Too tired to talk tonight!

Source of Image: http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w148/indiedancefloor/dog-tired.jpg

Wobbly moment

In discussing online facilitation with a colleague recently, my colleague said: 'I'd rather use any response from me as a fallback rather than a default'.

This caused me a 'wobbly moment' yet again. The question of how much to respond in an online course always arises for me. I think it's particularly important on this course, because of the nature of the subject matter. It seems to me that discussions about reflection and reflective learning might require a different type of facilitation.

On this course I have tried to be an equal participant, although as one of my past posts has indicated I'm not sure how successful this has been. However, I do have the role of facilitator on this course and I interpret this to mean supporting participants in their learning with all that that entails.

So my colleague's post has made me think about the way I interact online and why.

As a facilitator, I try to be 'present' - a 'leader' - not in any hierarchical sense, but in the sense of taking responsibility.

I try to empathise. I know that some participants will have problems with feeling of isolation, exclusion, insecurity, doubt about their personal/academic abilities and so on. I know this because it's exactly how I feel myself.

So I try to be inclusive - to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to enter into dialogue, ideally with other participants as much as, if not more than with me. I try to get a sense of the 'person' behind the screen and try to make personal contact.

Once the course has got going and everyone feels confident with each other, I try not to dominate the conversation and allow participants time and space to respond to each other. There is a difficult tension here between being 'present' and not being dominant. I still don't know how much is too much when it comes to posting. I still waver over how long to wait for others to respond to a post before posting myself. I still can't judge how much silence is beneficial in an online course or when silence becomes detrimental to the learning flow and process. I take each instance as it arises and respond according to my 'gut reaction' at the time.

On most courses I try to draw participants out through the use of open questions and keep the posting of my own opinion to a minumum, although I am aware that on this course, where I have tried to be an equal participant, I have posted a lot more opinion and done a lot less questioning than I normally do. Again, I'm not sure that this has been a successul approach. I hope that even when offering opinion I have been clear that it is only opinion and no better or worse than anyone elses and that there are no right or wrong answers. This is where the role of facilitator and tutor differ. If I see myself as a tutor, then my priority is that I have something to teach. If I see myself as a facilitator, then my priority is to assist the learning process. I know that all through this blog I have been using the words tutor and facilitator interchangeably, but I do see them as different and regard myself as more of a facilitator than a tutor, although obviously there is overlap between the two. I'm not sure whether my actions bear this out.

I also try to be aware of different learning styles and that some participants will learn through 'observing' rather than actively posting. This is difficult to judge online. How do we know whether someone is 'struggling' and needing support, or simply reading, wathing and thinking. 'Waving not drowning' comes to mind.

I suppose ultimately, I hope that a learning community will develop as the course progresses in which each member of the community takes responsibility for contributing to the learning process. Although there may be a core group that drives this process, everyone has a part to play and if the course were longer I would expect the core group membership to change over time.

030309 - I don't think my opinions have changed on this. I have recently facilitated on two online courses and I still always question whether my approach has been appropriate for the context. I suppose I always will!

Source of Image: http://www.dansisland.com/tiles/full/A%20Little%20Shaky.jpg

Issues with this blog

In writing this blog, I had hoped to explore the relationship between facilitator and participant and whether it's possible for a facilitator to be perceived as an equal participant in the learning process. I don't have much time on which to base my current thinking. I was 'absent ' for the middle two weeks of the course and we are still only in the middle of the last (fourth) week, so I'm not sure that my thinking is valid.

I have absolutely no idea how I am perceived - not only by the course participants, but also by the other tutors who I have also not met. Is it possible to ever really know this in a teaching situation? Is it important to know this? Well - yes - if I want to improve my practice.

The reflective writing exercise that I was engaged with last year and that participants are engaged with this year suggests that it's possible to improve our practice through this reflective writing process. By doing this we can explore alternative perceptions, question our own assumptions and identify possible different courses of action for the future. But all this assumes a willingness and ability to really confront ourselves. Is this really possible without the help of others? Don't we need dialogue with others to do this? And what's more, don't we need dialogue based on mutual trust and respect, which takes longer to establish than we have time for in this course.

There seems to me to be a real tension between the need for audience and dialogue in developing our reflective writing processes and the privacy needed in order to feel safe.

