Egh. I found many aspects about this unit and the experience of it very frustrating.
Rachel made a comment on that “there is never a good time for a PGCert”. I can believe that. And given the amount of hours I have spent on this course; I think it would have been more fruitful and impactful on my practice to produce a self-directed study or produce an original publishable research paper in this context.
I am very patient with my students, but as a student I am very task oriented and respond well to clear and unambiguous instructions. I prefer tasks to be explicitly oriented and conducive to a specific goal. I find that these conditions are not well-met in the context of this unit.
As a learner, I am not the most patient person. In the context of this unit, I was preoccupied with some research deadlines of my own, the teaching, career related issues, personal/private things…, and right here in the moment… this does not seem to be worth my time.
I don’t mean that Rachel or Sergio are doing a bad job- no; I don’t think that the materials covered are not important. That is firmly not what I am trying to express.
Instead these are the points of frustration that I experience as part of this course:
- I was/am very unclear about the minimum outputs for this class. I don’t like the ambiguity of styles, and I find the moodle space very messy and difficult to navigate.
- The term of “blog posts” is very ambiguously defined, (no word count, no style guide, no examples) – yet there is a firm boundary of 8 posts which is non-negotiable. How does this make sense? Why is 8 the be and ends all of the submission; but these 8 posts are so openly defined. I find this inconsistent; and it makes me unsure about the minimal requirement that I need to fulfill for this class.
- Workflow and WordPress are not really userfriendly. I am not using this platform very much, but I know how to use it; yet my colleagues are finding this platform very difficult to navigate. What does this platform offer over other ones? How is this qualitatively advantageous over a forum or a shared dropbox PDF or even a TEAMS group? Being restrained to use this platform seems like an unnecessary energy drain.
- I am aware of a wide range of backgrounds in my class. I am strong on the research aspects and I published in the area, yet I feel really out of my comfort zone in this module; which leads me to be really insecure about my place in the course.
- I found the sessions with Sergio too slow for my own comfort. When I am attending the sessions I find myself often distracted by other stuff that pops up. I found it preferable to watching the recordings and fast forward to the sections that are too slow for current level of tenseness. However, given that the recordings are not labelled in a meaningful way, navigating them (and keeping the overview) was difficult. I probably skipped some sessions by accident.
It was not clear to me which sessions were repetitive of other sessions and which ones were new content. 🙁 - Due to health constraints and some poor planning on my part and short-term changes in my availability I have severely struggled to make it to the in-person teaching in time.
- The session where I traveled to London and booked a hotel to attend the class ended up being cancelled and replaced by an online session. This was an unfortunate accident, but it did upset me in the moment quite a bit that I spent the money on a train from Manchester and booked a hotel which was moot in the end. I received the information about the cancelled session 5 minutes too late and the investment has already taken place.
- I would prefer to produce a research paper for this course instead of the scattered and kaleidoscopic array of tasks associated with this unit.
I think such an essay/statement would be more useful for a SFHEA or research publication in the area of pedagogical best practice. - I found the calendar hard to keep track of. Yes, the information was clearly laid-out in the Moodle space, but I had to create manual entries in my own diary.
This seems like an unnecessary time-dump as UAL possesses the tech to make these entries automatic. - I don’ think BBcollab is a good teaching space; MS Teams is better equipped and more reliable IMHO.
Teams could also be a substitute for Workflow or the blog. That way a single-medium approach could streamline the study experience.
Edit:
It is now time for submission and my Workflow Space is fully uncooperative. This is making me even more frustrated with the submission format.
I would MUCH rather submit a single, well structured, indexed PDF with all content.
Oh well.
At least I got a blog entry out of this….