My name is Susan Thomas and I am from Northeast Missouri. I am an Instructional Designer at a beautiful, public liberal arts college – Truman State University.
Before working in higher education, I was an Instructional Designer and Instructor in the corporate sector for over 15 years. Prior to that, I was a teacher in the public school system. I hold a Masters of Science in Education, with a specialization in Instructional Design for Online Learning from Capella University in Minneapolis, MN.
I have experience designing a wide variety of courses, including Instructor-Led, Hybrid, Blended, and both synchronous and asynchronous online courses. As part of that process, I recommend Open Learning Resources, and I am very interested in all the Open Learning Initiative has to offer!
This blog will mark my progress through a MOOC on Open Learning. At the same time, it will help me work my way through our work on Open Access at work.
I am so excited about OpenLearning18! There will be numerous opportunities to create and extend networks around open education, and this pre-cMOOC week is just the beginning of that process. There’s even a Twitter chat planned for this Thursday, 12-12:30 p.m.!
Joining in the conversation about Open Learning! Getting things going with a new blog. It has been a while since I have written a blog, so watch out for any boulders. (#OpenLearning18)
It has been a while since I wrote in a blog. This is good practice for me, as I need to re-orient myself to the process of blog writing. As far as the art of writing is concerned, I enjoy it, and need to do more of it to feed my emotional/psychological soul. So, here I am at Open Learning ’18. I hope to learn a lot about OER, get familiar (again) with some technologies, and even make some new friends along the way!
Welcome to A Life of Learning and my first ever blog post! I am starting this blog because I am preparing to participate in #OpenLearing18 and thus I am trying to be more…open. Being a private person, there is a big part of me that would prefer to simply stay off the grid, and up until recently, I have tried. (Just ask my friends who have finally stopped hounding me to use Facebook!) However, my second career of being a research and user experience librarian has brought me to more fully understand that learning occurs everywhere–through experiences, people and across all sorts of media formats. I am excited to enter into this new experience with #OpenLearing18 in order to learn about new ideas, new ways of learning, as well as new ways to become more open myself by participating with open technologies. And the journey begins…
Photo by robotpolisher: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lintbrush/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
This pre-cMOOC week, directed by Stephanie Blackmon, helps you prepare for Open Learning ’18 with learning opportunities around finding and building an openly networked public voice.
Day 2 (Feb. 6): Using Blogs, Twitter, and Hypothes.is to Participate in #openlearning18
Engagement in cMOOC #openlearning18
For those of you who participated in Open Learning ’17 and those of you who have participated in a similar faculty development experience, we hope that you will use Open Learning ’18 as an opportunity to take a deeper dive into the topic of open educational resources (OERs), expand your network around faculty development and open education, and help those who are new to the Open Learning experience build stronger connections around open education. For those of you who consider yourselves Open Learning environment novices, see the following helpful hints from Sue Erickson:
Twitter chat on various experiences with OERs (or what you would like to learn about OERs)
Note: Once you log on to Twitter, use the search box or your search filter (or click here) to find #openlearning18. Locating the hashtag will help you keep up with the Twitter chat and general Open Learning ’18 happenings! If it seems that you may be missing #openlearning18 tweets, just refresh your page.
Day 5 (Feb. 9): Blogging Opportunity
Blog Post on What You’re Looking Forward To in Open Learning ’18
Two guiding questions: What do you hope to get from Open Learning ’18? What do you hope to contribute to Open Learning ’18?
Designer at a beautiful, public liberal arts college – Truman State University.
