Along the way from my experience in LDT as a master’s student to my first two years of doctoral study, I have been taking advantage of various opportunities to explore the field of instructional design and educational technology. In the meantime, it is also the very much needed discovery journey to better understand myself and my future direction in academia. I’m more sure now than before that I’m a pragmatist and would apply any theories or approaches that are appropriate for the specific contexts I’m working in. Looking into the future, I would like to seek opportunities to be a professor to continue rigorous research, thus to advance understanding of the learning processes and the design of innovative learning environments, to contribute to the knowledge base of LDT, and to make an impact on education and the society.

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Research

1.  AERA 2020  Round Table session (conference canceled)

          I have been exploring different topics and areas of LDT and haven't decided on a research topic until the middle of the spring semester. As I got hands-on experience in the Q methodology course taught by Dr. Rieber and inspired by the practical instructional design work with the UNIV 1205E team (see below for more details), I decided to explore the use of Q sort activities for teaching and learning to address some practical issues in the classroom (read more in the "Research Ideas" section). To be more specific, I would like to deepen the understanding of students' perceptions of frustrations in collaborative group work, using Q methodology, which is a unique methodology specifically designed to investigate people's subjectivity. I conducted a pilot study with the students of UNIV 1205E and submitted an IRB application, which was luckily approved. I plan to prepare a conference proposal and write a manuscript for potential journal publication.

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4. Book Chapter for "Educational Media and Technology Yearbook" (October 2020)

           Because of my experiences in the Global IDD project, I started to work with our new faculty member Dr. Jill Stefaniak to upgrade and redesign the IDD online master's program. Dr. Stefaniak outlined a holistic plan for a benchmark study and SWOP analysis. I shared my experiences in the IDD courses I took and some of my ideas from the perspective of a student. After reviewing survey responses by current students and alumni, searching for up-to-date information about admission requirements, programs of study, and marketing aspects from our IDD program and comparable programs in seven in-state universities and 24 out-of-state institutions, I wrote up a preliminary analysis report on the data we collected. From the various design of instructional design programs, I had a deeper understanding of the constructivist approach to education adopted by our LDT/IDD faculty. I have also benefited much from talking with Dr. Stefaniak during this process, regarding my confusions in doctoral research. 

2. Conference of Higher Education Pedagogy (Feburary 2020)

 

3. AECT Presentation (October 2018)

           My research work with the Global IDD project was extended to my first doctoral year, as we submitted a concurrent session proposal to AECT 2018 and got a chance to present the pilot study at the conference held in Kansas City, Missouri. During the 30-minute session, Janette, Enid, and I co-presented how the flexibly accessible learning environments were enabled by innovative use of technology. Dr. Branch and Dr. Choi were there to answer questions from the perspective of instructors. Many of our UGA LDT community were among the audience to support us.

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Instructional design

       Towards the end of 2018, I applied for a temporary position as an instructional designer for the Division of Academic Enhancement, which has a partnership with the Terry College of Business and College of Education to design and develop a new asynchronous online course UNIV 1205E Introduction to Online Learning. This course was launched in Spring 2019, targeting a non-traditional college student population, introducing them to the useful tools, resources, and strategies to successful online learning. The major agenda such as the topics to be covered was set up prior to my participation in this project. However, many adjustments were made to the course to accommodate students' learning needs when we found out about the unexpectedly diverse population of students. I started off working closely with Dr. Biddle and Dr. Colvard. So far, from the mid-term course evaluation, students generally had a positive learning experience in the course. But we also have learned some lessons and thought about strategies to enhance the course in the future. 

         Although this instructional design job was meant to be only two months at first, it was extended to a semester. Satisfied with my work during the first iteration of design and implementation, Dr. Biddle invited me (informally for now) to continue to work with her for the summer semester for the second iteration and potentially the following school year as well. ​During my GA work with Dr. Stefaniak, I got to know more about digital badges and micro-credentials, and now I'm considering incorporating open badges into the course, not as extrinsic rewards but as a holistic design and assessment system. 

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Teaching

1. EDIT 2000

          I got a valuable opportunity to teach EDIT 2000 in Fall 2019 and continued to teach it as an instructor of record for three semesters now. The first year was totally face to face until the corona pandemic hit in March 2020, when we had to suspend instruction for two weeks and then transferred online for the last four weeks of the semester. For the fall semester of 2020, I taught the course in a hybrid format to allow students the highest flexibility. To minimize the risk of covid-19, we negotiated to hold class meetings every Tuesday and the students had independent work on Thursdays. The students were free to join Tuesday's class meetings in person at Aderhold Hall or remotely. 

2. UNIV 1205E 

            My major responsibilities in UNIV 1205E were to help the instructor design class activities, compile learning materials, and manage eLC. Besides, I also undertook part of the TA responsibilities, such as grading, interacting with student discussion, and resolving technique issues met by students. For some particular modules, e.g. Lesson 8 Addressing Common Frustrations of Online Learners, I was fully responsible for both the design and teaching aspects (see samples of work for the lesson plan).

3. EDIT 6190E

           I got the opportunity to work as a TA with Dr. Clinton again this spring. He kindly offered me some teaching spots to share with the IDD students about my understanding of instructional design. In March, I made a presentation titled "Design for Learning Informed by Learning theories: Cases of Foreign Language Learning Apps", where I briefly reviewed different learning theories, their implications for Second Language Acquisition, and tied them to the key design features of four foreign language learning apps (see samples of work for details). 

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Professional Development Opportunities 

1. Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) workshops

            I signed up for quite a few CTL workshops in Spring 2019 when I learned about these valuable resources from my partners in the DAE project. I think these workshops would be helpful to design effective lessons and improve my own teaching abilities. I took them as preparation to teach EDIT 2000 course in the following semesters. I listed the workshops that I have actually attended here:

January 17 – Planning, Presenting, and Publishing Research on you Teaching

February 13 – Writing, Engaging, and Critical Thinking: Using Writing to Enhance Student Learning

March 6 – Classroom Management: Balancing instructor Authority and Student Agency 

2. Writing Center workshops

           Being an international student, anything related to language is a weakness to me. This is especially true with writing. I'm not ready for the one-on-one consultation offered by the writing center because I haven't written anything serious yet. In the spring semester of 2019,  I attended their workshops starting from the basics:

February 6 – Writing Basics: Grammar & Punctuation

February 20 – Writing for Clarity

February 27 – Writing the Literature Review: Getting Started

March 6 – Writing the Literature Review: Finding and Organizing Sources

3. JoLLE pre-conference workshops 

          The JoLLE pre-conference workshops (February 5th, 2019 at UGA) were recommended by a classmate in the Design-Based Research (DBR) course, because there was a DBR workshop held by Dr. Reinking, one of the co-authors of the textbook we were using. He introduced many useful recourses such as the listserv and dropbox shared by the DBR community of more than 200 researchers. In addition, I also participated in a few others, such as the qualitative interview workshop, which was very enjoyable and insightful to me.

4.  UGA online teaching workshop series 

           During the summer of 2020, when all instruction was transitioned online due to the pandemic, the Office of Online Learning at UGA offered a series of online workshops for faculty to jumpstart their online courses. I registered a few of these workshops and learned some practical tips and tricks from them. Although I'm not totally new to online teaching and learning, I even have designed an online course before this, I still took this advantage to learn more because I know this year would not be a normal year of online teaching and learning. 

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