Seeing Ourselves Through Students' Eyes

We have just come to the end of the Advancing Teaching and Learning with Technology course in the teaching certificate programme (CUTL) and assignments are due.  Some participants have kept up with the pace of the course and have completed assignments on time, others have requested extensions to the submission date for a variety of reasons.

Looking back on this the second cohort of the course, I have been reflecting on the differences in the ways in which different participants have experienced and responded to the course.  The course is delivered in a blended format, with all core instruction, readings etc delivered online while face-to-face sessions are dedicated to hands-on workshops to introduce a range of instructional technologies.  Online discussions and other interactive web-based activities are a major component of the course.  Some persons have relished the online forums; the exchange of ideas and experiences and collaborative engagement with the assigned readings have been extensive, rich and thought-provoking.  However, there are those who have struggled to keep up with the pace of the forums, citing, in many cases, a dislike for spending extended periods at the computer, as well as the demands of professional and personal responsibilities which left little time to devote to what some found to be a demanding, even if engaging and meaningful course.

This reflection brought to mind a point made by award-winning author Stephen Brookfield, in his classic book The Skillful Teacher, to the effect that  the most important knowledge teachers need to do good work is a constant awareness of how students are experiencing their learning and perceiving their actions.  This was one of three core assumptions of skillful teaching which Brookfield outlined, the others being that:

• Skillful teaching is whatever helps students learn; and
• Skillful teachers adopt a critically reflective stance towards their practice.

Of course, these three assumptions are intertwined since, teachers often come to a knowledge of what will help their students learn through a combination of factors, including ongoing reflection on the outcomes of past actions, and ongoing solicitation of feedback from the learners themselves.  This latter action, solicitation of feedback, is not always easy and,perhaps for that reason, is often overlooked.  However, if Brookfield is correct, and this is in fact "the most important knowledge teachers need to do good work.., "  then finding ways to make this feedback easy and effective is paramount.  This is where technology can help.

The ready availability of course and learning management systems such as Moodle, offer feedback tools which make it extremely easy for instructors to collect anonymous feedback from students on an ongoing basis throughout a course .  Brookfield suggests that ensuring the anonymity of students' responses to questions we ask regarding their classroom experiences is a "cardinal principle of seeing ourselves through students' eyes", as this is more likely to lead to willing and honest responses. What will also encourage willing responses, he further suggests, is having students witness this regular invitation of anonymous commentary, followed by public discussion with them of the results...adding, "they start to believe that you mean what you say about the value of critical reflection."

Another interesting point Brookfield made in discussing the core assumptions of skillful teaching, is the invaluable lesson instructors can learn from their own return to "student status". He wrote:

"If... we find ourselves regularly in the situation of trying to learn something new and difficult, we can use this experience to gain an appreciation of what some of our own students are going through.  We are provided with an experiential analog of the terrors and anxieties that new learning produces.  As people used to orchestrating others' learning, we probably won't enjoy feeling frightened, embarrassed, and intimidated when we find ourselves in the role of learner.  But if we care about helping out own students learn, the experience of struggling as learners ourselves is a kind of privilege.  It gives us a gift of empathy that helps us adjust what we're doing to take account of students' blockages and anxieties."


So CUTL5106  participants, take note; when you feel like complaining about the demands of the course, see it as the privilege and the gift I try to make it!  And if you use none of the other technological tools that we have been exploring in the course, use the Feedback tool in Moodle/Elearning!