A500.9.4.RB – Course Reflections

Richard Martinez

December 18, 2015

MSLD 500

                The course Leadership Foundations in Research was a major eye opener for me. It really opened my eyes in the critical thinking aspect. I have always thought that I had some basis of critical thinking due to my 28 years in the Army and being in several high leadership positions leading anywhere from around 30 to 380 Soldiers at any given time depending on my duty position at the time. But this course taught me a great deal about critical thinking. I was always an analytical thinker but never really thought about my own thinking to improve it. Another area that was very new to me was the SEE-I concept. SEE-I which stands for S: State it, E: Elaborate, E: Exemplify, I: Illustrate. Applying this concept to my critical thinking has allowed me to ask the right questions to get a clearer thoughts. I now find myself using it in almost everything I do now. The blog portion of the assignments was also very new to me. I have never been one to put my thoughts down on paper, I never had a journal or anything like that. The first couple of blog assignments did take me a little while to put my thoughts to paper but I found that I became very interested in writing down my thoughts. My wife has been trying to get me to write a book about my 28 years in the Army and I never knew how to go about it. This blog has given me several ideas and options now.

                There were two areas within the learning and assignments that I did have difficulty with. The first was the Concept Map. I have a basic and I mean basic idea of how the program for the concept map works. I feel that this is something that should have a separate block of instruction on rather that the students learning on their own. This was by far one of the hardest assignments and it was reflected in my grades in the first three assignments. I have been improving my knowledge of the concept maps and what’s needed for each assignment. The second area that showed some difficulty is the ePortfolio. There has been no instruction on the use of this online tool. It has been one big trial and error for me in setting mine up. I believe that that in the future classes there should be some form of instruction on the concept map and ePortfolio online tools used in this course. Especially since they will be used throughout the Leadership Master’s degree program.

                Over all I am very pleased and really did enjoy this course of instruction. I felt it was very beneficial to me and my future in the Master’s Degree in Leadership program. The action research project was very informative to me even though I have a background in Research through the Army. It showed me another side of research that I feel enhances my current abilities. I now understand and feel that it is very valuable to complete this course before moving on to any other course in this degree program. I think that this course has set me up with keys skill sets that will allow me to do very well in the future course that I need to take to complete my Master’s Degree in Leadership.