Hi to everyone.
I am really pleased to be starting this course. It is my last one for MAODE and I have previously studied H800 and H810 and I am still studying E810.
I live in Newcastle under Lyme in the UK at the moment although I am looking for jobs 'down South' and hope to move in the next year or so. I am currently working three days a week, for three different universities supporting students with various impairments. It is a great job and I get to meet a wide variety of really nice people. Technology plays a large part in both enabling and disabling access to course materials and it was this aspect of my job that encouraged me to start studying in this area. My modules have been chosen to compliment my work.
I thoroughly enjoyed H800 and the way I was introduced to so many new technologies that were so relevant to my life and work. I then continued to H810 which was very relevant to my work and initially I found it a little easy but the design and analysis of accessible course materials was fascinating. I studied E801 (literacy difficulties) at the same time and I am continuing it until October. The work load is much less than the H-courses. It contains some interesting material but I have found it a little isolating in contrast to the H-courses as I have missed the contact with the rest of the group.
I initially chose this module as I am considering going on to the EdD or PhD and I wanted to do a research module in preparation. Unfortunately I have just found out that you need 60 credits in research to do this so I will have to do another course - avoiding all the ones with exams of course!
'What kinds of evidence and inquiry methods were appropriate to the subject you studied for your undergraduate degree?'
My initial qualifications were in Biology and Biochemistry and I worked for several years for ICI (now Zeneca PLC). I changed tack and started working with students so I collected some post grad qualifications in Mentoring and Counselling too. I have found it really difficult to change methods from paradigm driven research to the debate-driven educational research. I have been so used to concise scientific writing that I found some of the papers that were full of rhetoric very annoying to read! I am more used to them now and I am even managing to write in the first person occasionally without wincing too much!
I use my blog regularly for notes and thoughts on all the courses I have been doing and I would love to hear from anyone who fancies putting any comments on the posts. I have added the address to the blogs link on the Wiki page. I also use Twitter on a daily basis to share any links that I find to ed tech materials and you can find me at @LMAHunt