I realise now that whilst this blog might be a record of my thoughts about the course, it is certainly not a model of reflective writing and in fact includes little reflection - more it's just a process of highlighting ideas and questions as they arise - which is a normal way of working for me. I would not want to include reflective writing of the type that has been included in the Week 3 exercise for a number of reasons:

- Atkins and Murphy (1993) identify 3 key stages in the reflection process 1) inner discomfort and the experience of surprise 2) critical analysis of feelings and knowledge 3) emergence of a new perspective of the situation. In the last 4 weeks I have experienced these three stages in my life, but not in relation to anything happening on this course - so there has been no need for me to engage with deeply reflective writing in this blog

- I don't yet feel 'safe' enough in the course community to share my reflective thinking on a deep level. I think this would take a longer time than we have had. I have been so impressed by how open and honest people have been in their accounts. They have been braver than me.

- If I were to do any deeply reflective writing, I'm not sure that this is the place to do it.

So I'm not sure that this blog has served it's purpose. I don't feel that in any sense it has served to share my practice with other course participants - the actual discussion forums work better for that. There has been no dialogue here (no comments or response) so I have been writing for myself - which is fine, but wasn't the purpose. This blog feels too detached and separated from where everything is going on (do all journals feel like that?). The one time I posted an extract from it into the journals forum, I didn't get a response. So I am still no further in my understanding of whether or not a tutor can be perceived as an equal participant in the learning process, but I suspect not. Shame!

Since writing this I have started to blog publicly in the 'blogosphere' and I can now see that an audience makes a huge difference to writing, but also that the more open I am, the more feedback I get and the more confident I become in my own ability to communicate. However, it did take me quite a while to feel comfortable in my public blog, so I think my expectations that this could happen in a four week course were unrealistic. I have realised that for me there's a limit to how much I can write just for me without sharing my writing with others. I do have a few private blogs, but I don't write in them anywhere near as much as to the public blogs.

Source of image: http://www.stuffintheair.com/images/fog.jpg

Honesty and autonomy

There is a discussion in the Journals Forum about whether or not it matters if a student fabricates a piece of reflective writing where they are supposed to be talking about an incident drawn from their own practice.

This raises for me the question of the purpose of reflective writing and who owns it.

In their book 'Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education', McDrury and Alterio (p.170) discuss Sumsion's (2000) account of reluctant reflectors. According to this account 'two influences highlighted in this research were lack of student commitment to their profession .... and lack of commitment to reflection'. Under these circumstances a student might well fabricate a piece of reflective writing.

But a student might fabricate their writing for other reasons, not least for maintaining some sense of ownership over their reflective processes and some sense of privacy. If this is the case then I can relate to it and feel sympathy for it.In addition, who's to say that fabricating a piece of reflective writing can't be a powerful learning experience.

Could a piece of fabricated reflective writing demonstrate that the student is fit for practice? I would answer this with another question. Can any piece of writing demonstrate effective practice (as for example in the case of nursing or teaching)? Having a background in teacher training, I would argue that the only way you can determine that a student is fit for practice is to see the practice itself, not the writing about the practice.

Source of Image: http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/965/45005596.JPG

Tutor or Participant?

I have noticed that there has been a change in the way in which I am posting on this course. I am not sure whether this is because I am consciously trying to be an equal participant learner more than a tutor, or whether it's the nature of the subject (i.e. reflective learning) that has brought about this change.

So what is the change? If I read back through my own posts it is evident that I am making far less use of questionning than I would normally do when facilitating an online course. My normal style is to be reserved about offering opinion and instead to ask lots of questions in an attemtpt to include, value and draw out participant opinion.

On this course I feel that I have offered more opinion than I would normally and have done far less questioning. I think if this was a face-to-face course I could ask questions in such a way that it would be obvious that I was asking them because I am interested and not because I am a tutor. Online, it's difficult to know how you are perceived. If I could be sure that I was regarded as an equal participant as well as a tutor (given that this is what I am exploring on this course), then I would be more likely to ask more questions.

So by trying to be an equal participant learner am I short-changing course participants in terms of their expectations of a tutor and of their learning?

