Peer Review for Growth

One of the aspects of the ADL (applied digital learning) program that I have grown to enjoy is the collaboration piece. Being in the same situation with a group of peers that I can lean on for guidance while also supporting has helped me grow in this season. Recently I had the opportunity to review some ePortfolios of my classmates. I was able to see the many creative ways people have made their learning personal to them. I have kept my ePortfolio pretty simple, but I enjoyed seeing some of my peers using their site to highlight their accomplishments on their homepage. This helped me to learn more about the owner of the ePortfolio. This is a piece I'd like to include in mine soon so that my audience can better connect to me, the creator of my content.

I also enjoyed receiving feedback from others. It was nice to see the areas that people enjoyed and complimented, but also important to see where my peers thought I could improve my site to make the experience more enjoyable for my audience. I was able to take some of their feedback and make adjustments with their guidance. For example, some of my images needed to be reformatted. This was something I knew needed to be done, but hadn't figured out how to do that yet. Taking some time away from playing with the settings, then going back with fresh eyes, I was able to make the adjustments necessary. I was also able to make adjustments on how my ePortfolio is viewed on mobile devices. I had mentioned that struggle in a previous blog post, and one of my peers who has more experience with Wix than I do was able to help me so that I could ensure my audience has a positive experience whether they are viewing from a computer or a mobile device!

This whole process of creating an ePortfolio has enabled me to move out of my comfort zone by forcing me to learn a new platform to create and share to a wider audience. In the past, I have stuck with Google Suite products. Everything works together very similarly in the Google world. At first, navigating Wix for my platform was overwhelming! However, I quickly remembered that I didn't need to be a Wix expert YET! I could learn to master basic aspects of adding to my ePortfolio to get the job done, then focus on improving and adding more creative aspects. Looking at my peers products has encouraged me to play with different layouts. Being able to gain new ideas that I hadn't thought about will help me add new dimensions to my own platform.