Last night’s chat with members of the class helped me clarify an idea that’s been banging around in my head for a while. It has to do with the way people think about Education and the idea is epitomized in the following question:
Will this be on the test?
In reviewing the transcript from last night’s chat, one of the themes was, ‘What am I looking for?’ This was evidenced by several lines of discussion like “If I get my work done by Friday, do I have to blog over the weekend?” and “What if I’m out of town?” and the like.
These are good questions and I’m not faulting anybody for asking them, but they really underscore a fundamental point that I have failed to make clear.
This course is about learning. Paying attention to fulfilling the letter of the syllabus and grading rubric is not thinking. That’s gaming. Gaming is possible but the pay off isn’t as great.
So let’s differentiate Between Thinking Like a Learner and Thinking Like a Student:
| Student | Learner |
|---|---|
| What do I have to do for the grade? | What do I think is important? |
| How do I know when I’m done? | Done? How can I be done? |
| What do I need to know? | What haven’t I looked at yet? |
| I’m just here for the grade | I’m here to answer my own questions |
| Wants to know the Right Answer | Knows there are no Right Answers |
There is a Zen koan in here somewhere. Students always worry about grades and seldom get the grades they want. Learners seldom worry about grades but often get higher grades than students.
Some specific answers, therefore, to selected questions from last night:
- What are you looking for in our writing?
- Some evidence of that you are thinking and that your thinking is evolving. If you parrot back what you read, that’s not evidence of thinking. If your outlooks maintain a certain consistency in the face of conflicting or confounding information (which you fail to recognize), that’s not evidence of thinking. Evidence of thinking might be a comparison between something you wrote in the first week and how it changed because of something you read in week two. Evidence of thinking is when you take some idea (like Distance Education) and explore it — taking various perspectives and trying to draw some conclusions. Evidence of thinking might even be taking something you wrote and arguing that your view is right even in the face of some new idea that has been introduced.
- If I get my work done by Friday …
- Your work is never done. The week ends on Sunday noon. If you finish thinking about the things I’ve asked you think (and write about) by Friday, then you’ve missed the point.
- What if I have to go offline and can’t write in my blog?
- So? Go offline. Thinking is not contingent on being online. Consider how you look at the world when you’re not connected to it and write about that when you get back. Writing helps you discover what you’re thinking, but sometimes we all need to “listen to the silence.”
- How do I know if I’m doing it right?
- The first evidence of that is that you’ll stop asking questions like “Am I doing this right?”
Now, relax. This class is not a “normal class.” You can’t get points for giving me what I want. You get points for making me believe you’re engaging in the content and do you THAT by talking to me, talking to the other students, and by talking to yourself. The University needs me to grade you on something and I’ve set up the scheme that lets me grade you from week to week on the degree that you write/read/participate in the course. There are some general goals listed in the syllabus that will be served if you can rise above thinking like a student.
I do recognize how difficult it is, but I also know that each of you — if you apply yourself — can do it.