Professional Goals and Growth Plan
May 1997

Lorraine Sherry

Introduction

When I entered the doctoral program at the University of Colorado at Denver in the fall of 1994, the program was in a state of flux. I was given my choice between entering the "old" and the "new" programs. Both programs are portfolio-based. Because the restructured curriculum would follow the course requirements of the new program, I chose the new program.

Having been admitted at the cusp between the two programs, I have been guided by the requirements of both. Moreover, now that I have participated in cutting-edge research, given presentations at professional conferences, published several refereed journal articles, and been employed for the past two years as a professional researcher, I see my work extending beyond the limits of the portfolio and taking on a structure of its own, which I will discuss below. I have found this to be necessary, now that my portfolio also has to meet the requirements of RMC Research Corporation's Senior Research Associates goal criteria and the to-be-revised requirements of the CLT thread of the doctoral program.

Praxis

I have just been promoted to permanent part-time Research Assistant on the basis of my current portfolio. If I continue to grow professionally as I have so far, I will be offered a full time Research Associate position as soon as I graduate. My goal for the next year, as stated by my supervisor (the Denver Office Vice President, Shelley Billig) is to turn much of my theoretical knowledge into practical solutions for the classroom. This is also the stated philosophy of the doctoral program, namely, Learning should be applied and focused on difficult problems of practice.

Reflections: My Dimensions of Growth

There are five criteria by which RMC Research evaluates professional staff portfolios when considering giving promotions. I have demonstrated proficiency in each of these five dimensions, both in dealing with clients and with colleagues, and consistently over the two year period during which I have worked there. These criteria are consistent with the dimensions that my portfolio demonstrates.

1. Self-Direction

I am a self-directed learner. I am responsible and self-challenging, I have a clear concept and vision of my scholarly pursuits, and I consciously modify my own behaviors to advance my own knowledge and expertise. I am able to set priorities and achievable goals, and to monitor my progress with appropriate input from others. Moreover, once I have started a project, I see it through until it is finished and meets the requirements of the audience for whom I have created it.

2. Productivity

I create products that achieve their intended purpose and are appropriate to the intended audience, using feedback from my peers and colleagues to improve my products, my learning process, and my presentations. My portfolio not only satisfies the requirements of the CLT thread of the doctoral program, but extends it into the "praxis" of the professional research community as well, as I will describe under Professional Leadership and Engagement below.

3. Depth of Understanding

Building knowledge is a continuous process, not a product. This will continue to be an area of growth and development for me. I continuously increase my depth of understanding by applying my theoretical knowledge and my practical experience to problems and projects both at work and at the university. I have demonstrated my ability to design and conceptualize products, both in building the School of Education Home Page, and in my various research projects. I try to apply good judgment, though I still have problems with time management and balancing internal and external demands upon my time and expertise. I model behaviors that my fellow students and staff members can learn. I listen and respond to constructive feedback from my colleagues, especially from Brent Wilson, my academic advisor, co-author, and role model. I have also received many e-mail messages from colleagues indicating that they are beginning to see me as a good role model.

My own personal knowledge-building, sharing, and dissemination process is iterative and seamless, and works this way:

  1. explore relevant research in a field and produce a good literature review to ground new research in a sound theory base,
  2. create (formally or informally) a research proposal with a sound methodology and data-gathering strategy by which data can be organized, analyzed, and presented,
  3. conduct the research, development, or evaluation project,
  4. write a comprehensive final report, associating findings not only with research questions but also with the theory base and current literature,
  5. present highlights of the research at a professional conference, backing it up with an online paper that can either appear in the proceedings or be subject to peer-review in an online conference,
  6. revise the online paper and submit it to a good journal,
  7. integrate what I have learned from the project into a workshop and share this knowledge with others (inservice/teaching/consultation)
  8. take recommendations for further study or revision, gleaned from the global professional community, into account when extending the project to new research realms or new funded projects.

The products in my portfolio exemplify this process, even though they are organized according to the ten requirements of the doctoral program. All of these ten portfolio products are currently online. Within each of these ten requirements, the individual products are grouped by annual review.

My three topic foci, which are reflected in the products that I have created for the portfolio, are:

  1. collaborative learning through knowledge construction,
  2. computer-mediated communication, and
  3. transformative instructional design.

Taken together, these comprise the major elements of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), which is my primary area of interest. However, they do not fully encompass my current and projected research interests. These include not only the CSCL components but also the adoption/diffusion and evaluation of telecommunications-based learning environments, and the barriers, incentives, and performance supports that new Internet users have to deal with when they go through the learning/adoption process.

4. Community Building

Since 1994, I have been an active member of the Internet Task Force. I have mentored my peers, given inservice presentations, and worked collaboratively with my team to design and implement the School of Education Home Page. The action research I carried out during that project led to the Dynamics of Collaborative Design paper and to the first of my own major presentations at a national conference.

