Wrap-up and conclusions for Assignment 5

Here I would like to share my final reflections as a conclusion to Assignment 5, the original reason why I opened this blog.  However, I intend to keep adding posts in the future, in order to enhance my learning experience in the form of a reflective diary and to contribute to others' learning progress if possible.

Due to the nature of this course, EDD802, and its disperse design, my learning experience in terms of sharing materials, reading my "cohortees"' posts and exchanging points of view has been limited. There have been few discussions in the forums, and the readings and papers to be written as assignments kept my attention elsewhere and my nose to the books.  In that sense, I think we as a cohort had few chances for real exchange and dialogue during this course. Had it been otherwise, I would have felt motivated to engage more and contribute to the general discussion.  This might sound like an excuse, but the reduced importance of forums, peer exchange, and the corresponding credit led to this apparent indifference and scarce participation.

However, I think that reflecting on one's interests as framed by research paradigms and our worldviews or Weltanschauung (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) has helped me greatly to zero in on the topics, questions, methods, instruments, and other issues I would like to explore and address in my future dissertation.  Many elements are only starting to take shape, but I find the experience partially satisfactory since I have now more tools and a clearer perspective on the task and challenges ahead, although I would have loved to have more chance of probing into the theory related to different research methods and instruments (something I will dedicate my time to during summer break).

Thus, despite asynchronous conversations with my cohortees have been few within the platform and course environment, turning this experience into a mainly student-content interaction with some instances of student-instructor or student-student exchanges, I have been able to enjoy important moments.  Most of our communication took part via Facebook, Telegram, Marco Polo, or Hangouts, and the Moodle platform was used mainly for posting links to presentations, reading reminders related to the course, or uploading my assignments.

For example, regarding my contributions, I think that the one I made on this blog, "Using Zotero for Managing Bibliography" was one of the most useful since I found Zotero to be a wonderful tool (more on this below), to the point that I shared it here and also on my blog in Spanish. As things were, I received Lisa's words of grattitude for posting the link for download, and two video tutorials (in English and Spanish) that I thought to be the clearest and easiest to follow.  Helping my cohortees and students is always very fulfilling.

In addition to this feedback, I find that Lisa's comment on my post in this blog, "Critical Race Theory: a Tale of Two Colours" was one of the most insightful opportunities to receive feedback from a fellow teacher who has been working and teaching about culture for quite a few years.  In fact, we tend to take many elements about our identity for granted, and race is one of them.  Having the chance of sharing my perspectives on this and then reading Lisa's reactions has provided me with a validation regarding the subjectivity of the different narratives and counter-narratives that shape our daily lives.

Finally, I found that I didn't really have the chance or interest to analyze The Landing, although I already uploaded my Assignment 1 there. Most probably I will have a better look at it in the coming weeks.  On the other hand, I found the Adobe Connect sessions to be one of the most important environments for sharing and learning, specially when we had guest presenters, because they helped me have a better idea of the possibilities of applied research, and also on what's expected of me during the rest of this Doctoral Program. Listening to my partners' presentations was in most cases enriching and engaging, and allowed me to have a glimpse at research methods that were unbeknownst to me.  Besides, presenting for me left a sense of modest accomplishment: knowledge of the content chosen (enough for a 20-minute presentation), mastery of the Adobe technology, and self-confidence when addressing a small audience of native English speakers.  Another valuable experience was looking up dissertations and getting familiar with the way they're structured and the authors' positionings and chosen research methods.

In addition, Cynthia's motivating words, feedback, and counseling also contributed to increasing my interest, self-confidence, and even the élan I strive to cultivate during my doctoral studies.  This, plus the "finding" of Zotero as a practical and attractive reference manager, are the most important acquisitions to my learning and growth as a doctoral student.  Zotero has given me a new perspective on literature reviews, online research, resource management and referencing, and it has also become a tool that I use every day and have shared with my graduate students at UNED. ¡Enhorabuena!

As everything else in life, there's always room for improvement and evolution, be it course design, cumbersome textbooks (such as Cohen et al's), disperse evaluation, and scarce student participation.  What matters is how we reflect on our own process and how we can incorporate positive (and negative) experiences, self-direct in our learning adventure, share with others, and try to constantly outdo ourselves.  As J. Krishnamurti said,

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning. Jiddu Krishnamurti
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/learning

"There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning."


References:

Creswell, J., & Creswell, D. (2018). Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.