The best-laid plans of mice and Dave

I joined the University in August 2014 and in preparation for my first day I mapped out my teaching, learning and assessment philosophy (see attached file).

I then set about designing an MBA module that put the student at the centre of the learning experience, designing content around real-world problems, setting tasks that enabled the students to codevelop tasks and content delivery, engaging students in codeveloping expectations for the group in relation to engagement, reading and contribution to social learning, and I prepared for multiple roads of travel so that students could experience the "personal" learning journey.

The problem was, I had unwittingly made the classic "schoolboy error." I projected my idea of what the "modern" learning experience should be, without knowing who would actually be on this journey with me. Designing a learning experience requires co-development and I had fooled myself into believing that I was creating just that, but, in reality, I was imposing my beliefs upon the cohort. I had set about creating a “good” learning experience without asking “what does a good learning experience mean to you?”

My first day with the students was pretty much one of the let downs I have ever experienced. I entered the room like a kid at Christmas and left feeling as if I had obviously been on Santa’s naughty list. You see, the one eventuality I had not considered was that the students were totally field-dependent, with an external locus of control. They wanted PowerPoint slides, with all the “learning” in neat bullet points and I had prepared for messy personal journeys.

Preparing resources is never easy and with our teaching loads it is even harder to adapt on the fly, but this is a very real challenge if we are to develop one-size-fits-one learning experiences, as opposed to the traditional one-size-fits-all approach.

This year I am preparing two different approaches: for the field independent learners, stories using the Atavist platform; for the field-dependent learners, traditional PowerPoint theory by bullet point. For both, I am taking a case-based approach to bring the theory to life. But I’m also going into the first class knowing that I’m still going to have to adapt according to the journey that the other people in the room want to create with me.

I'll post the storytelling approach I'm developing on Atavist hopefuly by the last week in September!