Transformative Learning Reflection

The most transformative learning experience I can think of from WRI60 would probably be watching the TEDx Talk video from Douglas Smith in Week 4. In that video, the wildlife biologist discusses the idea of land or nature having "intrinsic value" in itself. This isn't something that I had ever stopped to consider before, and I think it helps explain a lot of why certain people don't treat animals very well or don't seem to care about what happens to the environment. It totally changed my view of literally the whole world around me. Not everything needs to exist for humans' sake or for the sake of any other species. Nature should have a fundamental right to simply "be".

When I saw that same term, "intrinsic value", crop up again in a scholarly research article I was reading, I knew it was important, so I made sure to include it as a concept within my Advocacy Project when discussing the solutions sections and ways to change our culture around animal rights.

The other transformative learning experience I had was when I was researching that same article. This course was my first time using Google Scholar and EBSCO Host, and I was shocked by how easy both of them were. Researching was honestly easier to do than writing the Tweets, and I'm really glad to have this in mind for future classes where I will need to perform other research. It's good to know that all one really needs to do is go to a database website and plug in pretty general terms in order to be met with some very interesting research articles. In a way, it wasn't that different from performing a regular Google search, especially when using Google Scholar.

That being said, I definitely had some issues with time management. Because of my work schedule and my other classes, I would binge ALLL of the weekly assignments on Tuesdays (and then not return to the class until the next week), which often took up essentially my entire day. This wasn't great for my quality of work (probably), and it certainly wasn't good for my health since I was sitting for so long, but I didn't really have any other choice. However, I think this will have more of an effect on my future course selection choices than it will my study habits. Maybe I should just take more lower-intensity in-person classes.

I also had major issues with technology. I did not have access to a working laptop computer until Week 6, and until then had to do everything on a little iPad in order to stay on top of work. This was.... really awful, to say the least (especially all the Wix stuff which would always crash and reload itself) but fortunately I was eventually able to buy myself a shiny new MacBook computer which I am now using to type this out. Therefore, I don't foresee this ever being an issue again.