Where do I fit?

Should I make posts alongside the participants or not? I don't think I ever run an online course without this cropping up. I know what the problems might be - it can intimidate people, or participants can think that what I do is what's expected - whereas in reality I am hoping for as many alternative perspectives as possible. There has been plenty of research to show that an overactive online tutor can be inhibiting. However, I really don't see myself as the kind of teacher/tutor depicted in this image of Doris Day at the blackboard - and haven't done for years.

I much prefer this kind of image

but I sometimes wonder if it's too idealistic

- it could be interpreted as abdicating responsibility and it also assumes that participants share an understanding of this sort of relationship between tutor and learner. 

There must be a middle line somewhere but it's not always easy to achieve.

Source of images: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/original/teacher-doris-day.jpg

http://basreus.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/people3.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

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

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