Sarah Jones' Diary

Week two
Well, here we go again – second night of course. This evening went really fast and we packed a lot in.

It was a good laugh. When we went in, J said she was going to give us each a sealed envelope and in the envelopes there were 6 questions we had to find the answers to. We had to come back in half an hour. We were not allowed to open the envelopes until we had left the room.

These were my questions.

Well off I trotted and got through about 4 but then I got completely stuck. Was sitting wondering what to do next when Lars came over and said he was stuck as well. No one else was around so we had a quick look at each other’s questions. Two of my questions were the same as his and one of them was a question I hadn’t been able to do so I copied his answer. The others were different but I managed to work out one of his so it was a fair swap. Then Ludger arrived and we started giggling and he said he was stuck so we cheated again and swapped answers.

OK – then we went back in and J started to ask HOW we had gone about finding the answers, not what the answers were but ways we had learned them. Then she wrote them all down – there were loads. We found out that everyone had two questions in common with each other person so we looked at all the questions and between us we had found out over 30 things in as many minutes.

Then J pointed out that she hadn’t taught us anything. We had just found out things on our own. All she had done, she said, was to structure the activity. And we had used all those methods people use to learn ‘naturally’ or informally.

She said (Very Important Learning Point)
“An awful lot of learning goes on all the time in the absence of a teacher”

….and added, I thought rather cynically,

“…and an awful lot of teaching goes on in the absence of learning”

She said the real job of a teacher was to ‘Create a learning environment’ (more jargon) and harness and develop all those ways that people learn all the time even when they are not in a classroom. Even better is if we can capitalize on ‘informal learning’ and make it explicit as part of the evaluation process. Whatever that means.

Then we started talking about what had happened from the time we had gone out through the door. No one had shown anyone else their questions and we were totally silent though J had only told us not to open them until we were outside. I admitted I’d cheated and asked Lars. J said she hadn’t told us we had to do it on our own. True. But I assumed we had to, so did everyone else.

Then she asked why no one had asked her because, as she pointed out, she had the answers to most of the questions when she wrote them. Everyone said that would have been cheating too.

The J said like most adult learners, we were conditioned by our previous learning experiences in school and college etc to think there were legitimate and illegitimate ways of learning. Like there were rules to learning – you mustn’t ask other people because that’s cheating. QED - there will also be ‘luggage’ about evaluation and assessment.
She reckoned this was a big barrier when you teach adults because you have to help them unlearn the rules. As she pointed out, in everyday life you ask people all the time.

That rung bells! Last year I was trying to get a mortgage to buy my flat and I racked my brains trying to remember some Social and Life Skills lesson we had in school when I was about 14 about mortgages. Couldn’t remember a single thing (guess it didn’t seem very relevant at that age!) ‘Course what I actually did was go along to a mortgage advisor I found out about by asking around friends and then he told me everything I had to know and do – and I had a quick look on the web as well.

So J said (another Very Important Learning Point)

Rule bound teaching produces rule bound learning

(I’m getting to quite like these slogans – should have button badges made!)

Anyway, why are we doing all this we ask? What the hell has it got to do with evaluation?

J said anything which helps students’ understanding of how they learn is all good as it gives them the beginnings of a vocabulary for participation in the evaluation process – it also starts teaching them diagnostic skills.

So (VILP again)

Review and evaluation is an integral part of learning not just a summative activity.

Students identifying and understanding a variety of ways in which they learn is a prerequisite to evaluation.

Then we had a quick coffee – everyone was buzzing a bit. Last exercise she said we were going to do a debriefing of what we had just done. She asked if we regularly did a debriefing with students after we had done an activity (most of us did actually). Then she said that debriefing was not just about asking people had it been useful or had they enjoyed it but needed to be more structured.

She gave us a model just called the ‘Debriefing Loop’. (Not the most original name I have to say). There's a video called "Debriefing Learning" as well.

Anyway, after the activity the first thing is to let everyone get things off their chest about it because everyone will want to talk about what they thought about it or felt about it. This is PUBLISHING. If you don’t let people do this they won’t concentrate on the next bit. Then you can unpick what actually went on – like who did what, who said what, what was useful, what wasn’t – all the detailed stuff, the dynamics, the problems etc. This is the PROCESSING stage. Then you can look at all this and see whether there are any general PRINCIPLES you can get students to work out. Then finally you should get them to think about how they can APPLY this in their own situation.

Then we looked back on the debriefing of the ‘go find out’ exercise she had done earlier and identified the stages.

Might try this. My debriefings have never been exactly scintillating – everyone talks about the importance of debriefing and just assumes you can do it but they never tell you how to do it.

Also – this is a biggy – had not really seen debriefing as essential component in student evaluation.

This week went to pub with Magda, Lars, Peter and a few others. Some people are confused because they don’t see where all this fits into what they thought student evaluation was. Magda said she had just started to realise that ‘involving students in evaluation’ was a continuous process with lots of components not just giving them a form to fill in at the end. Like you have to teach them HOW to do it and give them lots of opportunities all the way through the course.

Phew! Brain is worn out.