Learning and Technology is a very broad topic, one that we all have at least some experience with, so I was not sure what to expect going into the Symposium. Much of it resonated with my own experiences and values, and also ignited curiosity about topics I hadn’t considered.

       I’m sure it is a common experience when transitioning from student to teacher that people go from assuming that they will improve on the methods of their predecessors to believing that their students would do well to learn more about the challenges and purpose of learning activities and material. Much the same way that new parents suddenly develop an appreciation for the work their parents did, getting a broader sense of the challenges involved in both the economy and the psychology of learning gives me a greater appreciation for the quality of education that I have experienced to date.

       Listening to Catherin Cronin talk about the lack of resources for creating rich video material and the limitations of the material itself (2017, Lay of the Land track) resonated with this experience. When I began teaching, I spent 15-20 hours of work or more for 15-20 minutes of video material each week. The technical skills themselves required hours to develop. I learned, after presenting these videos to colleagues, that this was not a solution that had broad appeal in the industry. The students may have appreciated the videos – they even requested “more of those quick videos” since we never seemed to have enough time in class. However, appreciation is not the end goal of teaching.

       I quickly learned that, just as Cronin points out, the material quickly became outdated in a constantly changing industry, but also, that I was not managing student expectations or fostering SDL skills. Though millennial learners strongly value a professor that is “caring” and “helpful” (Price, C, 2019) it is also important to foster a sense of responsibility in the students for their own learning.

       Dr. Roland VanOostveen touched briefly on the idea of letting students fail in his talk on Fully Online Learning Community Model (2017, Lay of the Land). He specifically used the analogy of a child learning to walk, and how it is important to let them fall. As both an educator and as a parent, this analogy struck me strongly. As parents, we let our children fall when they have built the neck support and awareness of their surroundings to mitigate damage, and we let them fall on a reasonably soft surface before we let them walk anywhere near a staircase. Every child learns to walk at a different speed and the hopeful goal is that most children will be mobile. It is actually quite exhausting letting your children fall in graduating steps, and to continue to balance their trust in you and their trust in themselves. We have to balance our physical and mental resources as parents for the best possible outcome. Sometimes that means putting children in playpens (or sandboxes), sometimes it means using our full attention to monitor them and give emergency help exactly when and where it is needed.

       In Yvonne Armstrong’s talk summarizing her research paper in the final day of the Symposium (2017, End in Mind track), one of her recommendations for training was not to create experiences of failure which are stored in long term memory. It is important to note that the training this recommendation is targeting is simulating high-risk situations. However, it does illustrate a tension between two goals in education. We are not just teaching our students to walk; we are teaching them that they can learn new things even if, and perhaps especially when, they fail. The ideal is to graduate students with an internal locus of control along with hard skills.       

       In my classes, I allowing students to experiment with tools to attain a particular outcome, and attempt to create a low-risk environment for this by giving participatory marks. The challenges are typically at an appropriate level that it is likely that they will find some way, if not the ideal way, of succeeding at the task. However, I expect them to experience mild frustration. I attempt to create this emotional state so that the student is primed to learn the technical skill, but a possible benefit I hadn’t considered is that they become comfortable experiencing mild frustration, which it is an inevitable part of work in the industry. I will revisit these assignments in future with a new perspective.

References

Cronin, C. (2017). MALAT Virtual Symposium, Lay of the Land track. Open culture, open education, open questions

Price, C. (2009). Why Don’t My Students Think I’m Groovy? The Teaching Professor, 23 (1), 7.

VanOonsteen, R. (2017). MALAT Virtual Symposium, Lay of the Land track. Fully Online Learning Community Model

Armstrong, Y. (2017). MALAT Virtual Symposium, End in Mind track. Summary of her research