Source of Image: http://www.corp.com/QuestionMarks.jpg

Participant or Tutor?

I notice that the question of whether a tutor can also be an equal participant learner, sharing their reflective journal, is now being discussed in the Journals Forum. Whether or not you decide to do this depends on your purpose for doing it. It's been suggested in the Journals forum that we need an audience for our reflective processes and by sharing our reflective writing with our students we are getting that audience. Although this is of course true (or is it? - can we assume that students are interested in a tutor's writing and would bother to read it?), it would not be the purpose - at least, it would not be the purpose for me.

For me there are a couple of reasons for sharing reflective writing with students. The obvious one is to model good practice (once again assuming that the tutor is able to model good practice) - but more importantly the act of sharing reflective writing is a result of a given educational philosophical stance and may be (but not necessarily so) this would also be evident to students.

So for me, I do not wish to be seen as the 'font of all learning' (even if I could be) and would rather be seen as an equal partner in the learning process. This is because I know how much I learn from the learners I work with and also I believe that it is not in a learner's best interests to become dependent on a tutor.

Having said this, I recently signed up for an online Workshop on communities of practice solely because it was being run by Etienne Wenger. It was the fact that he is regarded as a world authority on social learning theory that attracted me to the course. So there is a role for an expert in the teaching position, but I do not think that the expert always has to be the tutor. I think this is also Etienne Wenger's view, which was evident in his self-effacing humility.

I need to do a lot more thinking about this.

Source of image: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/teacher2.gif

End of Week 3

Being away in the middle of the course is not ideal, but I have come back to a rich tapestry of ideas and a wealth of posts to catch up on. The interesting thing is that most of these are in the Journals forum - which is an unmoderated forum. This makes me wonder whether participants/students are better left to just get on with it and follow their own lines of discussion according to their own interests. Of course I know that this is oversimplifying the complexity of the situation, but it does make me question the role of the tutor - and how the tutor knows when to step in and when to stand back.

I suppose that ultimately this is down to professional judgement. I would love to leap into all this discussion and add my own ideas, but given that it has all developed in my absence, my gut feeling is that it would be inappropriate to now start posting.

I think I'll stand back for a few days and see how things develop. If I was a participant on the course and not a tutor, I would definitely be posting responses to the questions raised. So as tutors are we always on the edge of the social learning process?

Source of Image: http://bindweed.com/magicmirror/kaleidoscope-collage.gif

End of Week 1 - Exploring Tensions/Balance

My perspective at the end of Week 1 is that we have had a successful week - but who's to say? This is just my perspective and I can only compare to previous experience and to my own personal expectations. There will inevitably be alternative perspectives.

In setting up this blog, I wanted to explore to what extent I could become and be perceived as an equal learning partner in an online course in which I have the facilitator role and to explore the tensions that naturally arise in online courses, which may extend to face-to-face courses as well.

My role: Am I learning? Yes I am - a lot. There have been so many thought-provoking posts, providing alternative perspectives. Am I perceived as an equal participant? I'm not sure. I doubt it and wonder whether it can be a reality in a tutor/participant relationship. Are there any examples of this in the history of teaching and learning? I will have to explore this further.

I have only received a few direct responses to my own posts and only one challenge, which was great. It really set me thinking. Research shows that it is extremely difficult to encourage constructive criticism (challenge) in the online environment. People are so keen to adhere to Netiquette guidelines that trying to engage with constructive criticism is a bit like 'walking on eggshells'. So here we have the first tension. A tension between social etiquette and moving learning on, whether that tension be between participants or between facilitators and participants. The fact that both are important is the reason that Etienne Wenger in his work on Communities of Practice talks about dualities and not about tensions.

The course: It has been such an interesting week and for me as a participant and as a facilitator/observer, I can see (from my perspective and interpretation) a few tensions/dualities emerging.

1. Peripheral to core participation (Wenger's terminology, which I think is better than insider/outsider). In the whole group we are already beginning to see those who stay on the edges and those who get into the thick of online interaction. This is normal. But how does it feel from the participant perspective? Does being at the core feel like too much responsibility? Does being at the periphery equate to feelings of isolation? Not everyone can be at the core (can they?), neither can everyone be at the periphery (?) so how do we keep the balance so that everyone feels comfortable? Ideally people would be moving between core and peripheral to suit their needs but I'm not sure whether this works in practice.

