A Continued Challenge for my Students and Me
Before beginning my master’s degree, I was asked to provide personal and professional goals I would meet through participation in Michigan State University’s Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) Program. My personal goal was to return to school. I had wanted to continue my education but struggled with what my next step might be. When I changed professional careers from a practicing licensed veterinary nurse to an academic specialist working for Michigan State University’s Veterinary Nursing Program (VNP), I realized that attending a program through the College of Education would benefit my career.
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Professionally, my goals to meet at the completion of the MAET program were to benefit the Veterinary Nursing Program and to spread the knowledge I gained to my colleagues and students. The VNP at MSU is a relatively small program. Our faculty members are veterinary nurses or a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and most do not have formal educational training. While our VNP is rigorous and challenging, much of the program continues to be rooted in past curricula from previous instructors and utilizes some outdated methods of teaching and learning. My goal was to open the minds of my colleagues by providing additional 21st century teaching and learning modalities while implementing them in my own courses.
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Now I am nearing the completion of my master’s degree. As I look back on my personal and professional goals prior to entering the program I don’t believe I would change them today. Our VNP is still very small and while we try to update our methods of teaching and learning I can now share new ideas I’ve learned. I’ve been asked on several occasions to speak of my experiences to my colleagues and plan to continue doing so.
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The MAET program has certainly helped shape how I teach my students. Applying what I’ve learned during the program towards my students and their learning was an obvious professional goal I set years ago and one I still hold strong today. The world of education is ever-evolving and the insight I’ve learned about teaching and learning philosophies, course and curricular design, assessments, and teaching tools and technologies are paramount to an ideal learning experience. While I now have a better grasp on how to provide such opportunities, I can focus on my current goal: to challenge myself and my students.
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No longer do I view this complex topic of education, or specifically educational technology, as intimidating. Instead, I view it as my new challenge. I can now analyze how I once taught a topic or constructed a course or assessment and consider if it was successful. For example, did my students understand and retain the information or could I have gone about it an alternative way? This challenge of thinking outside of the box keeps my passion for teaching alive. My goal is to also keep my students challenged. I hope to continue to provide new and exciting information about veterinary medicine through ways that keep them curious, enthusiastic, and passionate.