This page summarizes my learning within each of the courses I completed during my Master’s degree in Educational Technology, Michigan State University.
Courses codes:
CEP = Counseling, Educational Psychology & Special Education
MI = Media and Information.
Teaching for Understanding with Technology – CEP810 (Fall 2016)
– Emily Stone
I started my master’s journey with this course as a developer of educational technology. This course changed my mindset where I used to believe that the best approach to enhance education is through creating tools that solely serve a specific educational goal. What CEP810 had taught me was: it depends. In some contexts, the way you use YouTube can result in a very rich learning experience, while an educational tool can be viewed as limited in many ways. The design of where and why to use the tool determines the success of the learning experience.
Adapting Innovative Technologies to Education – CEP811 (Fall 2016)
–Melissa White and Stacey Schuh
Although I am specialized in Computer Science, this course taught me that creativity is beyond knowing many technologies. Adapting technology and innovation in teaching and learning is not about the number of tools we use, instead, it is about how we apply them. I learned that designing the context of how teaching takes place is way more important than how fancy the technology is. This course gave me the skills of thinking outside the box when designing educational activities. I got to practice my learning in outreach programs where I integrated technologies in uncommon ways to teach computer science.
Foundations of Serious Games – MI830 ( Spring 2017 )
-Dr. Carrie Heeter
I took this course as part of my elective selection towards my master’s degree. Since I am passionate about games, I wanted to know what goes behind the scenes when developing them. This course helped me appreciate fundamentals such as game mechanics, game design, and gameplay. I got to design mini-games throughout the course to gain a deeper understanding of gameplay and game mechanics, By the end of the course, I invented a board game that stimulates students’ problem solving and algorithmic thinking. Developing the game professionally allowed me to interact with game developers, run test cases, and reiterate. All these skills were important for me as an educator and learner, to accept feedback and work to enhance my approach.
Applying Educational Technology to Issues of Practice – CEP812 (Spring 2018)
–Bill Marsland
Rethinking education in the 21st century is a topic that is discussed at international level conferences to students’ debates. It is not realistic to impose a new change and expect positive results. Change comes with a price and sometimes risk. This course gave me some direction in approaching this problem. At the same time, knowing that coming up with a solution, even with thorough research and analysis could produce “the best bad idea”. I learned that we should always be humble that it is a learning process and that as leaders and educators, we should be flexible to the storms ahead of us while being proactive to work towards a better educational system.
Computational Thinking for K12 Educators – CEP 814 (Fall 2020)
–Katie Rich
This course helped me gain techniques to diversify my approach to incorporate computational thinking in computer science teacher training. The goal is to empower teachers to help their students build transferrable skills of logical and analytical thinking. As a teacher coach, composing workshop plans throughout CEP 814 helped me practice integrating creative thinking skills in my training sessions.
Teaching Students Online – CEP 820 (Fall 2020)
–Anne Heintz
Taking a course about online teaching in 2020, the year of “COVID” peak was just the wisest thing to do. Throughout the course, I got to build skills and background theory of how to make online teaching “or training” interactive and effective. By the end of the course, I built an entire online course for Computer Science Teachers, which was extremely useful for my career. I was training teachers online that semester. Hence, I was fueled with ideas and strategies to lead a long-lasting impact on my trainees.
Learning in School and Other Settings – CEP 800 (Spring 2021)
-Stephanie Jennings and Kyle Shack
I am not exaggerating when I say that if there was a course I took this degree for, it would be CEP 800. Not coming from an educational background, I had this “don’t know what I don’t know” a blind spot that this course just made me see. The world of learning theories is huge, but this course helped me see it in such a way that directly relates to my life, let alone my career.
Technology and Leadership – CEP 815 (Summer 2021)
–Nicole Zumpano
I was not in a leadership position when I took this course. However, I believe that leadership can happen at the lowest level of hierarchy. This course confirmed my belief and enhanced my ability to analyze leadership styles in different situations. More importantly, it helped me realize that to make a change, we need to have the full spectrum of vision, skills, incentives, resources, and action plan all set. Missing one of these elements undefined or not well thought through leads to a change block.
Approaches to Educational Research – CEP 822 (Spring 2021)
–Dr. David Wong
This course teaches about Educational research, how to analyze them, differentiate between high vs low quality work, and how to design one. I have been working professionally in research groups, so I practiced carrying out educational research. However, I found this course very informative and offered me a lot to learn about, especially about Qualitative research. There is ongoing research about Qualitative and mixed methods that scholars are still learning more about. Human-based research is complex, and there is always something new we can learn.
Proseminar in Educational Technology – CEP 807 (Summer 2021)
-Dr. Matthew Koehler and Aric Gaunt
This is the Capstone course of the degree, where students who are about to graduate get to gather all their work throughout their graduate degree and create an online portfolio. An outstanding experience for me (and perhaps most graduate students) to get the chance to reflect deeply on what I learned, what changed in my goals and beliefs about the field. The best part is that we do that as a community of educators, where we give and receive constructive feedback, to present our best selves digitally.
Hanan Alshikh 