It’s a good thing I lent my brain out to a co-worker this week. If I had it it would be turning to jello and leaking out my ears right about now. I’m working on my final paper for my Psych class *yay me* and will have two more assignments due before the final exam. *boo hiss* Next week I’ll be frantically writing my final paper for my Enviro Chem class before prepping for my exam.  It’ll be very busy around here for the next few days as I’m feeling very unprepared this semester.

Aside from paper writing my biggest source of school related stress of late is that I’ve yet to manage to book my final exams.  I register for them two months before they are to occur and my exams get shipped out to the Base Personnel Selection Office (BPSO) for me to write. I then have to call the BPSO to arrange to sit the exams on days that fall within the pre-set exam week.  I’ve been calling the BPSO for a while now in order to arrange my exams that will take place three short weeks from now and have yet to manage to get through.  Normally if I don’t speak to a live person I’d just leave a message and a clerk would quickly return my call to set the dates.  I’m starting to get worried since multiple messages have been left and I’ve yet to receive a response from anyone in the office.

Last night I emailed the exam co-ordinator to ask if they could assist me in getting the arrangements made and specifically noted that this is not normal behaviour for the office. Based on past experience I would have expected someone to have contacted me days ago. Unfortunately for me, the only contact information I have for the exam co-ordinator is via email and I didn’t receive a response from them today *sigh* Since I live within 100kms of a base I have to complete my exams there and can’t have them proctored by someone at work – despite my co-workers many generous offers to do so.

Here’s hoping the phone will ring with news soon.  I’m beginning to feel a bit stalker-ish with the numbers of calls I’ve made to the BPSO of late.

A long time ago in a company far, far away I developed technical and customer service oriented training programs.  Had a nice spiffy title – Instructional Designer – and spent a lot of time doing on-site program analysis before settling down and scribbling planning like mad. My boss described me as a gut instinct developer.  From the beginning I could apply the theory without actually knowing the ins and outs of the language associated with the field.  Despite falling into ID after way too much time in the tech support/training worlds, I really enjoyed learning about the field and developing my skills.  I even suffered through completed years of classes at the local university to increase my knowledge of theory and learn the language.  I have a nice pretty certification to show for it.

My ego (and boss) liked to think I was good at what I did.  I built a reputation for delivering a solid product. It also didn’t hurt that I loved to travel.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered that I wasn’t getting all my needs met at zee giant corporation and accepted a position in a support role at a local college.  The downside of this was that, without significant formal education, I would need to complete a few degrees in order to return to the type of work I’d done – and loved – in the past.  Ergo, the return to university and constant whining that appears on my blog of late.  For now I help implement and support eLearning programs.  IDs do the heavy lifting and I help make their vision a reality.

Sometimes their visions appear as kaleidoscopes.  It can take weeks to put all the pieces together.

The bright side is that once completed we can replicate the original course (manually) in a matter of hours.  This turned out to be a good thing when late this afternoon we discovered that the LMS the course was developed in wasn’t compatible with the LMS the course was going to be delivered in.  EEP!  No quick replication through backup restores could save us.  Thankfully all the heavy lifting had been completed last week and the manual rebuild of the site in the new LMS was completed in 3 hours.  Yay!

Life, and work, is so much easier when you have a plan mapped out and can follow it.

I’ve always been a fan of informal learning. Curiousity and all that. I love reading and exploring. Libraries provide near instant access to a wealth of available published data through digital catalogs and access to online peer-reviewed journals. The Internet provides us with excellent methods to connect with experts and engage in conversations. Conferences provide access to alternate opinions and other’s constructions. I find I learn more from conversations with others in my fields of interest than I ever have struggling through a formal learning environment and reading preselected textbooks. Conversations – written and spoken – provide an opportunity for exploration of our own constructions and biases.

Unfortunately for me, the world requires we jump through hoops and prove we’ve learned something in a more formal manner. Otherwise known as *ptooey* credentialism.  Of late I’ve come to believe that formal education is more about biulding and maintaining social class systems than it is about exploring and constructing new knowledge on an individual basis.

I, as always, struggle with the concept of learning in a classroom (face-to-face or online) environment.  While I’ve discovered that I prefer an online environment to a face-to-face setting – mostly because it provides ample time for reflection and forces me to explain my core beliefs and understanding in a written method – I still balk at some of the more formal constructs that are included in instructor led courses.

Twice since I’ve returned to university I’ve encountered profs who assign a reading or assignment and pose a broad topic question for which we are to provide a response.  No other instructions are provided and, up until I receive feedback, reading outside sources is not expressly forbidden at the onset of the assignment.  Both times I’ve received feedback indicating that it’s not appropriate to go outside of the assigned readings and incorporate other materials into the responses.  Once I was told that I’d “over researched” a paper because I’d included three outside references in it. Most recently I was advised that by encorporating the research/theory of an individual not mentioned in the text or assigned reading in my response that I’d gone off topic.  My error? I cited an alternate model of another researcher in the field (Ross) to help define my position.

