Final thoughts

Well, here I am penning my last post of this blog for the class. It’s been an intense and, I hope, educational year for all of us (we learn too, you know!) Please read my words and I would be so grateful if you could add some words of your own. You may not wish to write as much as I have or follow the same cyclical structure, but your comments would be appreciated all the same, good, bad or indifferent.

We (lecturers) should, I believe, always be prepared to do the tasks which we ask students to do. So, in that spirit, I aim, right here and right now, to write my own reflections and evaluation of the year.
Structure is (arguably) the most important aspect of anything concerning Communication, so here is how I have put my words together:

- Introduction – motivation and expectations
- Positive experiences
- How my course could be improved
- Evaluation of my own performance
- Conclusion – what I have learned

Mark's Reflective Words

So, to start, what were my motivation and expectations at the beginning of the year? (Ah yes, the old, trusty question to get a written piece kick-started). Well, beside my big, fat salary (aye right!), my motivation was, as always, to create a supportive but challenging learning environment to allow students to develop. That all sounds a bit woolly but I suppose that’s what teaching is for me. Sometimes the word “teach” is too blunt an instrument for my liking.

My expectation was that I would be working with a group of able and interesting students who would be ready for a challenge. I wasn’t wrong. This is my second year teaching on this Access course at Stevenson, so I was, in a sense, still quite new as well. Not to teaching, not to Communication, not even to the Units, but to a cohort of this nature. I think we were all up for the challenge and, although, tough at times, I am certain we all learned a great deal along the way.

It’s impossible to predict how a class will gel, but from very early on it was clear that you all worked and, importantly, learned very well together. This intra-class dynamic is crucial to the development of a positive learning environment - it was always a pleasure to walk into your class.

This brings me to my positive experiences. To be honest, the positive experiences are really too numerous to mention. One of the most fundamental factors in teaching, I think, is developing positive relationships with learners. I feel that I was lucky in developing such relationships with each and every one of the class. So, my primary positive experience is the sum of all these relationships. I also feel that the yearbook we put together was an amazing journey. I was editor, time manager, encourager, photography assistant, liaison officer with the DTP crew, you name it and boy was the result a cracker! I really hope you enjoyed the experience and the end product. Next year's group has a great deal to live up to, make no mistake about that. And I thought LAST year's was a belter!

But what about improvements? (By the way, I hope you are all paying attention to my paragraphing and signposting). We always need to be aware of how things could be improved. So what about improvements in things that I have control of (and this segues into the evaluation of my own performance)? Well, that’s trickier as it requires a degree of self-criticism.

I suppose I’m asking myself "would I do anything different?" Well, I think I might time or pace assessments in a different way next year. I was very conscious of the amount of assessments that you needed to get through this year. I made a conscious effort to space the assessments out, but maybe I would have done both reading together, both listening together and so on. The reason I didn't was to avoid lots of assessments at the one time but I am happy to be led by your individual comments on the assessment pattern.

Deadlines. I have no doubt that I will be getting first drafts and remediated work in from some students right up to the final knocking, which on a personal level, does annoy me a little, certainly a raised eyebrow... Should I have failed every student who didn’t make the deadlines I set? Hmmm, perhaps, but is that the spirit of FE? What I can note is that having taught and managed undergraduate and postgraduate courses at university, I know without a shadow of a doubt that universities will be stricter on making deadlines. Maybe I need to go on about that even more next year. (Already I can see the rolling-eyes of students I haven’t yet met). Joking aside though, meeting deadlines is an important part of all aspects of life.
Most of you were excellent at time management, so well done to those learners in that bracket.

So, what have I learned? Well, amongst other things I’ve learned how to tie some useful knots, make hearty Highland soup, bread, beer, Moravian stars, know what my name is in Japanese, how to play a successful game of Hearts, you get my drift! I’ve also learned (or re-learned) that if we’re coasting along then we’re probably not learning a lot. But when we feel we are on the very edges of our comfort zone, then, possibly, we are learning. That’s what learning feels like. It’s not always a pleasant feeling at the time - but it seems worth the discomfort in retrospect. This is an important thing for us as lecturers to remember. We force students out of their comfort zone a lot. How often do we move out of ours?

I always like to think that one of my strengths as an educator is my time management and feedback skills. This takes a lot of time and effort to get right, so hopefully this is an area where you feel I have given you my very best attention. Oh, and a light peppering of humour never hurts either I always feel!

I have spent a lot of time putting this blog together too and have really enjoyed the experience.

Another way of self-evaluating for me as a lecturer is asking the simple question "what did my students learn?" One way of getting a measure of that is by asking you to comment on the blog, e mail me, fill in the end of unit questionnaires etc. and I look forward to your comments.

It was apparent from informal and formal mechanisms that the oral presentation delivery was the biggest fear for many students in the beginning. Oral presentation teaching is one of my passions of all the different areas of communication I teach, so it was refreshing to listen to so many amazing talks. The collegiate approach shown by you as a class, the expertise of the PP slides and the question and answer sessions were really entertaining at times. For me, everybody has raised their level of performance as the year has progressed and I do hope in the future when you wow the University bods that you remember the importance of structure, rehearsal and organisation!

So, to finish (and I just love cyclical structures), let's go right back to a question we started with at the very beginning of our time together in September: what is the purpose of education and communication? No need to reply, but I wonder has anyone changed their mind on that one …

Take care,

Mr H