Self assessment

Advisor: Dr. Thomas C. Reeves

Highlight

• Take 12 credit hours every semester

• Attended and presented paper at international conference

• Co-facilitator in EDIT 6210, Spring 2004

• Ongoing research & journal article in process
  

  Reflection

  My first year in the doctoral program has been a transformation process. I came into our doctoral program with skills on developing multimedia projects, as well as the ability to do instructional design. These skills do help me to do my assistantship jobs, and also give me the opportunities to serve other people. However, I realize that I need to focus on reading and conducting research in my doctoral program. I need a new mind-set to face these new challenges. Honestly, the beginning of the second semester was a painful time for me. I was struggling with identifying my research ideas. The difficult part was not only clarifying doable research ideas but also defining myself as a researcher. I was asking myself what I can do to contribute to this field. Am I the right person to do this? A lot of “why” questions jumped into my head. Others told me: “It is supposed to be hard, but everyone can do it.” I am glad right now to report that I have a clearer vision about my research, and have started to enjoy thinking critically and conducting research. It’s all about growth, and fortunately there are many people in our department who are willing to provide support. In the following table, I list the main tasks (combine with my PhD goals) in my first year, and describe my weaknesses and strengths within these tasks, as well as the things I intend to improve in the future.

	Strength	Weakness	Improvement
Critical writing	Hold perspectives from other culture	Writing style & sentence structure	Keep writing & proofread by native American
Reading literature	Have topics to focus on	Reading speed & note taking	Practice and more critical thinking
Research design	Trained in both qualitative and quantitative methods	Need more creativity to escape stereotype	Look at more research designs & writing proposal
Cognate area	Creativity is an interesting field to combine with IT	Need more theory-based thinking	Take some basic learning theories course
Teaching experience	Have opportunities to teach	English speaking & pedagogy used	Get more hands-on experience & observe other teachers
Conference experience	Get connections with some scholars	conference proposal writing	Keep writing & get involved in the community

 

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