My Exploration of Professional Development

Part of any profession is becoming involving in collegial organizations and reading the literature of the field. As a professional librarian I am a member of several library organizations and keep current by reading a variety of journals related to librarianship. However, being a neophyte in the field of educational technology, I am not yet involved in similar professional development activities related to IDT. Chapter 26 of the text provides a comprehensive description of many organizations and journals of interest to educational technologists.

Several of the organizations appealed to me including the Society for Applied Learning (SALT), the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), and the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Two of the three organizations (AACE & SALT) are linked from UF's Educational Technology website.

Many of the journals were interesting, but a few of them really peaked my interest. Several aspects of IDT appeal to me including instructional design, assessment, and online teaching & learning. In selecting journals to investigate I tried to find titles that would accommodate all of my interests. I explored the following journals: the American Journal of Distance Education (AJDE), the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET), Cognition and Instruction, and the Journal of Technology, Instruction, and Assessment (JTLA).

The UF libraries have subscriptions to many education journals, including those named above. The library has a print subscription (located in the Education Library) to AJDE from 1987-present and an online subscription from 2002-present. The Education Library also houses print copies of BJET from 1971-present and an online subscription from 1997-present. For JTLA, the library has free online access to 2002-present in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). A print subscription to Instruction and Cognition from 1984-present is housed in the Education Library and the library has online access from 2002-present in DOAJ.

Check back next week as I explore and discuss the knowledge and skills I need to gain in this program to improve my instruction and potentially advance my position in the library. Until then...