Reflection Phase

1. Final meetings with Julie and colleagues for feedback

These meetings were not altogether different from the previous feedback that I had received. Julie was kind enough to write a letter summarizing her experience in the course, which I will share here (with her permission):

"Firstly, about the content of the class, l think it is very

targeted for IELTS. l learned about much knowledge about

IELTS and the skill of English use. Because it’s all in

English, l can familiar with the English environment in

advance. l can practice both my listening and speaking

during the class. This is my favorite pattern of the course.

Then l also like the homework after class. They are always

varieties. Sometimes l needed to write a article about my

experience or a place and sometimes l needed to read an

article and write the summary of the article and so on. Of

course, l also had the basic homework that l needed to

watch some English program and read English books.

It’s very helpful to build my habit of learning English. l think

it is prefect. The only thing that’s missing in the class is

the lack of the real question exercise but it doesn’t effect

much about the my IELTS learning because there are practice questions in the textbook.

In addition, l like the tutor of my class. His

accent is very pure and the pronunciation is clear. He is

also a nice and patient person. He always said “How are

you?” to me before the class though sometimes l couldn’t

answer it very decent. He also shared some experience

about himself with me and answered all of my questions.

Sometimes, maybe l forgot the time of our class but he

never blamed for me. Besides, he is a polite person.

When l sent my homework to him he always returned

“thank you” to me.

Overall, not only the context of the class but also the

outstanding tutor are made me get great progress."

Generally, her feedback was more specific than that, and was usually verbal. This final note was after her last class and before her test.

2. Reflect on whether strategies employed will work for course release in October

The strategies employed worked incredibly well for developing the course (they were less effective in staying up to date on the PME-800 course work). I really liked working in a low stress environment, knowing that my work will help a student and potentially more. I enjoyed using reward systems and proximal goals to tide me over until the distal goal. I enjoyed being present in my conscious efforts and watching the ways in which I could plan and execute my goals effectively.

3. Did I achieve my Distal Goal?

Create a teachable video-conference based IELTS course to accompany an IELTS textbook for students based in China.

Yes, I did. There is still work to be done in specializing and optimizing the course work but it was successfully taught and all of the most important aspects are presentable. I would not have been able to do so within this amount of time or have taken so much insight away from it without the help of the SRL strategies that were employed. It was no achieved in the east measure I set it out to be but I think given the circumstances and the communal nature of the course it as good as it can be.

4. Did I achieve my proximal goals?

Locate and research IELTS resources, textbook, practice tests, reach out to IELTS experts.

Yes, this was part of the forethought phase and it was much easier than I thought it would be.

Meet with potential student and assess timeline for test and willingness to partake in course.

Yes, this was also part of the forethought phase. Julie ended up being the most helpful student I could have asked for.

4. Coach prospective student until their test date.

Yes, the coaching went well and all obstacles were overcome. Julie's test will happen next week and our collective fingers are crossed.

Submit Courseware to company and have it implemented into regular lessons.

No, this aspect was suspended until October to allow time for optimization, and to create a low-risk scenario, which I decided to implement after Module 2.

5. What were my Obstacles and how did I Overcome them?

The chief obstacles I faced were as follows:

Timing: I had trouble finding time to schedule lessons with Julie

Debate Camp: I lost a week of lessons that I had planned fro when Julie went to debate camp.

Software: The software made it difficult to carry out one of the lessons because of lack of technology allowing simultaneous listening, and time constraints made writing assignments difficult.

In order to fix the first obstacle we both found times that worked for us and scheduled our lessons in the short term so that there was minimal stress involved, and when we found time to meet we would do so. The second simply involved extra time for me to optimize the official course and to doctor Julie's to fit her new time constraints. As for the software, I had to note these issues each class and find ways to present the material in new ways, or offer homework for self-study.

6. Am I satisfied with the outcome?

Yes I am very satisfied with the outcome. I think the ideas that were presented by Zimmerman, Schunk and Locke & Latham as well as the input from my classmates and further course work I was able to create the best possible method fo developing courses and a very strong and helpful course. My first student is extremely happy with the outcome and I am as well.

7. Was the Feedback Helpful?

Yes, the feedback was extremely helpful. It helped me most in my own reflections and helped me to create better lessons for the following day while taking less work to do so. Coupling feedback with the reflection sections of my SRL processes made my life infinitely easier.

8. How will this help me when developing courses in the future?

This will help me in many ways. the most important is that it will assist me in planning, goal setting, motivating myself and understanding the strategies I can employ. It also gives me the ability to role model these strategies for my students in the future. By mastering SRL myself, I can pass on the main ideas which can assist students. This really showed me how important it is to assess each facet of a project before, during and after its use. I look forward to revisiting these ideas as I finish developing the course and in future work.