2. Theory and practice. My perception is that the balance on this course is towards practice, but there are probably some participants who would like more theory. How are we to maintain a balance so that everyone gets a little of what they need? How are we to ensure that practice is informed by theory? Do we need to?

3. Activity and reflection. Many people (me included) have been very active this week. Too much activity can be an issue for learning (my perspective). There was brief mention at one stage about whether a physical space could promote reflection. For me it is the bath (very non-eco-friendly), but it seems to be the only place where I really can stop and 'think'! A shower is just not the same! Short online courses tend to be fast-paced. Perhaps all courses are too fast-paced, and overloaded with content. Space is needed for reflection.

4. Breadth and depth. In the early part of the week the course was very fast-paced and lots of ideas were being added to the forums. It's difficult to know how to get the balance between breadth and depth. Breadth is easier to go for with a fast pace - depth (for me) takes more time. In an article I've recently read by Anne Edwards (2005) Let's get beyond community and practice: the many meanings of learning and participating Vol 16, No. 1 The Curriculum Journal, she writes that

It is not clear how the community of practice metaphor deals with learning something new. It provides a compelling account of learning as socialization into existing beliefs, values and practices, but does not offer an account of how new knowledge is produced..... Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it does not tell us what is learnt, only what is done.

It seems to me that to focus on what is learnt as opposed to what is done, then we need a depth of critical discussion and reflection which will allow time for the constructive criticism and development of ideas. The problem with an online course is that for the online bit to be successful, there needs to be a certain momentum of posts. This rather militates against the 'slow' approach that might be needed for depth of reflection. On the other hand the asynchronous nature of online discussion means that we don't have to respond immediately. We do have time to think and reflect before posting - but we can never be sure whether discussion will have moved on in the meantime.

5. Facilitator and gatekeeper. From what I have learned from Wenger the ideal for a mature community of practice is to have the continuum weighted to the facilitator end. In the early stages of a course my role feels to be at the gatekeeper end. My ideal is that ultimately (and I'm not sure that this is completely possible in a short course), different members of the community take on more or less of the facilitator role according to the context, that learner's take control of their learning, that learning and curriculum are negotiated, that participation is individually determined and that knowledge is socially constructed by the community.

There are of course other tensions, but I need to reflect on them further before posting. I think these will do for now!

(030309) - Looking back I can see that this post was very much influenced by my thinking about a research paper that I was writing at the time. I don't think I have changed my mind about these tensions. If anything, I am more aware of them.

Source of Image: http://www.michellemorrell.com/images/prints/duality.jpg

Emotion and Learning

Emotion and learning has only been touched on so far in the course. I think there is a recognition that this is a very important part of reflective learning and also that as tutors we might need to help students deal with their relationship between emotion and learning, but we haven't gone much further than this in our discussion.

Norman challenged me to include some reference to emotion in my definition of reflective learning and I found it very thought-provoking and difficult to include a reference in my definition that would be meaningful. I am still thinking about it.

Jenny Moon has devoted an entire chapter to emotion and learning in her book and discusses how 'learning about emotion and working with one's actual emotions can tend to become confused'. It seems to me that reflecting on learning can also become very confused by emotions. I have just seen an example of this from a participant on another course I attended recently.

A colleague and I are researching the learner experiences of e-learning on a course on which we were also participants. We are exploring the relationship between learning, community, domain, practice and technology and have just started interviewing course participants.

One of the interviewees felt she had a very negative experience on the course. What is surprising (and it shouldn't really be) is the strength and depth of her emotional response to the course. From our point of view as interviewers it has certainly affected how we feel able to approach her. From my perspective, her emotional response appears to have been so strong that she is unable to consider her learning in any form of detached way, so all her comments and responses are influence by her emotions.

I suspect it will be some time before she can detach herself from her emotions and look at the experience in a more detached way.

Now the question is - does reflective learning help you to deal with your emotional response to learning or not?

(030309) I don't think it necessarily helps you to deal with it - more it helps you to recognise it. This recognition may or may not result in changed behaviour in the future.