Working with the Internet Task Force over the past three years has helped me to value multiple perspectives, to share responsibility for group functioning, to respect my colleagues' time and energies, to be more conscious of the effect of my behavior on others, to generate confidence in my fellow students as well as my fellow staff members at RMC Research, and to accept responsibility for working through the numerous conflicts that inevitably arise when working as a team on a joint project.

5. Professional Leadership and Engagement

I see myself as a change agent who is able to influence others in a positive way, and to support the development of other people's skills and understandings. Most of this takes place through my efforts at disciplined inquiry and my contributions to the field of educational technology, via my publications and presentations at professional conferences. Thus, I am not only engaged professionally, but I feel I am beginning to demonstrate professional leadership and commitment. I want to push the frontiers of knowledge and conceptualize innovations that can help to extend and support the use of educational telecommunications, based on empirical research.

There have been several milestones along my path to developing the qualities of leadership:

  1. My first professional publication where I was lead author: Issues in Publishing Online Documents
  2. My first major product as an independent contractor: A Needs Assessment for Distance Learning
  3. My first action research project and independent professional presentation at a national conference: The Dynamics of Collaborative Design
  4. My first refereed journal article in the field of performance support: Supporting Human Performance Across Disciplines: A Converging of Roles and Tools
  5. My first major research project: Evaluation of The Boulder Valley Internet Project: A Theory-Based Approach to Evaluation
  6. My first book chapter, Transformative Communication as a Stimulus to Web Innovations (in Web-Based Instruction, by Badrul Khan)
  7. My first symposium, proposed for AERA '98, based on my paper: An Integrated Technology Adoption and Diffusion Model. This paper will be presented at AECT '98.
  8. My first paper demonstrating professional practice in CSCL: Supporting Networked Community of Learners
  9. My first research project demonstrating that I can explore and support the change process leading to effective use of CSCL within the School of Education (The 1995 TSS E-Mail Survey: A Re-Analysis, plus the 1997 survey which is now in progress).

My vita lists the many professional presentations and workshops that I have given at national conferences. I have produced several refereed journal articles and have received requests for reprints from many colleagues around the world. All of my public-domain publications are online in my public information writing product.

I rely heavily on external networking, and am in contact with colleagues at other universities around the world via listservs and private e-mail. An example of shared leadership is my proposed AERA panel in 1998 - the first symposium that I have developed in collaboration with other experts. Though it was not accepted at AERA, it did receive high evaluation scores, and was also a growing experience for me in recognizing the strengths of individual team members, collecting input and ideas, and communicating with this team of experts to build knowledge in an idea that I am keenly interested in: developing a new model for the adoption and diffusion of Internet technologies in educational institutions, particularly, those that support collaborative learning environments. The paper that I wrote for the proposed symposium will be presented at AECT, February 1998.

Professional Development

My work at RMC Research has been, and will continue to be, intimately related to my research and theory domains. At RMC, I have evaluated both the Annenberg/CPB Math/Science Project and the Boulder Valley Internet Project. I have also written major sections of two proposals:

  1. The Navajo Learning Network
  2. The Caddo Parish Technology Initiative (paper only)
As a result of the BVIP research proposal and evaluation, and of my initial efforts building the relevant knowledge base and our corporate capacities to carry out the research and development involved in these proposals, I have come up with an expanded model of the adoption/diffusion of technology within educational institutions. This model can be adapted to other potential projects. With each iteration, and with each successive study, we are able to further refine and begin to generalize this model. I presented this model at the February 1997 AECT Conference in Albuquerque, and the March 1997 AERA Conference in Chicago.

Recent work at RMC Research involves serving on the Texas Star Center technology team, a group involved in a collaborative effort to develop and maintain the STAR Center Web Page. I have created pages for this site. I am also currently working on a Teachers' Internet Use Guide. It is a product that has evolved from three separate efforts:

  1. my panel presentation with Tim Neese at Colorado School of Mines;
  2. my book chapter and Badrul Khan's introduction to Web-Based Instruction; and
  3. the feedback received from a group of K-12 teachers in Texas when a colleague at RMC Research presented my prototype at the ACET Conference.

I am actually carrying this out as a CSCL project with the technology team, using e-mail, LISTSERVs, and the Web server to design and implement a practical product to support teachers who are new users of Web-Based Instruction. It is a major contribution to the Texas STAR Center Web Page that received a very favorable writeup in the most recent STAR Center annual report. It also received favorable reviews when I presented it at the National Conference of Texas in Austin in October 1997.

I am keenly interested in continuing to cross-fertilize my work at CU-Denver with my work at RMC, because I see this as two aspects of the same field of research: design, development, adoption, and diffusion of transformative learning environments supported by telecommunications. This is a long phrase, but it does contain all facets of my research interests. I would like to continue to keep my feet in two boats, namely, to continue on at UCD as a member of the Internet Task Force, and to become a Senior Research Associate at RMC Research, upon my graduation. I am interested in maintaining my roots in academia as well as the corporate research community, because I am a firm believer in academic/corporate collaboration. I would be interested in strengthening any partnerships between RMC and CU-Denver, now and in the future.

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Lorraine Sherry
File moved November 16, 1997