I have been trying my best to make my online classes as interactive and “human” as possible, but it remains difficult for us to know each other. One thing that I did was writing my experience as a learner and sharing with my students on Canvas. This serves at least two functions. (1) It can let my students know a little more about me–someone who may otherwise be just a moving image on their screen. (2) It can help them understand that learning how to learn is a process–that one will make mistakes but will overtime become a better learner.
Now I think that it may be a good idea to put it here too! It is a very long piece because I have indeed made so many mistakes as a learner in the past. I have also thought very carefully about the experience and so I have many things to say about that. Maybe my experience speaks to yours too.
TLDR: The following describes my experience as a learner. The main points are (i) I am a slow learner and I understand the feelings of being overwhelmed by unrealistic expectations, too much material, and fast-paced teaching, so I will do my best to ensure that my expectations are realistic and the workloads in my class reasonable; (ii) I have received plenty of poor teaching and I understand its detrimental effects. I will therefore do my best to give you good quality teaching with clear, step-by-step instructions.
I am a very slow learner. To understand and learn something, I need clear, detailed, but concise explanations and instructions. I am, in colloquial terms, “stupid”. (Knowing and accepting my “stupidity” helped me understand what I need to do to learn successfully.) Unfortunately, I have encountered plenty of poor teaching and understand its harm (both short-and long-term). I am also no stranger to the feelings of being overwhelmed by unrealistic expectations, unmanageable amounts of learning material, and teaching that progresses too fast. I will do my best to ensure that my instructions are clear and step-by-step, my expectations are realistic, workloads are manageable, and the teaching pace is reasonable.
I am going to tell you three of my learning experiences. These learning experiences have in many ways shaped my thinking about teaching and learning. They are my experiences of (1) learning to drive, (2) learning French, and (3) studying undergraduate philosophy.
(1) Learning to Drive
Let me start with this: it took me four driving tests to get my novice licence in BC—I am sure that most of you did or will do better than me. I am still a very poor driver and need to take driving lessons to improve my driving.
How did that happen? Part of it was surely because I am a very slow learner. And part of it was that I learnt from two bad driving instructors.
How bad? With my first driving instructor, in the first hour of driving in my life, he told me to drive in a relatively busy street in UBC. At one point, I didn’t know what I should do and so I stopped in the middle of the street, and a car crashed into mine. He then yelled at me and told me to “pull over”; at that time, I didn’t know that “pullover” meant something other than a piece of clothing, much less how to do it.
There are so many things I can say about my second instructor. I was not good at turning, and that was one of the reasons why I failed the tests. But this instructor did not tell me about this weakness, nor did he give me any focus practice. His golden recipe for improvement was “just drive”. When I made a bad turn, he would sometimes hold his second steering wheel to “correct” me, rather than giving me the opportunity to learn from my mistake. (Compare this with training wheels on kids’ bikes. Do you think they can learn how to ride a bike from those wheels?) He also told me that “book-smart people were often bad at driving.” (Compare this with people telling girls that they are “genetically bad at maths and science”.) How would such comments—whether or not they are true—help the listener learn?
All this weighed me down. They make me think and feel that I was a poor driver and I was condemned to be a poor driver no matter how hard I tried. But the truth is likely that my poor driving was largely because of the poor instructions that I received. For one thing, how could someone learn to drive if they haven’t been given enough opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them? And can you imagine how much a car accident—in someone’s first hour of driving—would haunt a learner driver?
How did I pass my fourth test? First, with luck. Second, I practiced with a friend. I remember he took me to a spot close to Spanish Bank and we kept turning until I managed to make a good turn. His most important advice? “Do it slowly.” I am always very grateful for Jerry’s simple, practical advice and his patience.
(2) Learning French
I wasn’t able to hold a simple conversation after learning French for two years and a half. Part of it was surely me—I am a very slow learner (I said that already), particularly in relation to listening and speaking. The teaching that I received also didn’t help me much. My learning goal was to speak the language, but university language teaching often focusses on reading and writing.
