All That, And More
by Benjamin Oberdick |
I started the MSU MAED program in September 2009 a little less than a year after beginning my job as an Instruction and Reference Librarian for the MSU Libraries. I was very excited to be coming to work at MSU, and to being back up north after 5+ years living in North Carolina, and I was also excited to be able to work on another degree after having recently completed the Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) program at UNC-Greensboro in 2007. I have always loved being a student and I was looking forward to continuing my education and earning a second graduate degree, but I was also a bit nervous about completing the coursework for this program while also working full time in a position that would require a lot out of me, including having to go through our version of a tenure review at the same time I would be completing my last class in the program. I had never had the challenge of working full-time while also being in school and I felt not an inconsiderable amount of trepidation about being able to give both of these important things my full attention.
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As I look back on an essay I wrote for admittance to MSU, my goals for completing this program came down to a desire for me to:
· improve my teaching and knowledge of education · gain some expertise and skills in the use of technology in education · gain experience and familiarity with online instruction · better understand how students learn online so I could use it when I was creating online modules, guides and tutorials for students for their information literacy needs. |
I believe the courses I took, the readings and discussions I had, the activities and projects I completed, have helped me to make progress in all four of these areas. My coursework was very broad and covered topics in educational technology, educational psychology, and higher education administration, and while I am by no means an expert in any one of these areas, I have learned a lot in each of these fields. My coursework has helped to make me a better teacher, allowed me to play with, and learn about, many new and different technologies that I have been able to incorporate into my teaching in a pedagogically efficient and effective manner, and also to relate and apply a lot of what I learned through my coursework directly to my teaching and work as an Information Literacy Librarian at MSU. I didn't state this in my original goal statement, but I think it has been a huge additional benefit for me. To be able to use what I learned in this program to improve my work as a librarian and teacher, and to also be able to use it to make presentations at national and international conferences related to my profession, has been incredibly helpful to me as a teacher, librarian, and on my road toward my tenure review this coming summer.
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I have greatly enjoyed these past five years of taking classes in the MSU MAED program and I have learned a lot. It was a challenge at times as I tried to balance my coursework, job, personal life, and everything else, but even when I was traveling around the country (and internationally as well) to make presentations and attend conferences, I was also able to make the necessary time to complete my coursework because it was something I wanted to do, as well as something that I had to do. Overall, I think I made a lot of progress toward reaching each of the goals I named when applying to the MAED program, and while I am not at the finish line for any of the individual goals, I am now a little closer to the finish line for each of them.
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