Tag Archives: novice-expert

Reflecting on Being a “Student”

Just over a month ago UBC, like many schools of all levels, moved all our classes online in response to COVID-19. I have not yet been able to write coherently about what that’s been like, though I suspect I will, at some point, review my extensive Twitter feed and many communications to students, to draw insights.

Today I simply want to capture what I’ve learned from being a “student” in Day 1 of 5 in a synchronous online course called Foundations of Online Teaching and Learning, led by colleagues at UBC-O’s Centre for Teaching and Learning Peter Newbury and Janine Hirtz. Thanks Peter and Janine!!

Insights from how I felt during the 1.5h live class

As soon as I was invited to turn off my video (for internet traffic concerns) at the start of class, my attention shot all over the place. I got distracted by other windows, my email, phone… wowza. I had to deliberately stop myself and shut everything down. I got out pen and paper and started making my list of what I was learning. Insight: OMG how are students doing this at all ever!!!!!! I have so much extra awe for those who continued to virtually attend and participate in my classes. Take-away: Invite students, perhaps more than once a lesson, to pause, explicitly shut down their other non-essential devices/apps, and rejoin us?

I needed to move around! At some point I just got up and walked around for a bit. My take-away: Add a “let’s move around” break.

I wanted my prior knowledge engaged! Day 1 was Foundations of Teaching and Learning. I totally understand why that was the starting point, and I knew that going in. And I also wanted to start engaging in applying this knowledge in the online environment right away. There was only so much I could do to hold myself back before I started adding links and ideas to the chat, and maybe that wasn’t helpful for the class or the instructors. I don’t know. Take-away: Give people a place from Day 1 to share why they’re here in this class, and try to parse whether it’s urgent problem-solving or bigger picture (& give resources or a task to those coming for urgent problem-solving?). Add a note to “rules of engagement” for where to put your extra questions that go beyond immediate content? In hindsight, an extra task that could have helped me today might have been a handout with a place for me to identify my own urgent questions, along with spaces for me to note which of today’s concepts are relevant to helping me figure this out. If it was laid out simply, I could re-draw it by hand so I could also be reminded to doodle rather than click (ie help me harness my attention).

Logistics and Points of Process I found helpful

Set-up: “here’s what going to happen when I click…” especially around break-out groups (they’re clunky!) including the abrupt ending.

Break-out groups: Perhaps better for investing large chunks of time (like 10 minutes) rather than quick think-pair-shares. Allow for 3-4 minutes just to figure out microphones/videos and get started, esp if people don’t know each other. Find out if there’s a setting so we can have the same groups more than once in a class session rather than meeting new people each time.

Screen-shots of where to click to find chat, poll, etc, are helpful.

Opening slide with an invitation to draw/play (e.g., add how you’re feeling, identify where you are on the map).

Have a co-moderator who is on chat monitoring questions. What if this isn’t possible? (E.g., limited TA time budget or none at all?) I was reminded of Student Management Teams who could be delegated as monitors, which might also serve to give an extra task to keeners (quick summary here, https://nobaproject.com/blog/2015-09-02-student-management-teams-bridging-the-gap-between-students-and-the-professor, see author Troisi’s published research for details).

Rules of Engagement were helpful to have listed on Canvas landing page, and repeated at the start of class. Includes info like raising hands, turning off your camera and mic, etc.

Curse of Knowledge happens with tech too. It’s easy to presume students are fluent in the medium… but you don’t get that same fairly obvious visual feedback as in f2f class if students are confused and lost. Be careful and explicit.

Keep an “after class” open question period, akin to how students line up at the end of class to ask questions while I’m packing up. OF COURSE I could have done this… it just didn’t occur to me (and I was barely holding myself together anyway those days so, can’t really feel bad for not thinking of this before).

Reminders of T&L Foundations that are Well Worth Revisiting Right Now

CUT CONTENT. Everything takes more time now, so it’s more important than ever to critically evaluate every single thing I’m asking students to learn (and how). If I can’t answer “why am I teaching this concept?” with a good answer, then it’s a candidate to cut. (omg this also feels so overwhelming.)

ENGAGE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE. Gotta figure out new ways to do this… without feeling overwhelmed by 200 unique answers that I actually can’t possibly address uniquely.

COMPETENCE = deep knowledge of facts + organization in conceptual framework + ability to retrieve and apply that info as appropriate. Need to support and measure all three.

META-COGNITION is important. How am I teaching my students to develop their internal monologues about what they (don’t) know? Implication: frequent low-stakes assessment.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM, BEHAVIOURISM. Time to revisit foundational theories. Although it was just a passing historical reference in our reading (How Learning Works Chapter 1), Behaviourism might actually be more relevant in my teaching than ever before! What exactly am I rewarding with points? praise/attention? 

