I’ve just realised how long it’s been since I wrote anything.  My whole purpose for blogging is to get the creative juices flowing and to actually put fingers to keyboards and produce words.  Words that put my thinking into context.  Words that will contribute to my understanding of things.  I seem to fail at that.

So here goes:

I have a tendency at this this time of year to put my all into preparation for classes.  I’m starting to wonder why, as it seems I am burning myself out a bit trying to get it right.  So I started thinking about it a bit deeper.

(Bit of background, this is a course with over 700 students across 2 semesters.  There are often 5 or 6 tutors involved in the course and we’re trying to use new technologies.  The course is called Business Informatics.)

Some of my thoughts include

Why do I do this?

The answer seems to be:  Consistency, quality, pedagogy, control!

Okay, so I like there to be a consistent experience for students.  The only way I can do that is to design a set of key activities for them.  Problem is some of the tutors like to do things the old way, like sticking strictly to the text and getting students to answer the review questions in the tute.  Somehow I don’t think that really adds value.  Adding value is what we really need to do.

Which brings me to quality.  How do we ensure the quality of what we give students?  Now I have a problem with that question.  What type of quality are we talking about.  I think I really mean I want good quality, but definitely not poor quality.  In some ways, quality relates to Value (notice it’s already achieve capital status).

The third point was pedagogy.  I don’t think we can adequately define pedagogy, except that it takes some ideas, puts them into activities and adds Value. It contextualises and makes relevant all the ideas.  It is a value adding activity.

My last point is control.  Why do I want control over what happens in the tutorials?  I don’t think I really do, I want the tutors to have something they can build on (add their own value), but I want the foundation that they use to be consistent.  I have a circular reference.

Consistency and control together with a bit of pedagogy and quality should make for a value-added experience for students.

Am I taking on too much?  Probably, but if the theory works, then I should be a little more relaxed during semester.  Except that I push the limits of what we can do.