Facilitator-in-Training Specific Project

I recall in my first blog, I had mentioned that I was somewhat nervous about the Facilitator-in-Training experience. I was particularly apprehensive because I do not have any teaching or training experience, beyond serving as a teaching assistant during my undergraduate years. However, I was pleasantly surprised throughout the experience as a FIT to enjoy the opportunity, and correlate our class discussions with observations made during the FIT experience.

Our instructors posed several opportunities for FITs to choose from in the beginning of the semester. One activity was to create 15+ chapter multiple choice quizzes from the textbook into an electronic assessment software tool. I chose to complete this activity for my individual project, as assessment as a general topic is something that I am interested in (both with my previous degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and my Instructional Technology degree). Gaining access into the online textbook and the assessment software tools proved slightly challenging at first, but the instructors were extremely helpful and patient. Once I was able to access both tools, I began the task of creating the quizzes in the assessment tool. Each question had to be answered in order to find the correct answer during which I discovered I knew a lot less about European history than I originally thought! So instead, I decided to answer “C” to every question instead of attempting to answer correctly – which cut down on a lot of time and effort – although my scores looked worse! I’ve continued to transfer the information into the software tool, and hope to be done this week.

Although my individual project did not involve any hands-on facilitation with the students, I’ve been able to witness the other FITs opportunities and observe their experiences. This has been helpful, as the four of us have had different experiences throughout the course. In addition, participating in the Elluminate sessions has been a great experience, to really see a synchronous learning session take place.

I think if I were to do the assignment over again, I would have taken on more hands-on task, possibly in addition to the assessment tool. I know that creating the assessments was an important piece to the instructors, but guiding an individual assignment similar to what the other FITs worked on would have been beneficial as well.