It's been a heavy week - and it's only Wednesday.
Today we had to give our 15-minute presentations on a subject specialist resource we had designed. It sounded like a reasonably simple assignment, but typically I made my Adult Literacy resource relate to my previous area of expertise, psychology and well-being. James W Pennebaker has long been a hero of mine for proving, in controlled clinical research, that writing about trauma - in a freestyle, but structured way - promote psychological and physical well-being.
The result was I didn't finish writing the presentation and preparing the Powerpoint until late the night before so there was no time to rehearse and I ended up reading from notes - which I'm sure I'll get marked down on. But in a choice between free delivery but losing my place and thread and leaving out important info, and sticking to a script which progressed with clarity and got in all the necessary points, I chose the latter.
This course is making me feel strangely de-skilled in many ways. I've delivered management training, talks, seminars, workshops and creative writing classes for many years; ok, I may not have done so in a technically perfect way, but feedback has always been good and I've always thought that I can get information over to people and relate well to an audience/class. Now I feel like I don't know how to do it right any more at all; that my natural style has been compromised and I may be too old a dog to learn new tricks successfully. When I have presented research reports in the past to an academic audience, there has been no problem with working from notes - in fact it's expected.
I feel the same about writing, after the marking of Module 1 essays - though these are now being re-checked and it has been admitted that they were marked at Level 5 standards instead of Level 4, which this course is.
And yet I'm not impressed with the administration of the course nor the modelling of how to run a satisfactory course for students (not "learners", we've now been told - "students" is college policy). The teaching of our two main tutors has been excellent, but the surrounding admin and support pretty useless.
21 November 2009
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Your DTLLS course sounds far better than some:
ReplyDeletehttp://pgdtllsreflectivejournal.blogspot.com/2009/10/barrier-to-learning.html
Interesting, reflective observations on not uncommon experiences; I've commented on some of the points in more detail at http://www.doceo.co.uk/reflection/2009/11/on-being-called-into-question.htm
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Sean and James. Certainly the post you've put up, Sean, makes the teaching you've been on the receiving end of sound truly appalling. The teaching on our DTLLS course has been excellent until now - when our main class tutor has been dismissed "for not completing his probation satisfactorily". This is mid-term, mid-course with apparently no thought to the consequences for students nor how the teaching, marking, support for us is going to be covered. Incredible!
ReplyDeleteJames, thank you for your post and link. I take on board what you say with interest. It's true you have to go down before you can come up in any new activity and humility is a useful quality at these times. But see above for poor modeling and its effects!