 

That’s all for now. Thanks Peter and Janine for offering this course, giving me some structure as I question and explore being a learner about being a teacher… once again.

Finished Pottery!

So I finished all my pottery pieces in December and they were done firing by early January… and yes it’s March and I haven’t shared the results yet! Well, here I am!

My First Three Pieces

Glazed and ready for the final kiln

And finally complete!

Next came this pair of honey pots

And later a trio of bowls

 

 

which I carefully trimmed when they were exactly “leather-hard”…

But sadly, I lost this one.

It was separated from the others while drying, and I forgot to go searching for it. My best bowl 🙁

 

 

Oh well, here’s another.

Which I trimmed a bit, just to clean it up. But it wasn’t made to be a bowl so nothing fancy.

 

The last three pieces glazed! Just one ugly smear from a poor glazing decision. (I knew I felt like I was missing something. I was.)

 

Ta da! The final set!

Bottoms of bowls are so much prettier than bottoms of cylinders… but I found them much much more difficult to make!

The tallest piece turned out *almost* as big as a coffee mug.

 

That was a lot of work! I had no idea pottery was such a lengthy, complicated, time-sensitive process. I’m happy with the products, but more than that, I’m very glad to have tried my hand at learning something entirely new. It was an experience full of excitement, concentration, frustration, celebration, disappointment, pleasant surprises… much more than I could have expected. Thanks to the staff at Claytek and my fellow classmates for an interesting learning journey. Onward to the next sabbatical-fueled adventure!

The Highs and Lows of Pottery: Weeks 2 and 3

Proud Potter

Proud Potter

Walking out of last week’s class felt great! I had made two cylinders that I felt proud to present. I figured I had the hang of it. I had been very careful at every single step, and called over my instructor before proceeding a few times so I wouldn’t ruin the piece. When she was helping other students, I waited rather impatiently. In that very moment I was feeling frustrated I was also imagining what my students may feel sometimes. I just needed her attention for one minute only before I felt I could relatively confidently proceed without mangling the clay. I imagine this can be tough enough to manage in a class of 8 novice hobby potters with an hour to work with. For me, 600 students a term means just that one minute of attention per student equals an impossible 10h each week (and forget timing-as-needed). When it was my turn for her attention, she helped me verbally review the next step, and once she even pushed down on my hands so I could feel the force she meant. I don’t know how I would have learned that feeling on my own. The entire class period I focused on nothing else. The sun was shining, I could centre clay, and I made two cylinders! Hooray! Please, admire my work:

Practice Makes Perfect

“Practice Makes Perfect”

 

img_20161005_125850-collage

“Patience”

 

This morning I spent an hour clearing out my email inbox before class. I left home in a fluster, rushing the whole way and thinking about upcoming travel and the things I needed to do this afternoon. I arrived and quickly checked on my pieces from last week, all looked great, and I quickly prepared them for the next phase. I share this information not to simply recall my morning, but to highlight the state of mind I entered class. It seems to have been incompatible with pottery.

My goal was to create two more pieces today. I quickly failed. The first piece centred* surprisingly easily (and I know it was decently centred because of later disaster), so I went for it. I was the first person to start making my cylinder. Everything was going great for about 2 minutes, until the entire piece of clay had come off in my left hand, leaving only the disc of a base spinning on the wheel. Apparently I had made the wall too thin right there. I chuckled as it dawned on me that it was fully destroyed. Then I was furious. I had to start over from scratch. I would not make two pieces. I might not even make one. Scrape off the clay blob, clean the wheel, knead a new piece of clay, and start centering all over again. Ok. Except it wouldn’t centre! I tried and tried and got more and more frustrated and it got more and more wobbly! After almost half an hour of trying I almost gave up. Instead, enter teacher. I looked up and there she was. I asked for help and she was there. (Again, just the right moment. How can I ever do that?) She made a suggestion and reminded me it was ok—it’s only clay. I was a breath away from quitting. Instead, I kept going. The resulting pot looks like crap. The walls are so thin that when I went to take it off the wheel I almost crushed it into another grey blob. I finished it. This is my ugly, misshapen masterpiece. I title it: Persistence.

Persistence. Upper right and bottom left are still on the wheel. Opposite corners: what I salvaged post-removal.

“Persistence.” Upper right and bottom left are still on the wheel. Opposite corners: what I salvaged post-removal.

* The second step to pottery on the wheel—after sort of kneading it to get air bubbles out—is to get it “centred” which means that as it spins around it’s actually in the centre of the wheel and it doesn’t wobble. If it wobbles, it could spin off or have a bubble in it or otherwise not be sturdy in later phases. Centering can be a time consuming endeavor involving lots of bringing the clay up to a cone shape, then squishing it back down to an anthill. If you rush it, you will probably pay a price later in a weird or collapsed or cracked piece. Patience!

