Final Reflections

 

Jack Mezirow (1990) wrote, “Critical reflection occurs when we analyze and challenge the validity of our presuppositions and assess the appropriateness of our knowledge, understanding and beliefs given our present contexts”.

 

I began my Athabasca University Master of Education journey three years ago with the naïve presupposition that if I simply learned the content of the courses and executed the assignments, my MEd credential would follow. In those days, I am not certain that Mezirow's message would have meant anything to me. Along the way, critical reflection on new learning helped me realize that it was not the content I was to internalize. What mattered was my interpretation of the content and what I did with it in my own life and professional practice. I had to make sense of the material through my own unique lens and figure out my own use for it. Because I have been simultaneously studying and working in adult post-secondary education these past three years, I have been able to not only internalize my new learning, but to put into practice virtually every concept presented to me in my daily work .

 

Prior to undertaking the MDDE program, my previous formal schooling had happened over twenty-five years ago. As I learned about and internalized the concept of adult education and andragogy in the first few courses, I came to realize that my early thoughts about teaching and learning were due to a preponderance of pedagogical memories from all those years ago. I simply did not know how to learn as an adult at the master’s level in addition to having a case of imposter syndrome stemming from my lack of an undergraduate credential. I needed to quickly make the psychological jump to self-direction, self-determination, and my own meaning-making. While I feel I did manage to do this, I owe a debt of gratitude to AU's open enrolment, their recognition of prior learning assessments, and eleven kind and encouraging professors who helped me enormously with my new knowledge, personal growth, and professional confidence.

 

Why a master’s degree in distance education in particular? Three years ago, I was a contented polytechnic instructor and never really saw himself fully retiring. However, I did imagine a much older Ian teaching at a distance one day, from a place with a good internet connection and much, much warmer temperatures than Calgary. My desire for lifelong learning drove me to a master’s program, but in all honesty, it was Athabasca University’s distance education MEd. that drew my attention because it is offered 100% at a distance. I saw great promise in the growth of distance education and wanted to remain professionally viable (and warm), well into the future. These views have not changed.

 

While that dream remains, I now have other plans in the interim. Because of both my AU experiences and my recent involvement with governance at SAIT Polytechnic, I now wish to explore educational leadership via an Educational Leadership Doctorate program (EdD). This, I feel, is a way I can both continue down my lifelong learning path and contribute more widely to my field beyond instructing learners directly.

 

Athabasca’s MDDE program has had other positive spinoff effects I was not aware of in the beginning.

 

The first have been my relationships with classmates. It was as profoundly satisfying to apply my newfound knowledge directly and immediately to my own work situations as it was to communicate with my online colleagues about how their learning was affecting their work situations in a myriad of professions.

 

Additionally, as interesting and enlightening as the content was in each course, I absorbed an equal amount of learning about distance education simply by observing the abilities, habits, and online facilitation skills of my professors in the program. Almost exclusively, I learned best practices from them, but I also very occasionally gleaned information as to which online practices did not produce desired results. This learning was just as valuable. Overall, the entire ‘play within a play within a play’ aspect of a distance education course taught at a distance and learned at a distance was beneficial. The MDDE program was not simply a vehicle for learning new information. It was also a three-year long demonstration of what distance education can and should be.

 

Athabasca University’s Master’s Degree in Distance Education is, without a doubt, rigorous. It required an ongoing dedication, dogged perseverance,  and exemplary self-directed learning practices regardless of what other things life presented. At the same time, it was incredibly rewarding, current, and directly applicable to the post-secondary blended and distance education world of which I am a part.

 

Ian

 

 

“In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm.

In the real world, all rests on perseverance”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Mezirow, J. (1990). How critical reflection triggers transformative learning: Fostering critical reflection in adulthood. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

 

Starr-Glass, D. (2013). Learning through learning: Experiential resonance in an online management course. International Journal of Management, Knowledge and Learning, 2(1), 67-82.