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Week 12 Blog Reflection

What does it mean to manage/regulate yourself (self-regulate) and others?

Self-regulation and self-management are crucial in all aspects of our lives.  It is even more important when taking online courses and working full-time.  Is vital to managing one’s time so that at the end of the day, all things that needed to be taken care of are crossed out the to-do list, to stay on track.  This is even more important with courses in which there are no hard deadlines, such as this course.  It is so easy to go off track or put things off and before you know it, you find yourself trying to catch up.  When working with clients, like we did for these two big projects, it is also important to manage not only our time with our clients but also regulate our communication and interaction so that the project stays on track.  Having said that, instructional designers need to be flexible enough to accommodate all kind of clients’ personalities and schedules. 

How does it bring you towards goals?
Goals can come in many forms, for example, physical goals (losing weight), career goals (promotions), education goals (graduating from college), and emotional goals (having a healthy relationship with your loved ones).  To achieve many of these goals requires putting in the effort and time, regardless whether they are short-term or long-term goals.  For example, over ten years ago, I decided to make it my goal to run my first full marathon.  I knew I had to train my body and mind to run long distance before I could achieve this goal.  I had to create small goals, running 5 miles, then 10, then 15, and so on.  Achieving these goals took a lot of training hours and emotional management as it was only up to me to encourage myself not quit and to continue moving forward. 

How important is communication in this process and what helps/impedes it?

Communication is very important when working on group projects.  I am currently working with a committee whose main goal is to gather data related to dental courses and the course methods and objectives.  Since am familiar with MS Access, I have been asked to work with this committee to figure out how the information can be gathered and used for future reports.  I met with some members of the committee who explain how they wanted to use the data but it was never cleared to me what their final goal was.  I sent many emails, communicating with this group asking for a visual document of what they had in mind.  Finally, after two weeks of communicating back and forth, I finally got a document that I can use to figure out how the data should be gathered to be able to run adequate reports.  The wrong person who does not understand the final goal of a project can become an obstacle in moving forward if they provide others with the wrong information.  This was the case with this committee group as the wrong person kept responding to my emails and sending me the incorrect information.  From my persona experience, managing all aspects of my life has allowed to me achieve some milestones and goals.

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