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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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, \u201cstupid\u201d. (Knowing and accepting my \u201cstupidity\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n (1) Learning to Drive<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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 \u201cpull over\u201d; at that time, I didn\u2019t know that \u201cpullover\u201d meant something other than a piece of clothing, much less how to do it.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cjust drive\u201d. When I made a bad turn, he would sometimes hold his second steering wheel to \u201ccorrect\u201d me, rather than giving me the opportunity to learn from my mistake. (Compare this with training wheels on kids\u2019 bikes. Do you think they can learn how to ride a bike from those wheels?) He also told me that \u201cbook-smart people were often bad at driving.\u201d (Compare this with people telling girls that they are \u201cgenetically bad at maths and science\u201d.) How would such comments\u2014whether or not they are true\u2014help the listener learn?<\/p>\n 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\u2019t been given enough opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them? And can you imagine how much a car accident\u2014in someone\u2019s first hour of driving\u2014would haunt a learner driver?<\/p>\n 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? \u201cDo it slowly.\u201d I am always very grateful for Jerry\u2019s simple<\/strong>, practical advice<\/strong> and his patience<\/strong>.<\/p>\n (2) Learning French<\/strong> 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\u2019t able to understand anything when someone spoke French. When I tried to speak it, I wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n I still can\u2019t 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\u2019t ready for an \u201corganic\u201d, \u201cnatural\u201d conversation in French. What I should have done was to start with \u201cultra-artificial\u201d conversations with very simple, one-sentence Q&A such as \u201chow old are you?\u201d, \u201cdo you have any siblings?\u201d, \u201cwhen is your birthday?\u201d etc.<\/p>\n In fact, I didn\u2019t 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<\/strong>\u2019s 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\u2019t speak German very well\u2014in 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.<\/p>\n (3) Studying Undergrad Philosophy<\/strong> 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:<\/p>\n Week 1: Introduction<\/strong> Week 2: Natural Law Theory<\/strong> Week 3: Legal Positivism<\/strong> 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\u2019t know how much I actually learnt. 30%? Probably less.<\/p>\n 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\u2014surely faster than me by a large margin\u2014or 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.<\/p>\n You won\u2019t 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\u2019t manage the reading in my undergrad, then I wouldn\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been trying my best to make my online classes as interactive and “human” as possible, but it remains…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41570,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2199310,1945453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-experience","category-thoughts-on-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41570"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/irwinch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLet me start with this: it took me four driving tests to get my novice licence in BC<\/strong>\u2014I 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.<\/p>\n
\nI wasn\u2019t able to hold a simple conversation after learning French for two years and a half. Part of it was surely me\u2014I am a very slow learner (I said that already), particularly in relation to listening and speaking. The teaching that I received also didn\u2019t help me much. My learning goal was to speak the language, but university language teaching often focusses on reading and writing.<\/p>\n
\nI 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.<\/p>\n
\nDworkin, Taking Right Seriously, Introduction (9 pages)
\nHart, The Concept of Law (30 pages)
\nHart, Postscript (11 pages)<\/p>\n
\nBix, Natural Law Theory (11 pages)
\nDimock, The Natural Law Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas (14)
\nAquinas, Concerning the Nature of Law (?)
\nBurns, Aquinas’s Two Doctrines of Natural Law (20)<\/p>\n
\nAustin: A Positive Conception of Law (?)
\nKelsen: The Dynamic Aspect of Law (?)
\nHart, “Law as the Union of Primary and Secondary Rules.” (20)<\/p>\n