Given a unique opportunity to be entangled in a family business has, in fact, been a blessing. It gave immediate confidence in knowing someone would be present to teach the future generation the ropes, but it also leads to the ultimate disappointment when family dynamics hinder that transfer of knowledge and skills. 

Because of this experience, I have always had a mantra to teach beyond my reach, and my business experiences have made me realize the importance of training. Transferring knowledge only opens one up to more learning possibilities, while it also opens the student up to pass on that education. I do believe that my early years in college instilled in me the thirst for knowledge. However, it was my business experience that has given me the desire to teach. With that passion comes the need to fill my knowledge base with accurate facts based on quality research and methodologies.

One thing that intrigues me is the psychology of the mind, as it relates to the learning process as well as the teaching process. Just as we can see from the political campaigns, perceptions of the same facts can be so different that it leaves one to wonder if the facts were presented in similar manners to all recipients. Knowing the learners’ mentality and developing instructional materials to get the intended results can be more challenging than I once thought.

My desire is to gain an understanding of the possibilities that shape human learning and the processes needed to facilitate the acquisition of digital information in the most productive manner.

During my graduate school experience, my research focused on the technology that was on the market for small businesses to host learning materials. Now that I have made the investment personally in the system that I preferred in my research process, I would like to now focus on the instructional design process. This process, beginning with the gathering of data, going through the development stage, and evaluating the implementation to assess learner experience is what I would like to master.

I am currently working on projects where these skills would be valuable to the organizations that I support. Volunteering to bring technology to the non-profits that I serve has been a great experience for me. One of my goals for the past several years is to be successful in my work life enough to make time to add value to the charitable organizations that I support. I serve in a technical capacity in organizations to assist with their training needs. I would love to have the opportunity to gain more knowledge to sharpen my skills to make these organizations and my industry even better.  These projects are doors of opportunity to learning experiences that I would not have otherwise had the chance to be involved with.

My ultimate professional goal is to continue with the entrepreneurial efforts I have been engaged in while utilizing the skills I have learned in the field of educational technology.