But I want to focus on the negative reinforcing effects that failure had on me. Because of the misalignment of my training and my learning goal, I was set up to fail. I wasn’t able to understand anything when someone spoke French. When I tried to speak it, I wasn’t able to finish a simple sentence. On a few occasions, in a French learning environment, I encountered French speakers who were more interested in speaking than trying to help me understand them, and they ignored me outright after they realized that I wasn’t able to follow. The feelings of shame and defeat made me want to avoid the language for fear that I would feel shame and defeated again. But then I would have even fewer opportunities to practice, and next time I inevitably heard French, I would again feel shame and defeated. This vicious cycle would go on and on until I finally gave up. (There was one point where I could potentially have stopped this vicious cycle. There was one Francophone friend who would very patiently speak French with me and encourage me to speak more, but we were then both dealing with some work problems and did not have much time to practice. It was indeed a shame.)
I still can’t speak French, but one thing I have learnt from my failure is this: unrealistic expectations set you up for failure, which will discourage you from practising and making improvements, and will in turn keep you farther and farther away from your goals. At that time, I wasn’t ready for an “organic”, “natural” conversation in French. What I should have done was to start with “ultra-artificial” conversations with very simple, one-sentence Q&A such as “how old are you?”, “do you have any siblings?”, “when is your birthday?” etc.
In fact, I didn’t figure out this approach myself. A few years after I had given up French, I started learning German because I had spent a month in Germany. I later took Florian Faller’s German courses at UBC and he used the above simple questions to help me practice German speaking. He is by far the best language teacher I have met. I still don’t speak German very well—in fact, my German is quite poor. But at least I can say some things slowly. I was not frustrated but was instead encouraged by the learning process, and I am always open to opportunities to speak and listen to it. This is the complete opposite of my experience with learning French.
(3) Studying Undergrad Philosophy
I have finally got to philosophy. I will openly admit this: I did quite poorly in my undergrad. In many classes, I was just about managing. But the lecturers were very generous; they would give me decent marks even though I misunderstood the materials, so long as I have made an effort and had something sensible to say.
What I want to focus on here is the workloads. On top of having to take 5 to 6 courses each term, the readings for some of these courses were simply unmanageable. The most unmanageable course was definitely Philosophy of Law. Here are the readings for the first three weeks:
Week 1: Introduction
Dworkin, Taking Right Seriously, Introduction (9 pages)
Hart, The Concept of Law (30 pages)
Hart, Postscript (11 pages)
Week 2: Natural Law Theory
Bix, Natural Law Theory (11 pages)
Dimock, The Natural Law Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas (14)
Aquinas, Concerning the Nature of Law (?)
Burns, Aquinas’s Two Doctrines of Natural Law (20)
Week 3: Legal Positivism
Austin: A Positive Conception of Law (?)
Kelsen: The Dynamic Aspect of Law (?)
Hart, “Law as the Union of Primary and Secondary Rules.” (20)
These are all long and challenging readings; each would be sufficient for one week of teaching. But there were (at least) three in one week. As a slow learner and a slow reader, I was very overwhelmed and just could not follow. I don’t know how much I actually learnt. 30%? Probably less.
Maybe you can manage such a heavy reading load. Maybe you will even thrive in classes with such reading loads. If so, I am very happy for you (genuinely). You are either a very fast reader and learner—surely faster than me by a large margin—or you are very well prepared for university (or both). But I think that quite a few of you would struggle in courses with such heavy reading loads.
You won’t find anything like that in any of my classes. I limit my reading assignments to 20 pages a week. My rule of thumb is this: if I think I couldn’t manage the reading in my undergrad, then I wouldn’t expect my students to do that. (In fact, I wonder whether even now I would be able to manage the above reading load if I were new to Philosophy of Law. Probably not, not least if I were taking four other courses in the meantime.)
