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