The first education system I am examining my role in is as a student in the UNT Learning Technologies program. I wish that I could say that my experience has been phenomenal in all aspects, but like all systems, there are bright and dark spots. As a student, I am at the mercy of the program design and the rules that govern that program. Having some experience in higher education, I know of some of the rules that govern the programs, so I see some of the areas that I am not as fond of in a little bit of a different light. I think the biggest area I struggle with at times is the disparity between the courses we take. Some feel like they are truly designed to push our thinking further and broaden our views, while others seem like we are doctoral students, so we will get the work done with minimal support. This leads to a struggle and some anxiety with each semester in what to expect from our courses. We often have to engage in activities that seem to offer limited benefit to our learning, but again, some of these I recognize as being part of the bigger picture for accreditation and expectations of UNT being the recipient of federal funding. I think my bigger issue is that it can feel like we are limited in our courses at times because there just is not enough time for the faculty to prepare the courses for us to create learning artifacts that help us in our journey. I know in my cohort, especially, that the start of the program was rough, but we also started in unprecedented times of the pandemic. I do feel that in the last few semesters, I have been able to work more on my interests. Still, I also think that work is often outside of the scope of our expectations in terms of building portfolios and preparing for our transition to doctoral candidates. I’m hoping that as we continue forward and based on discussions that have taken place, things are moving in the right direction.

The second education system I am examining my role in is as a member of a workplace learning and development team. I work for a large organization with close to 80,000 employees, so the workplace education system is complicated with a lot of elements that have input and influence decisions being made. My role is to help create learning programs based on the needs of certain groups that are identified by a variety of different stakeholders. This often leads to shifting priorities and changes as more and more stakeholders become involved. We are fortunate to have a variety of training platforms and resources available to use, but that also can complicate our development and implementation process. So, as we are receiving input on what type of learning is needed, we have to identify the appropriate platforms for development while ensuring that we can capture relevant data to provide informed feedback if our learners are meeting the expectations set. This often creates times when we have to go back and rework courses that have already been created to ensure we are meeting the expectations of learners, management, and other stakeholders. I feel that efficiency is not always our strong suit, but when we can start with a clearly defined goal, that usually helps the ensuing processes run more smoothly. That is rarely the case, but we are constantly working to improve our processes and currently take an MVP (minimally viable product) approach to development, knowing that we will, in all likelihood, be revisiting our learning in the near future for further development. I am leaning towards examining these processes further as part of the tasks for this course, looking at how they can be improved on a more holistic scale to minimize the rework as much as possible.