What compels a 40 plus-year-old female professional to return to her Alma mater 18 years after graduating? The answer is threefold.
As a leader in professional development, I know and understand that staying stifled in old practices and fixed mindsets can cause businesses to languish. The way businesses and organizations educate and train employees to advance along their career paths continually changes. That said, my most significant obstacle in 2018 was becoming “21st century capable”. Despite twenty years of activism and professional work, I realized that if I was going to be successful in the latter part of my career, I needed additional skills. So in the Fall of 2018, I enrolled.
Initially, I applied to the Agnes Scott A Digital Communication and Writing Masters of Arts degree program because I believed it would assist me in leveraging and aligning my skill sets and talents professionally as I sought to obtain the skills, knowledge, and experience to become a Chief Learning Officer. When I enrolled, my employer at the time was seeking to move our professional development and training to a technology platform that would engage multiple educational leaders in quality on-demand leadership training and development. I was promoted shortly after enrolling but has since transitioned. Secondly, I believed skills that I would acquire in web site design, technical writing, social media, and digital design methodologies would increase my ability to positively serve my community through volunteerism. The third and most important reason for my enrollment, was my belief that the course work and electives were diverse enough that I would gain the knowledge and expertise needed to launch a nonprofit, website, and blog promoting a fictional Afrocentric female entitled Melanated Pearl as the public interface. Armed with new knowledge, I officially launched the nonprofit, Melanated Pearl Corporation in November 2018.
Although I found all the coursework meaningful, the following courses were the most influential in my professional development.
- Transmedia introduced me to transmedia storytelling as a form of communicating ideas across a range of digital delivery platforms. I learned to produce unique but connected stories for diverse audiences and for multiple purposes, including entertainment, marketing, and social change. I identified and analyzed the ways in which themes acquire a new aesthetic and social significance as distinct stories are developed for different media.
- The Critical Communication course helped me examine the multifaceted role of communication in the formation of social bonds, identities, and communities in digital spaces. The course drew on insights from rhetorical theory, visual rhetoric, performance studies, public memory studies, critical cultural studies, film studies, and audience analysis (demographics and psychographics) to understand how communication works in digital environments.
- The Visual Thinking and Digital Design course taught me how to resolve visual problems while implementing line, texture, color, spatial illusion, materiality, and compositional frameworks. The course focused on the design process and conceptual development relating to web and mobile platforms.
- The Web Writing course covered the principles of writing and editing for the Internet. I learned coding, the vocabulary and technology of the Internet, the features of the user-centered text, and how to articulate optimal technical platforms for specific uses and audiences.
Thinking ahead, I will continue to serve as the President and Chief Learning Officer (CLO) at Melanated Pearl Corporation. I look forward to using my new digital communication expertise to move the organization forward by promoting knowledge management, instituting effective programming and training, directing large scale change management, overseeing, and instituting the latest technology to market and promote the brand. As I sharpen my skill set, I look forward to incorporating the Core Learning Principles Used by a CLO specifically; Instructional Design, Mobile learning, Microlearning, Social learning, Blended learning, Gamification, and Learning Management Systems.
Completing the Masters of Arts program in Writing and Digital Communication helped me develop the necessary skills in website design, technical writing, social media, and digital design methodologies, required to launch and manage the Melanated PEARL Corporation.
