Student stories
An education pioneer in the digital era: Chengxi's story
Chengxi Li had become disillusioned with her studies. She was halfway through a Master of Professional Accounting when she realised she’d made a mistake. But, out of that experience she found a new passion for teaching and learning. Chengxi was the first full-time student to enrol in CDU's innovative Master of Digital Learning Futures. Here's her story.
Accounting wasn’t my thing. [Taking this course] might be one of the best decisions I’ve made
After realising that Accounting wasn't where her passion truly laid, Chengxi started looking into possible alternative career paths and came across the Master of Digital Learning Futures at Charles Darwin University; a course for current and would-be educators working in the digital learning space.
“I became the first full-time student,” she tells us.
The Master degree teaches graduates how to use and evaluate digital learning tools for the education sector. It's a cross-disciplinary course that includes a selection of core education subjects, as well as elective units in new media design, web development and systems management.
For Chengxi, the course spoke to a relatively newfound interest in teaching. As an undergraduate, she had participated in a program run by the Chinese government that placed student volunteers in rural areas throughout western China.
“I was the volunteer teacher in a middle school located in a remote and poor village,” she says.
Development of technology or the internet can help to provide a better society with a more equal allocation of all kinds of resources.
The experience gave her an insight into the disparity between access to educational resources in metropolitan and remote areas. Chengxi thinks the kinds of skills taught in the Master of Digital Learning Futures can go a long way in addressing the problem.
“The development of technology or the internet can help to provide a better society with a more equal allocation of all kinds of resources to everyone,” she says.
“One of my initial goals from this course is that I will be able to design some products that can provide sufficient education resources to remote areas with a reasonable and affordable cost.”
Chengxi is positive about her experience in the course: “I think it might be one of the best decisions I’ve made,” she says.
Ready to find your new world? Study Education at CDU your way, with options to study online, on campus, part time or full time.
Written by EducationHQ News team and originally published in the October 2017 edition of Australian Teacher Magazine. Reproduced here with permission from the authors.
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