Confused?  Me too.  I’m still attempting to understand how it can be possible to “over research” a topic simply by seeking alternate points of view on which to base my opinion.

This attitude towards learning and assignments strikes me as extremely detrimental to learning.  To me, it appears to assume that the learner has no previous knowledge of a topic, or no ability to find alternate sources on which to base a new construct, and is entirely reliant on an all-knowing specialist for direction and substance.

And yet, as students in a formal learning environment, we are dependant on our profs.  Not necessarily for our knowledge, but for grades upon which future dreams (i.e. access to Grad school programs) may be dependant.

I’ve yet to fully comprehend why formal education, at least in the undergrad level, is so structured and unbending. Have we not yet reached a point where informal or constructivist learning is accepted outside of Grad school?

There is one bright spot in all this; I have this prof again next semester.  As I’m learning his expectations of his students I’m learning what I need to do to fare better in his future classes.  Of course, that begs the question, how ethical is it to “jump through a profs hoops” rather than following one own path to learning?

In truth, what I am learning in these situations is when and how to subvert my own needs to search out alternate research and construct my own beliefs about a topic in order to parrot the beliefs of the instructor.  Honestly, what type of learning is that?

Got some good news in the mail today.  My letter of permission arrived from my university that will allow me to register in a STATs class at an alternate university for the winter semester.  Credits and grades earned for the class are guaranteed to be accepted when I apply to transfer them into my Home university.  Now all I need to do is come up with the $$ to pay for the class.

And finish the two papers currently haunting my desktop.  My fantasy life says they’ll be completed before Friday, but we all know how detailed my fantasy life can be…

The fifth annual International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL) conference was held in Edmonton last week and I took some time out of my vacation and studies to attend.  I attended partially because (as a student working full-time) I don’t expect to have another chance at attending a conference of this nature again anytime soon but also because the conference had come highly recommended by a number of individuals who’s knowledge and expertise I respect.

I’m not sure what I expected.  Once upon I time I was a frequent attendee at tech conferences – mostly of the Microsloth/Novell variety.  Thrown in the odd WebCT conference – which doesn’t easily fall under an educational or tech conference label – for fun and you’ve pretty much got the extent of my conference background.

On the bright side I had been warned that an Ed. conference was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.  Having survived the 4 day journey I’d have to say I agree with this assessment.

For those who don’t know, the ISSoTL conference focuses on the development of scholarship in teaching and learning.  Of course, everyone has a different definition of what that means.  Thus the interesting conference presentations.

So what did I really learn at ISSoTL?

• My opinions on learning and the use of technology to support learning are far stronger than I’d realized.  I’m perhaps less open and flexible when it comes to considering others philosophies of education, teaching, and technology use in education.
• When a presentation goes off the rails, it really goes off the rails.  A portion of ours did.  It started well but ended badly after the presenters swapped roles.  Our secondary presenter appeared to have forgotten the entire theme of the conference and spent the time talking about what he/she/it does for a living rather than how we incorporate SoTL into our development process.
• Far too many people seem to have forgotten who their audience is.  In our case, attempting to design courses to meet the perceived expectations of millennials completely misses our target audience and sets us down the wrong path.
• Pedagogy is not always driving technology use.  People are still getting caught up in the “ooh, that’s shiny, lets add it” stage.  Again, I believe this is tied to having lost, forgotten, or completely ignored the audience.
• I’m tired of repeating “just because we can doesn’t mean we should” when it comes to technology. Please don’t misunderstand my comments. I love technology.  But we have a duty to ensure that courses are accessible and that we’re using the right tool for the job.  A carpenter isn’t going to use a Skil saw to pound in a nail.  We shouldn’t be using Second Life to deliver PPT presentations.  Better tools, with lower digital requirements, already exist for this function.
• Undergraduate students don’t typically attend conferences such as this one.  The few students I met at ISSoTL were all grad students (Master’s or Ph.D).
• There are some amazing and generous educators in our world.  I’ve had a number of conversations that have really forced me to rethink my position on a number of topics and a few great opportunities to learn from others far more knowledgeable than myself.

As for the sessions themselves, approximately 50% had me wanting to pull my hair out in clumps while the other 50% gave me lots to reflect on.  One disturbing comment I did hear in a session led by U of A profs was that it was the duty of the specialist (i.e. Prof) to give knowledge to students.  UGH!  That goes so against my beliefs surrounding informal learning and my constructivist leanings that I can’t even describe the rock that sank to the bottom of my gut when I heard the statement.  And yes, it was repeated later.

Then again, there was a lot of sage on stage behaviour displayed during the presentations.  If this is the quality of delivery that students receive in the classroom and is celebrated at Ed. conferences, I weep for the students.

For an alternate view of the conference check out Raj Boora‘s ISSOTL posts [here & here].