Adventures in Being a Complete Novice

Yesterday I failed miserably. I was frustrated, a tiny bit embarrassed, and delighted. I was delighted because one of my personal goals for my sabbatical is to learn something completely new from scratch. I want to feel like a complete novice, so I can improve my empathy for what my students may be going through when they join my class. The phenomenon called the hindsight bias or curse of knowledge basically means that once we know something it’s really difficult to imagine what it’s like to not know that thing. Imagine not knowing what the traffic lights or temperature mean. Imagine not knowing how to decode what these letters that form this sentence mean. Weird, eh? The challenge is, it’s my job as a teacher to imagine what it’s like to not know about psychology (or some aspect of it), and then try to teach that topic to people who actually do not know (as much) about it. What makes this action trickier is that the longer I do my job, the more I know about psychology, which makes it harder and harder to imagine what it’s like to be in my students’ chairs. I try to get around this challenge in a few ways, including talking with my students about their thoughts. But let’s be honest: it’s been a while since I’ve had a pure experience of complete and utter lack of understanding.

Enter: Pottery class.

Yesterday morning I wandered down to a studio I’ve passed a million times but never entered. I was excited to embark on a new learning adventure! I was going to create something! It might not be beautiful, but I could create! I was the second person to arrive, out of a class of 10. I met my teacher, she used our names to introduce us to each other. I felt welcome. Someone said she had done this before and I didn’t think much of it until later. (For the record, my only foray into art was a single class in high school that was half history, and included zero pottery.) The teacher showed us around the facility. I was trying to absorb all the information. The keywords I remember, in no particular order, include: kiln, bisque firing (as opposed to another kind of firing I forget), plug, glaze, members only shelf, don’t touch, student shelf, slip, washroom, clay, silicate, wheel, clean, wedge, centering. Soon, my brain was full of terms, but I was still excited. Read: without some sort of handout or way to take notes, jargon became a jumbled mass quickly… but maybe that’s ok as I don’t really need to know all this right.

It felt like an eternity until we finally got our clay! Read: all I wanted to do was *DO* the discipline of pottery, which made it difficult for me to concentrate fully on the orientation. The teacher demonstrated wedging, which is kind of like kneading dough and is essential for a strong final product. I measured exactly 2 pounds of clay from my large block (instant success!). My wedged clay looked reasonably good for a first try. Great! With confidence I prepared my wheel station. I watched the teacher’s demonstrations carefully, and tried to emulate her precise hand and body actions. Things were going reasonably well until suddenly half my clay came off in my hand! I made do for a while, and then I tried to make a cylinder, carefully watching the steps and trying to follow with a half portion of clay. After trying to be so careful with it, my cylinder fully collapsed in on itself. It was such a disappointment. I suddenly felt frustrated, especially when I looked over at the person who had done it before. Hers looked just like the teacher’s. Read: social comparison framed my feeling of disappointment and pushed it into failure, but also motivation to make another one.

I stayed an extra half an hour because of a fierce desire to make SOMETHING, ANYTHING that didn’t resemble a pile of grey mush. I tried three times and couldn’t even get the clay to stick to the wheel. It kept slipping off! That most fundamental starting point eluded me, despite the careful attention I had paid to the demonstration, despite the fact that I’d successfully done it just an hour before when my teacher was there. Frustrating! I gave up — but only because I realized I had actual work I had to do and couldn’t just spend the rest of the day on pottery. Reluctantly, I left. All the way home I was frustrated and annoyed because I couldn’t get it. Slowly, I began to laugh at myself. I had taken one single class in a completely unfamiliar discipline and somehow I wasn’t a magical unicorn prodigy in pottery so I was frustrated by it. Ha! Later, I actually uttered the words, laughing, “Turns out I’m not a great potter!” and they made me pause. Really? Is it true that I don’t think I’m a great potter because I got one lesson and couldn’t make something? Of course not. Read: This reaction is consistent with something I’ve suspected for a long time. I tend to have a fixed mindset, and correct to growth when I notice it. I’m reminded of when my statistics students say “I’m no good at math” and I try to convince them otherwise. It takes time and practice and willingness to fail but not feel like a failure.

Scorecard: Pottery definitely won the day. I won insight about failing and a pile of clay covered in mud (called slip) that looked kind of like this (actually this is nicer than mine was):

When I searched for “Pottery cylinder collapse” this image from “Fine Mess Pottery” came up, in a post aptly titled “To that beginning student.”  Apparently I’m not alone.

Kids doing science… and publishing!

What a fabulous example of what can happen when people — kids! — have the opportunity to use the scientific method to make discoveries about life. This paper about bees was actually published in a scientific journal. Bravo to the journal editors and reviewers for publishing such a fine example of science fueled by curiosity. A worthwhile read! Thanks to friend and colleague Lesley Duncan for the recommendation!