Source of Image: http://www.wheelerconnolly.com/photogallery/photo20592/Explosion%20of%20emotion.jpg

Masks

There has been a really thought-provoking thread in the definitions forum - bearing the title 'The mask of reflection. Which face am I to wear today?'

Obviously, if and when we are reflecting, we are thinking about who we are and how we are perceived by others. Lionel in his post writes about this as follows:

For me, at this time, the definition of reflective learning revolves around the symbolic interaction of front and back stage. Reflection is a social attribute, by definition it involves at least two, even if those two are only the I and the me, where the I is the mask I show to others and the me is how others see my mask. The reflection comes as the desire to modify that mask, the concept of me and I as a series of morphing masks, balancing and learning what comes from one into another.

I interpret this to mean that the face I am presenting at any one time, depends on the context. So for example, my mother would not be interested in knowing that I am interested in reflective learning, so I don't present this face to her. For her, because I love her, I am the caring, loving daughter, trying to be whatever it is that will make her happy in her old age.

However, I think there is a limit to the extent to which we can adopt masks and I'm not sure that I believe that we are always wearing one - or maybe I believe that there is a definitive 'Jenny' mask, one that is most like the real me and one that I mostly wear.

I have a clear memory of once meeting someone who I found impossible to recognise. She was a Brazilian, married to an Englishman and their life involved travelling around working in different countries in the world. She had become so adept at adapting to her situation that I really had no sense of who she was. She seemed to have no identity.

I would hope that the metaphor of adoping masks wouldn't lead to this. I would like to think that even if I recognise that in certain situations I adopt certain masks, I still have a sense of who I am, however fragile or misguided this sense might be.

(030309) I'm still not sure that I fully understood the original post.

Source of Image: http://www.dianecoates.co.uk/Images/RecentCommissions/Masks/Masks_06.jpg

Notes that strike a chord

The very best thing about being a tutor is how much you learn or are prompted to learn by participating in a learning environment. There have already been so many posts in the course that have caused me to stop, think, mark, question, puzzle over.

One of these is a post by Helen, who has written:

....'we 'teach' who we are.

I haven't responded to this in the course, because I am not yet ready to. I have to think about it a bit more. Is it true? And if so, do I have to know who I am to be able to teach? As yet I don't have the answers to my own questions, but the question has been raised and by marking it here I will maybe not forget it and return to it later.

Another tension in the teaching situation and in particular in the online environment is that between moving on and holding back. I find I have to be very self-disciplined to only 'speak' when I am ready to and not when it may be expected. Research into teaching shows that teachers 'talk' far more than they think they do and far more than they need to. I know I am often guilty of this.

Source of Image: http://www.rhythmnraga.org/playingguitar.html

Too busy

The overwhelming feeling today ( and I note that word 'feeling', i.e. this is an emotional response) is that I have been too busy.

I have discussed this with John (for anyone reading this blog, John is my husband of 40 years - so if anyone knows how I tick, then he does!). His perspective in discussing how to keep a balance between activity and reflection, is that I am always active/busy, whereas he spends a lot of time doing little (his words and certainly not my perspective).

What I do know is that he can 'switch off' - right off and always has been able to - but I cannot. Once started on a project it is always there in the back of my mind and more frequently at the front of my mind - so a lot of discussions at home at the moment are about reflective learning.

This not being able to switch off means that at the very times when I am most engaged, most interested, most wanting to reflect and learn, I am also at my busiest, which makes it difficult to find space for reflection.

John thinks that you can always find space for reflection if you want to. This comment makes me wonder if we need to be good time managers to be good at reflective learning or whether it's more of an innate ability. Whatever it is, for me there is always a tension between reflection and activity and I think this maybe the case for many students, which may also be domain related - but I'll need to think more about that.

Source of Image: http://www.gapingvoid.com/too%20busy.jpg

Jenny Moon's book

In reading through course participants posts, I am struck by the amount of 'story telling'. Maybe I have noticed this because I have booked to attend Gloucester University's Digital Storytelling conference in May, where we will explore how storytelling can be used to enhance learning and in particular reflective learning. Jenny Moon will be speaking at this conference.

I think we already have some storytellers on the course. Can you learn to be a storyteller or is this an innate ability?

