Sticky notes & Open tabs

I applied for a job recently, and it got me thinking about one of my shortcomings when interviewing with people who don’t know me already. I’m a great synthesizer – I can hear and process many pieces of information, and quickly articulate big-picture meaning in a way that many people have noticed and appreciated as exceptional. However, as soon as I have done this, my brain discards many of the details. I don’t care about the name of the theory, or the theorist. Perhaps in a connected way, I can re-experience favorite books and TV shows, because I’ve forgotten the details. In my working memory, I am very detail-oriented. I don’t miss things. I know I’m great at my job. I remember the names of a class full of students very quickly, but if I meet a new person on the street that I suspect I’ll never see again, I have forgotten their name by the time it’s out of their mouth.

Again, this is a problem for job interviews. It’s also difficult when I come across a piece of information that I know will be useful… but I haven’t hit the appropriate context yet.

My passion is curriculum design. In my perfect job I’d be helping instructors from diverse disciplines design learning activities, courses and programs, while teaching a course or two myself. Bigger picture, I’d love to be building teams, culture, and capacity. My current job isn’t too far from this, with about 50% paperwork thrown in. Thinking about applying for other jobs (with less paperwork), I realize I need to find a way to track and organize all the great ideas I’ve come across, and come up with. This iteration of ONL has added many new ones to the pile. Currently I have a few half-baked blogs, some folded-over book pages, a bazillion open tabs, and old work journals with sticky notes poking out. Realistically, I’m not sure I’ll go back into all the past stuff, but I need to develop a system for going forward. A blog with a good tag system? A wiki? A giant annotated bibliography for my brain?

I’m deeply curious about how other people’s brains work. Is your brain a filing cabinet, a map, a junk drawer? What systems have you developed to support your thinking (and not-thinking)? How are you integrating all the things you’ve learned in ONL?

On Stuckness and Superpowers

Watching the recorded webinar for topic 4 (Design for Online & Blended Learning), I am aware of the privileges I bring from my background area of expertise. Teaching in, and administering an applied program, so many of the principles described explicitly by Dr. Marti Cleveland-Innes are intuitively and implicitly part of my practice.

In normal times, we have a few courses which are lecture-based (fashion history, for example), but even yet we incorporate as many applied activities and assessments as possible. Most of our courses are hands-on, many project-based. With 15-person cohorts of maker-types, we can’t avoid knowing when our students are bored or disengaged. When the pandemic hit, we were one of the few programs that were allowed to resume in-person instruction. We transitioned anything we could online, and were very conscious and purposeful about it (in part, because we had to justify every in-person learning experience in mountains of paperwork).

I recognize the stuckness* of a teacher-centred approach – we have some stuckness in our department as well – generally older instructors who are teaching courses in the ways they have always been taught. When I first started teaching, I had the same stuckness. With these team members, it’s so hard for them to even comprehend that transmission does not equal reception, integration, and future application. There is no appetite for study, experimentation, or reflection – but these long-term team members are valuable parts of our team otherwise, and for their knowledge in a niche area. One ongoing challenge in my leadership skills is honing strategies to meet these instructors where they are, and build on their strengths – as Dr. Cleveland-Innes says, we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Preparing for a job search, I’m painfully aware of how bad I am at dropping names and theory into descriptions of my practice – even when what I do aligns with theory and best practice. I’m great at creating a culture of learning, collaboration, evaluation, and creative courage. My superpowers: emotional intelligence, excellence orientation, openness, authenticity, imagination. Do I get better at name-dropping, or do I try to find a work culture that will appreciate my approach?

*nod to Annika who told me about an activity she does with her students – collaboratively creating a digital collage to better know their ‘stuck’. I love this.

Focusing energy

Whenever I meet with my group, I feel inspired, refreshed, energized. It’s exactly what I was hoping for, but I don’t have the time to devote myself as much as I’d like – and it leaves me wondering what on earth I’m doing with my time.

These days it’s 2-4 evening meetings a week, plus work all day, plus parenting and gardening and everything else. Considering how much time I’m not enjoying work at the moment, I am spending way too much time and energy there. I feel needed – but my daily work seems to move further from where I want to go and what I want to do.

I was reviewing my CV this morning and it was the perfect moment to do so – I felt it didn’t represent my superpowers – like I’m trying to fit into a world that I don’t even like. I love learning, putting ideas together in different ways, collaborating, and enjoying shared moments of inspiration. I love applying design to the real world – through making, curriculum, systems, and culture. I love building mutually appreciative, trusting working relationships that make the work feel like play. I give no shits for money or paperwork, but I can work in that world effectively. I need to leave that world behind, consciously, deliberately, even though it feels like a ‘career limiting move’ from an outside perspective.

One thing that has sparked this thinking in my PBL group is the ways we work in metaphor. Though I work better, and happier, in this place – I wouldn’t have had the courage to lead my teams using these techniques. Seeing the diversity of our group – and yet it still works – I am encouraged. Less fitting in with the institution, more fitting in with myself.