Mark's final words - please lend me your feedback at the end!

Hello dear Communication and Digital Content Creation Module students,

Well, here I am penning my last post of this blog for your CDCC classes. It’s been a high octane and educational term for all of us. We lecturers learn too you know!

Please read my words and I would be grateful if you could add some words of your own at the bottom in the comments section. This is particularly helpful for future CDCC classes I may be asked to teach and assess. I certainly hope my college and the university can sort something out again, as I have really enjoyed coming back to lecturer at Napier. 19 years seems an awful long time since I left. 

Have you developed as a person, are you more confident, what skills have you enhanced, has the module, teaching, feedback, assessment content helped you in any way? You decide what you want to write, good, bad, somewhere in between, but please reflect on what you thought of the module. The comment section is all yours. Maybe you’d like to comment on the blogs and assessed presentations you read and listened to? Don’t forget to use Google Chrome to make a comment though. 

We (lecturers) should, I believe, always be prepared to do the tasks which we ask students to do. So in that spirit, I aim, right here and right now, to write my own reflections and evaluation of the term. Here goes.

Mark's Reflective Words

So, to start, what was my motivation and expectations at the beginning of the module? That is very straightforward indeed, as it was to create a supportive but challenging learning environment to allow you all to develop as learners. That all sounds a bit woolly, but I suppose that’s what teaching is for me. Sometimes the word “teach” is too blunt an instrument for my liking. I wanted you to develop confidence and say yes I can do this and not too much of the "I'll never be able to do that" type of chat. I think we can safely say this potential quandary has been avoided. 

My expectation was that I would be working with a group of initially (possibly) nervous but interesting students who would be ready for a challenge and to challenge me too. Clearly we were all up for that to be fair and although tough at times, I am certain we all learned a great deal along the way. There are many ways to approach an evaluative task whether it be a mock or an assessed one, that much you should all know by now.

It is impossible to predict how classes will gel, but from very early on (class one in fact) it was clear that you all worked and really importantly, 'learned' very well together. This intra-class dynamic is crucial to the development of a positive learning environment - it was always a pleasure to walk into your classes and we did plenty group learning exercises. I also made a point of striking the balance with individual (autonomous) learning too of course. Something for everyone in my classes!

This brings me to my positive experiences. To be honest, the plusses are really too numerous to mention. One of the most fundamental factors in teaching I think, is developing positive relationships with learners. I feel that I was lucky in developing such relationships with each and every one of the class who attended my lectures. So, my primary positive experience is the sum of all these relationships. 

Attendance was an issue for some of you but in the main, the majority of you were ever or nearly ever present in my classes. I appreciated messages from you when you were unable to attend. As professional communicators in training, this is so important. It should also be remembered that we are still operating in a pandemic, and many of you (including me) caught Covid since we started in mid January. But we worked around it, sensibly I feel. 

I also feel that the blog we created together was an amazing journey, and most certainly a labour of love in my case! I really hope you enjoyed the experience of the class blog and your end products. I am conscious that people learn at different paces. I am task orientated, I don't like loose ends and think three weeks at least ahead of the game. Does that make that strategy any better than those who leave things to the last minute? No, it doesn't. I just don't choose to "thrive on working against the clock" as I hear some of you say so often. The end product is the most important factor, always. If we were all the same it would be a  really dull affair, that's for sure. My advice is, don’t be a last minute Annie.

If I have even persuaded you to think, learn and manage your time differently, I would be happy with that. No more, no less. 

But what about improvements? We always need to be aware of how things could be improved. So what about improvements in things that I have control of (and this segues into the evaluation of my own performance)? Well, that’s trickier as it requires a degree of self-criticism. I am not averse to such of course. 

I suppose I’m asking myself "would I do anything different?" Well, I think I might time or pace assessments in a slightly different way next year if timetabling permits my inclusion. I was very aware of the amount of assessments that you needed to get through this year with your other classes. I also recognise now, that marking the blogs and podcasts takes days, not hours to do. This is something I must be mindful of if asked to deliver the module again. That said, I believe that meaningful feedback is important to your development. You received a lot of peer and lecturer feedback and I always encouraged you to self reflect. Some of you can do this really well, with some gentle nudging from me…

My own organisation skills were tested throughout and it is anticipated that you all knew where you stood with the assessments and the assessment requirements. I work four days a week at New College Lanarkshire too and really had to manage my time effectively. I was glad our class was on a Wednesday. 

So, what have I learned? Well, amongst other things I’ve learned about mental health and social media, spiking, spiritualisation, NFTs, VAR, rape culture; hey, I’m sure you catch my drift...

I’ve also learned (or re-learned) that if we’re coasting along then we’re probably not learning a lot. But when we feel we are on the very edges of our comfort zone, then, possibly, we are learning. That’s what learning feels like. It’s not always a pleasant feeling at the time - but it seems worth the discomfort in retrospect. This is an important thing for us as lecturers to remember too. We force students out of their comfort zone a lot. How often do we move out of ours? In my case, I always look to evolve. 

I always like to think that one of my strengths as an educator is my time management and feedback skills. This takes a lot of time and effort to get right, so hopefully this is an area where you feel I have given you my very best attention. Oh, and a light peppering of humour never hurts either I always feel. Life can be so dull without a wee bit of laughter. And laughter is something 'they'll' never take away from us. Yet.

Things erode around us as educators but I always believe that the safest place is in the classroom, where we can learn, facilitate meaningful engagement without lots of admin., forms and the like. They are just the things that have to be done though. I doubt this will diminish as the years go on, but are a necessary evil I suppose. Checklists, checklists, checklists!

I have spent a lot of time putting this blog and the assessment blog template together too and have really enjoyed the experience this term. I know that not all members of the parish were necessarily keen bloggers or podcasters to start with, but that's OK. I'm fine with that, I like to be flexible with everything that I do. But everybody rolled their sleeves up and got the job done. 

Well over 3,000 hits at the time of me composing this post. That is really quite amazing, so thank you for your unstinting engagement. Especially to the regular contributors. 

Another way of self-evaluating for me as a lecturer is asking the simple question "what did my students learn?" Ways of getting a measure of that is by asking you to comment on the blog, e mail me, speak with me one to one. address these questions in both the assessments etc.. and unless you're all telling fibs, it seems that you all learned something of value to you along the way! Thankfully. Please tell me I am right in saying that, ha ha. The start of your personal brand story is well underway. 

It was apparent from informal and formal mechanisms that the oral presentation delivery was the biggest fear for many students in the beginning. Oral presentation teaching is one of my passions of all the different areas of communication I teach, so it was refreshing to listen to so many amazing pitches and progress presentations. By the time you see this post, you will have delivered your final assessment presentation in front of me, Gary and half the class. The collegiate approach shown by you as a class, the expertise of the content matter you chose and the question and answer sessions were really entertaining and always educational. I guess you all found your voice. And crucially, you supported each other.

So, to finish (and I just love cyclical structures), let's go right back to a question we started with at the very beginning of our time together: what is the purpose of education and communication? No need to reply, but I wonder has anyone changed their mind on that one.

I look forward to reading your reflections below.

All the best, and go well in the future if our paths don’t cross again. I do hope they do though…

Mark