tennis, and basketball are my favorite. In winter, I go to the gym a lot. In addition to doing exercise, I like to read in some local and unique coffee shops. Yet it seems like there are not many local coffee shops in Bloomington. I always enjoy observing and exploring something fun in my daily life. Also, I am always interested in experiencing something I’ve never done before.

I am really excited about sharing and learning regarding instructional design, also making R541 an interesting and valuable course together with the instructors and my colleagues.

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Week 1 – Tagxedo

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