[PROMPT] SHARE A STORY ABOUT YOUR BEST LEARNING EXPERIENCE (COULD BE A FORMAL COURSE OR SOMETHING MORE PERSONAL). WHY DID YOU ENJOY IT?



One of the most unparalleled learning experiences was learning ReactJS — a JavaScript library for building user interfaces[2]. In this blog, I will share my experience when I was learning ReactJS in my first software developer internship as well as analyze the learning theory and motivation behind this learning experience.

The learning theory that I underwent was Behaviorism. A behaviorist is an instructor who believes in improving learners’ development through consistent encouragement and positive feedback. Behaviorists would award their students when they do an excellent job as a sign of encouragement and recognition to help them keep up on their learning curve and hard work. My past supervisor was a good example of a behaviorist. He admired a co-op student’s hard work in front of other interns when one accomplishes a certain task.

In my first co-op work term, I was working as a software developer at an e-commerce company in downtown Victoria, British Columbia. My main responsibility was to use ReactJS to develop their e-commerce platform. Nevertheless, ReactJS is a software technology that I was unfamiliar with at that time. I am fully aware that ReactJS is one of the most necessary tools that a website developer should have in their tool kits because it is the most popular web framework for web development [3]. This fact and my co-op project motivates me to start learning ReactJS, however; this learning experience would never happen without support from my supervisor. He did not only allow but encourage all co-op students to spend their first few weeks learning this technology through the real-world projects.

Figure2: Stack Overflow’s 2020 Developer Survey [3]

I started my learning by selecting one of the beginner-friendly components of the e-commerce website to develop. I spent nearly two weeks reading ReactJS documentations, watching video tutorials, and implementing the project. My supervisor consistently provided feedbacks and suggestions on my work to improve my programming style. I discovered many interesting ReactJS techniques to improve my programming style through his feedback. Ultimately, I completed the first project. My supervisor liked the outcome and praise my hard work in learning ReactJS and contributing to the company.



References:

  1. freebiesupply. React Logo. Retrieved from https://freebiesupply.com/logos/react-logo-2
  2. reactjs. React. Retrieved from https://reactjs.org
  3. Michael. Top-4 most popular JavaScript frameworks in 2021. Retrieved from https://elitex.systems/blog/most-popular-javascript-frameworks/