Comprehensive Exam

For those of you who don't know, I've started a more professional blog on my professional website. Not this one- the one I have that isn't named after animal droppings. I'm hoping to establish a professional presence in the blogosphere. This same excerpt made it to that blog today. I've spent nearly every waking hour of the weekend working on my comprehensive exam. Assuming I pass, I have only one more class standing between me and a graduate degree. I'm glad, not only that I finished, but that I was able to sum up my position on eLearning so succinctly. It's nice to end on a high note.

As we proceed into the information age, things will continue to change, while others will stay the same. Internet-based teaching and learning will continue to be adopted in new and novel ways. Enthusiasts of new technologies will continue to overpromise and underdeliver. As learning professionals, we will learn from our successes and failures and as a community we will establish best practices for use and effectiveness. Corporations will try to reduce the cost of training while trying to get an informational advantage over their competitors. Instructional designers will continue to work for the sweet spot between the two. The learner will be confronted with staggering amounts of information and in the long run will remember most of what they need or enjoy by forgetting what they don’t. The instructor will always have a place in instruction. Their role will continue to change, and the technologies at their disposal will open up new possibilities and frustrations, but they will continue as mentors and guides to the future.