Category: The Civil Learning Society

The Civil Learning Society

Enriched versus Impoverished Learning Environments

| ggroulx

Very simply, enriched environments coupled with play, social interaction, care, and challenges are important for learning. All of these factors are significant to the growth and strength of dendrites!

Marian Diamond, 1998; URL

In my experience, I have had had many amazing teachers and had been inspired to work hard to become one myself. I especially enjoyed working on online independent courses as a graduate student at Athabasca University. I was able to conduct independent studies via blogging with the help of one mentor for a 15 month learning period. I was able to learn so much within the context of a previously discussed plan of learning.

Having said that, there was one impoverished learning experience that has stood out as particularly unpleasant.

One correspondence course I needed to take was first-year Geology to fulfill a science course breadth requirement as part of completing my degree. I did my best, listening to CDs and reading the textbook, and even attempting the lab activities with the box of rocks.  I was out of my comfort zone. This was before the age of YouTube and the World Wide Web was pretty young then, too. The issue was that I was really not motivated to learn, but to just pass. Some topics were quite interesting, and I did my best to absorb the materials. There was a lot of new terms I had no background in. There was no direct involvement with the professor or the Teaching Assistant, except when it came to marking my work and sending back the graded assignments. I really had no idea on how to complete the worksheets, and handed in a partly completed assignment – I did not even bother to guess. So, along with the crummy grade of 6.5 out of 10 for that worksheet, I got a lot of comments about how I could have completed the assignment, and where to find the answers in the book and notes and videos. Honestly, the TA was a bit dismayed I cared so little. All in all, I passed the course with C+, learned a lot, worked as hard as I could, but made no connection and had no contact with the Professor or TA.

On the plus side, I learned a lot about how not to design and deliver a distance course. I incorporated my experiences into an essay I wrote for another course and did quite well on that assignment. I reassured myself I did quite well but was left perplexed about my total lack of motivation to connect with the professor or in some way become more engaged.

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The Civil Learning Society

Formal Testing can be a Stressful Form of Feedback

| ggroulx

How do we usually respond to receiving grades and report cards, or transcripts from our teachers and professors for assignments, quizzes, tests, and exams? One’s past experiences can impact on how we feel about getting graded.  How we respond also depends on how well we think we prepared for the testing, how much effort we actually put into preparing for learning the materials, how others did and how you compare to them, and how your parents and teachers respond to the grade. Thus, we can all come up with personal memories of us failing a test, acing it, doing a re-write later after calling in sick the day of the testing, cramming the night before, and perhaps even rolling up your sleeves to study harder to get better marks on the next test.

Perhaps we have experiences of withdrawing from a course after a failed test, changing sections because of a poor grade on an essay or assignment, (we all know certain instructors grade more fairly, others are much tougher graders), requesting a chance to do additional work to improve a poor grade, getting extra tutoring to prepare for a tough exam, and even shifting programs and courses depending on how you will be evaluated (more exams, or more essays).

Fast-forward into workplace learning, and the big stress test is the performance review, or a report card on your performance, tied to a promotion depending on how well you do. The stress never goes away when it comes to being evaluated. High stakes exams are even more stressful, for workplace certifications, for example, or for language proficiency exams or college placement tests. Participants in employment training programs now are expected to do some kind of placement tests to establish their levels of computer skills, reading, writing and numeracy skills.

 

Part of building a civil learning society is creating more reasonable guidelines of practice for introducing grading for low-stakes learning so that it is done without so much negative stress. The whole idea of imposing/forcing on learners what educators consider important for learning, and then testing whether learners have learned it, and then assigning a grade to how well learners met outcomes, is the cornerstone of our formal education system. It is in many ways an impoverished, inefficient system for evaluating learning. High-stakes assessments are stressful, but then again, most people believe that those exams need to be in place to ensure that the public is protected. There is implied consent by the public; testing needs to be rigorous enough to ensure professionals with the credentials can actually do things they are being paid to do.

In many cases, however, despite how it might feel for those undergoing rigorous testing, the formal professional exam is assessing how well learners meet specific standards of skills/knowledge to perform tasks. These standards benefit society because of credentials (certificate, diploma, degree) and protect individuals and groups of people. High-stakes tasks carried out by professionals are regulated by professional associations which determine the type of training required and determine which educational institutions can deliver the training.

