Semester is all but over and this poor neglected blog needs an update. Actually, it needed an update as well as an update, but that’s another story.
As I sit here catching up on the last of the marking and preparing for the exam marking, I’m pausing to consider the reflections that my undergrad students submitted (as well as the ‘official’ evaluation, which I hope to never use again, but that’s another story, which I will get to later).
I must preface these remarks with the caveat that I’m making some big assumptions about ‘Gen-Y’, ‘Net Natives’ and any other label that could be applied. That said, I’m constantly amazed by students. Sometimes you get students so engaged that they take up what I give and spin it back to me in ways that I never considered. These students are few but they make it all worthwhile. For instance, one of the things I purposely do is not give a precise definition of ‘Informatics’, because I really want students to start defining their world for themselves. We give hints and clues and show them examples, but the definition is really up to them. Which is why this kind of reflection really impresses me:
[Informatics] involves answering the fundamental questions, looking into why we do things and how we take technology and things around us to get it done, it looks at communication and thinking as well as the construction of ideas, templates and data in addition to systems, theory, traditions and recording. It is endless as to what informatics can teach us and it is important that we grasp the concept as it can’t be defined into a phrase and regurgitated.
That student will go far in Business. Another student came to similar conclusions:
The importance of information presentation, sharing, visualisation, contextualisation and manipulation is now more important to me than ever before. I believe that informatics will become increasingly important, as the link between people, information, and technology becomes more engrained in society.
I’m not sure that the order of those tasks is right, in fact I think it should start with manipulation and end with presentation, but all of the key points are there – the whole range of what we want students to learn. These are impressive outcomes and make me glad that I do things in the way that I do. It kind of makes up for the two or three students who feel the course is a waste of space, but that’s another story.
Which I really should think about. Apparently, at least one student did not like that I use the phrase “but that’s another story” as much as I do and I have been seriously thinking about why I say it so much, particularly in this course. It occurred to me that that phrase is almost a verbal hypertextual link. It’s the kind of link we see and then we may open the page in another tab for when we have time to follow it up[1]. I don’t think I’ve realised just how much the web has influenced my thinking, but it’s really evident in that phrase. And it really became evident when someone wrote in the ‘official’ evaluations that I should stop saying it. They were quite emphatic and used UPPER CASE with all of it’s implications. But it wasn’t until then, that I did realise the kind of mesh thinking that I do – it’s the kind that is needed to help students, at least those who are engaged, to make the leap to higher levels of thinking about technology. It’s the kind of thinking that is needed not just in business graduates, but in all graduates and, quite possibly is one of the things missing in our current crop of politicians. Linear thinking is not really helpful for solving the complex problems that we face. It’s the kind of thinking that leads directly to the our current method of ‘official’ evaluation, where students, shielded by anonymity, get to throw whatever shit they feel is their due because the bucket that is their head wasn’t filled in the way they think it should have been. I find it quite incredible that we rely on these evaluations. It’s not like they have studied teaching and learning for over a decade and reflected upon the range of ways in which people learn. There’s a kind of cognitive dissonance between having to elaborate what you learned and ticking a box, the unthinkingness and the immediacy of the ‘official’ evaluation gives rise to a petty approach to evaluations which leads to a simple, ‘I don’t like this course so I’m going to give it a low evaluation’ or ‘I got a low mark, well, take this you doody lecturer’[2]. But the reflection, where students are not anonymous gives much richer feedback, for example:
I don’t feel that the science/language of informatics content was at all relevant in the business setting. Discussing the debate of whether you can use facebook or dailybooth at work was not particularly useful. Ditto being shown a lot of fun websites early in the semester was not a great use of lecture time. If I go to a lecture, it’s because I want to learn new skills and important information relevant to my degree. Discussions of where the internet is headed do not have a lot of relevance for my career in business or many others’.
While I tend to disagree with most of this, the student has elaborated a great deal of information about the way some students view technology[3] and it is this view that we try to get students to rethink. Language is important everywhere and the future of technology is directly responsible for where business may be going. In fact, there are so many stories of business leaders missing the point, which leads some to contemplate the idea of ‘felony interference with a business model’ as being a chief reason for many industries’ problems. Perhaps, if we keep going down this ‘official’ evaluation pathway, we’ll end up with academics being charged with ‘felony interference with student thinking‘ which simply beggars the imagination and that, hopefully, will never be another story that I allude to.
- I currently have about 5 tabs of that category open write now, and I’ve only got 18 tabs open [↩]
- yes, that is my interpretation of the low evaluations [↩]
- the student actually received a good mark because they elaborated their views quite well and did get me thinking about ways to improve the course [↩]