Yeah, I know, this has been a pretty rambling post - but I don't know if I've ever had so many thoughts tumbling around trying to be heard, all from one single experience.
Nothing to see here
So, our module tutor finished off with the introductions, and we thought, "Great, now we get to learn some stuff"....ah... that's not what the tutor had in mind.... it's going to be a facilitated process where we will work in teams to complete some exercises which you should have looked at before now.
In the midst of this, a latecomer arrived, having attended at the original address from the invite, to be greeted simply with a very rude "You're late", and no welcome from the tutor. Did he think that someone really wanted to be turning up halfway through the morning at their first workshop?
OK moving back into the module then... we'd seen the exercises (some as late as the day before the workshop due to yet another admin error), but there was a lot of stuff in there that we didn't exactly know how to begin... like the first question, around completing a risk assessment for our fake system to be designed. So we shared that fact with the module tutor - and the general theme for the experience began right there.
"You are all supposed to be here studying at Level 7, you should know this already" (errr.... how does someone straight from a maths degree get experience of writing risk assessments please?), and then there followed a 15 minute lecture on the difference between Level 4 learning and Level 7, (with slides) which I'm sure might have been more useful and helpful if it wasn't being used to berate us for not knowing something. "Anyway, I haven't got time to teach you about that". (you just wasted 15 minutes where you could have explained in telling us about different levels..)
On the plus side, working through the exercises with people employed in different workplaces enabled us to discuss the differences between our working practices. There was also a lot of discussion around the difference between a simple analysis and a critical one, which I'm sure will be of assistance when it comes to completing the module assignment.
However, it would have been much more helpful if the tutor had been less, well, critical, and more eager to show us the difference between how to structure an argument for L7 versus L4/L6. Anything helpful that he did show us, he would scroll up and down really fast, with no proper discussion. By the end of Day 1, I had a headache and was totally regretting putting myself through this.
It was the same whenever we asked a question, "You don't want me to give you all the answers you are Level 7 students" - no we didn't want the "answers", just guidance on what he thought was a good answer, given that he will be the one to mark our assignments at the end of the day.
Building a team
I guess the positive outcome of Day 1 was the camaraderie that grew between us students, out of sheer frustration at the module tutor and his unwillingness to listen to questions. We finished Day 1 at the pub, and had a good old rant about the experience with each other, and learned a bit more about each other along the way.
Yeesh that was one long day.... so much so that I will start yet another post....
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