On Being Held Back

You inadvertently sometimes overwhelm others with too much information and postings online. This is an aspect that you have to [sic] aware of and to manage to ensure that you do not discourage others.

Earlier this year I was involved in a series of Online Learning Activities for the PGCert course where I was obliged to interact, for a four week period, with other staff members undertaking the course. This was not therefore a teaching situation but rather a learning one, where we were being asked to demonstrate our ability to “link theory to practice in aspects of online teaching, learning and assessment”. If the above feedback is anything to go by, these activities were also intended to gauge our skills in interacting with each other as a means of determining our abilities in supporting online learning. But since when did someone’s skills in learning say anything about their skills in teaching? This assumption is probably one of the biggest fallacies in all of education.

During these Online Learning Activities I was grouped with staff from the Faculty of Nursing (one of whom had previously publicly accused me of “thinking too much”), the Faculty of Management and the Faculty of Technology. Although these were all perfectly pleasant people, I shared nothing in common with any of them and it should have been immediately apparent to the tutor that I was having significant ideological difficulties from the outset with the “Ground Rules” exercise and the compliance culture which it sought to engender.

Until recently I thought that this was all there was to it: a simple case of cultural difference (critical culture that is) but I’ve now realised that there was something else at work. Of all the staff undertaking these online activities I was the only one who had voluntarily signed up for the PGCert course, everyone else was obliged to do it because they were new to teaching. The other members of the group were doing the course because they had to, whereas I was in the more privileged position of doing it because I wanted to (it’s the intrinsic/extrinsic divide that I spoke of a few posts back). So when the PGCert online activities began I must admit that I was really excited and was probably much more prepared than I needed to be.

In the studio context, if a student dominates the discussion we tend to politely ignore them and they usually get the message. But what do we do with over enthusiastic students online? Well, if they’re simply posting loads of half interesting material then it’s unlikely to discourage the other students, but if they’re clearly advanced, and there’s no way to offer them a more advanced opportunity, it’s probably best to contact them privately, reassure them that what they’re doing is above the level expected and ask them to tone it down a little so that the “others” don’t become discouraged. But it’s also important to provide such students with a substitute challenge in order to nurture their potential for growth. In other words, it’s not the job of the student to know to hold back, but rather the teacher/moderator’s job to ensure that the learning situation is maximised as much as possible for everyone.

But let’s change the subject slightly and turn to the students I teach. At the moment, I’m running an online activity where second-year students are asked to organise regular pre-tutorial meetings with their peers and to keep an online record of all tutorials and preparatory discussions. I’ve noticed that the more committed students tend to hold themselves back from posting too many more posts than their peers. It’s pretty obvious that they don’t wish to intimidate their peers by visibly widening the gap between them. Presumably these students would be seen by my PGCert tutor as examples of sensitive moderation, but from my perspective they’re simply holding back and loosing out as a consequence, whilst also reinforcing their peers’ lack of engagement.

In my experience, conformity is a far more corrosive, easily overlooked and difficult to manage factor in education than over-enthusiasm.