Thoughts, Fears and Motivations

Why am I doing this course?

I have been asked to try and put my  Thoughts, Fears and Motivations down on paper giving my reasons for doing this course. As this is a personal piece I have chosen to write it in the first person and not the third. 

Firstly Thoughts, when I was younger I didn’t have the opportunity to go to College. As a teenager in Derry in the 80’s it was a bleak time, it was the last recession and there was a general air of why have qualifications when there is no work. So I left school at 16 years old and went on a Government training scheme to get a trade. However the trades were not good to me and I ended up in a garage repairing alternators and starter motors.

I soon got bored and again did a Government training scheme, this time I discovered I had an aptitude for computers. Keeping in mind this was the late 80’s and our top of the range computer had a hard drive that was a whopping 10 megabytes WOW!!! and a new company called Microsoft had just launched something called Windows. I worked in several offices until I started in the Civil Service in 1991, for this job I had to move to Dublin.

I had several positions in the Civil Service over the years but I got to a point in my career where I needed a third level qualification to progress; so I decided it was time to go to College. I was in my early thirties by now and didn’t know the first thing about going to College. The Civil Service run a refund of academic fees scheme so at least I knew I could claim the money back. There was a Bachelor of Business Studies (a Bachelor in BS as my wife jokes) in Human Resource and Industrial Relations that look interesting in UCD. However  I was apprehensive about committing to a four year degree course, then I found a year Certificate course in Business that promised to show what College life was all about. I applied for the course to see what work was involved and to see if I could hack it.

The year flew by but it was tough, the course lived up to expectations and I knew what would be expected of me on the degree course and even more important I would be able for it. I completed the degree and graduated in 2010 knowing someday I would be back in College to complete a Masters Degree.

I changed role in work in July this year (2013) and am now a member of the Staff Training & Development Unit. I explained to my new boss that I was looking to do a Masters and wondered if there was an area he wanted me to work on as part of the process; he immediately identified eLearning. This area has been looked at in the past and identified as the way forward for training. As luck would have it that day I met a friend, whom I had not seen for at least two years, that works in DIT eLearning support office. I told him about my conversation and he suggested a course in DIT. I looked into it and it looked ideal so here I am.

I have stated the course with the expectations of being able to devise, design and deploy training to staff through eLearning. It will utilise the Departments national network and its Intranet to deliver the modules. I am looking forward to seeing what is out there and how it can be utilized to best effect.

The last two paragraphs deal with my Motivations to do the course. As for Fears, I don’t have any for the course; but how I deal with internal bureaucracy with in my Department is a major one. When it comes to the network and using online tools the policies are very strict from a security point of view and I would not like to be hampered by such problems. I will need to see how things progress over the next two years and deal with issues as they arise.