In looking to learn a little more about digital storytelling before attending this conference, I have been searching the web and came across this synopsis of Jenny Moon's book.

A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice

Having read the book last year, it's interesting to see how someone else interprets it.

Source of image: http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/publications/2005/onceuponatime/cover.jpg

Self-censorship

Well, it's happening already. I find myself being very careful about what I am writing in this public blog and editing my writing quite a bit.

Why am I doing this? I think these are the reasons and I might come back later and add to them.

• Despite all my feelings that ideally a tutor is a learner alongside his/her students, this is not necessarily how the tutor is perceived by the student.
• As a tutor I have a responsibility for learners' learning and therefore I need to ensure that this learning isn't knowingly jeopardised in any way by my actions.
• It takes time to build mutual trust and respect between learners be they tutors or students. During this time a cautious approach to the relationship is probably advisable.

But if as a tutor I am finding and may continue to find that I need to be cautious about my reflections in this blog, then how might students feel when they are asked to produce reflective journals as part of their course?

Source of image: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2274/2102981584_aa81e7ab23.jpg

Focus and boundaries

Right at the beginning of Chapter 1 in her book, A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning, Jenny Moon discusses 'focus and boundaries'. She writes on p. 12:

To deal properly with a topic requires focus and boundaries or the discussion will be woolly.

This is a real challenge at the beginning of an online course and also at the beginning of face-to-face courses. The first task on an online course is usually fairly open-ended to allow participants to find their feet and enter the course at a level of their own choosing. This inevitably leads to broad ranging discussion with lots of ideas thrown into the melting point.

From my perspective as a tutor this lack of focus and boundaries and the possible accompanying feelings of 'where are we going?' 'what are the key ideas emerging from discussion?' 'am I missing something?' may be a necessary precursor to the more focussed discussions we will be having later on in the course.

So there is a tension here between needing focus and boundaries for discussion and learning to be effective and ensuring that participants have sufficient autonomy to feel comfortable in the learning environment.

From my experience the range of discussion in the first week of an online course can often seem daunting. As is well known by authors of online courses, this obviously has implications for course design and for the facilitator's role.

Source of Image: Krola Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/charola/318245761/

Catching up

Being away at the start of a course doesn't suit my learning style - I feel as though I have been running to catch up today - but the advantage of an online course is that it does offer this type of flexibility.

Looking back over the blog that I kept to accompany the course when I was a participant last year, I can see that my posts reflect what you would expect of a participant at the beginning of an online course. The two main areas of concern in the initial stages were, for me, using the technology and wondering how I was perceived by other course participants and by the facilitators. This will be the same in face-to-face courses, but there is no personal contact with all its associated visual cues to give you any clues as to what people might think of you in an online course.

As a tutor these concerns are not very different. When the online environment is new to me I might still have concerns about whether I will be able to handle it and I almost always learn something new about technology every time I work on a course. Inevitably I also always wonder about how I am perceived. This is not something unique to students.

I remember last year feeling that my posts were not as reflective as those of some of the other participants. At the beginning of the course it seemed that I could recognise reflective writing when I saw it, but not so easily produce it myself. However, the course did help me to clarify my understanding of what we mean by deeper reflection, and helped me to recognise that I won't always be reflecting at a deep level.

For now, I am still in catching up mode - not so much physically, but in my head.


Source of image: http://activerain.com/image_store/uploads/9/2/8/1/8/ar119238033681829.JPG

Why this blog?

I am setting up this blog with a little hesitation. I have kept a few blogs before. I have written travel blogs for my family and friends, I have an ongoing personal, private diary blog, I have a blog that I am writing to accompany a research project and I have in the past kept a blog as a reflective journal to accompany a course - as is recommended on this reflective learning course - but I was a student, not a tutor on that particular course.

I have not before kept a blog to share with students on a course on which I am a tutor. So this is very much an experiment.

I always consider myself to be a learner on the courses on which I teach, but there is a tension between participating as a student and participating as a tutor/facilitator on a course. By openly sharing this blog with all course participants I hope to be able to 'unpick' this tension a little and reflect further on my role as an online tutor. I think there will also be other tensions that will become apparent as the course progresses. I am looking forward to the start of the course and being able to explore these further.

Image source: http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=62624&rendTypeId=4