Hello, my name is Marina McLaren. I am twenty-two years old, and I am currently finishing up my BFA in Theatre. I am very interested in education, particularly using drama or theatre as an educational tool. My goal is to become an elementary school teacher, and I will be applying to the elementary education PDPP at UVic after I finish my degree. I currently working for two different out of school cares as a leader, and I am really enjoying learning how to lead and teach through first-hand experience.

I started my degree in 2020, so my entire first year of university was online. Some of my classes were asynchronous, but most of them were synchronous. It was a hard year, because I felt disconnected from my peers, and since it was my first year, I felt very scared and alone. However, I was amazed at the ability of technology to allow us to learn from a distance, especially in a degree like theatre, where distributed learning seemed like a difficult challenge.

One thing I noticed during this completely online learning period, was that digital literacy was a very important skill to possess. Many students and professors, had to improve their digital literacy skills quickly in order to keep up, which was frustrating. However, the students who were already digitally literate were able to excel. Thinking about my first year causes me to wonder how we can all access resources to become more digitally literate, because as Shauna Begley reminds us in her Ted x talk: “Be confident that if you are not digitally literate today, it is entirely possible for you to be so in the future.” It is possible for anyone to learn, so how can we make digital learning more accessible? These are questions I do not yet have the answers to, but I hope I will by the end of this course.

When I think about different modes of learning, there are different reasons why I like or dislike each one. For instance, face-to-face learning offers community and connection, which can help build confidence for the learners as they build friendships with one another and help each other solve problems. But there are also reasons why online learning can be a very effective mode. For example, this semester my schedule is so busy that I don’t have time in my schedule for very many face-to-face classes. Since I have the option to take online courses, I can fit everything into my schedule without issues. As for the pros and cons of asynchronous versus synchronous learning, I think that it is very dependent on the learner; some learners do very well will self-paced and independent work, while others struggle more if they do not have the structure of scheduled lectures or lessons.