The concern is that our society is so concerned with credentialism, however, that there is little room for other ways to determine if a person can do something well, especially in cases where learning is not required for high-stakes situations. This creeping credentialism has been introduced in more and more ways and in more settings. The outcomes-based evaluation model requires a set of goals, a list of activities that break learning down into steps, and then a final test to evaluate how much is learned, with a grade assigned.

Formal grading cannot accurately describe our emotional responses to learning, nor our changing values and beliefs. Nor does it fill in the gaps in giving meaning to our transforming learning experiences that help us become more responsive as lifelong learners and eventually even mentors in the future.

 

 

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The Civil Learning Society

Receiving Critical Feedback

| ggroulx

I remember the critical feedback of others in so many respects were uninvited, imposed, and unexpected, as well as scathing and nasty. Harsh teachers that would ridicule your answer they demanded you to provide even when you did not know the answer. I once had a teacher at George Brown College teaching web design who would lecture the students, asking questions as challenges in a condescending tone, and then wait impatiently and petulantly and stop the class for a moment or so for someone to volunteer an answer, and then mock the student who tried to offer an answer. I had a colleague teaching IT in Terrace visiting a few years back asking what I taught at the local college campus in Prince Rupert, and when I replied, he mocked me with his friend standing by, saying that “I guess someone should do it for the low literacy learners”, and they laughed together at his nasty joke.

I always hated having to write the first paper for a new course during my undergraduate studies; I never knew how the professor would mark the paper – there was never much guidance for what to do. I got one chance to get it right. One time I wrote an English paper and the Teaching Assistant was really arrogant and condescending, providing a scathing criticism of my written assignment. I wrote back an equally scathing criticism of the TA’s marking, and handed it back to the Professor, asking him to discuss it with the TA, and criticizing the whole process of allowing an untrained, arrogant TAs an opportunity to mark and provide feedback to first-year students’ writing assignments… I was so annoyed I dropped the course and it has stayed with me as how not to provide feedback on student writing.

What about the times I remember of others giving me nurturing feedback? Tough but fair feedback? I have received a lot of positive feedback. There was a Professor that gave me an option to re-write my essay after giving me a grade of C+, with a list of improvements to implement. I was very grateful for the opportunity, and re-wrote it, trying to account for his feedback. I was able to upgrade my grade to an A-. It was a pivotal moment in my experience as a learner, and it influenced me greatly on how I provided writing instruction as a literacy practitioner and ESL instructor in the future.

How I respond to criticism depends on a number of factors: did I expect it, or did it come out of the blue? Was the person doing the criticizing have power over me in some way? Do I respect and like the critic? Does the criticism match up with what I already think (my inner critic)? Does the way the critic provides feedback trigger an earlier memory that floods me with shame and anger and defensiveness? Is the feedback I receive matching up with the learning context?

This learning context typically requires the role of dependency and trust for the learner.  It is the assumed base of all learning transactions that require voluntary adoption of a learner mindset, which is evident in many learning situations in a classroom or workplace setting. The student or worker is supposed to be ready to be obedient and be ready to listen and follow instructions, believing the instructor’s expertise will help them. The student or worker needs to be open and willing to listen to an expert and is supposed to provide permission to receive criticism in order to learn and develop skills. In return, the student or worker expects to grow and transition from a state of dependency and a novice state with a lack of skills and knowledge to more of an expert.

This learning context provides a set of roles and expectations, an implied contract, or code of conduct, and key to that is the role of feedback flowing from the learner to the boss/instructor and back again. As well, the boss/instructor is supposed to be responsive to cues from the learner/worker to alter or modify the learning experience. The boss/instructor is supposed to offer feedback in a balanced fashion, offering a feedback framework and schedule, stating explicitly this is what the instructor/critic is looking for as a critic, and this is how the task or knowledge/skills will be evaluated for a learner/worker. The boss/instructor is supposed to be clear in the methods for how the feedback will be offered, and give reasons why.

So, this is ultimately where the learning transaction breaks down: our own set of expectations as learners, whether in the workplace or in the classroom,  don’t usually match the reality in a workplace or formal classroom setting. More often than not, we are shamed, criticized, put down, harassed, and bullied by co-workers, peers, bosses, supervisors, fellow classmates, and teachers in one form or another. Constantly ranked and found wanting against others, as well as devalued, invalidated, ignored, taunted, teased and shamed – this is the reality of our workplace and formal learning settings. This is why many opt out of the learning offered by formal institutions altogether.

The truth is that learning seldom takes place as expected; however, we are very resilient; we learn in spite of the many crappy ways we receive feedback and the lousy learning contexts we find ourselves in.

 

 

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