The journey is your learning

Question? I’m just making my way through the tasks for Part 4, I think that 4C- Developing your questions within your professional community would be a big advantage in my research. However at the moment everyone is preparing for school inspections in two weeks time. I was going to complete this task after two weeks time, so I can get a fully thought out conversation about my topic. To replace the lack of this task I was going to keep up with my own individual research, literature and other research methods. I know that the timeline says that we should be moving onto Part 5 next week, will postponing task 4c be an issue? I have also found two other students who have a similar path in their inquiry to mine, its nice to know that we are sharing similar challenges within our inquiries.

Adesola’s thoughts: I am happy with you doing whatever order you want whenever you want. Everyone’s practice is different and has busy points. That is the point of the course, you are at work. The important thing is that you don’t disconnect work from study: be thinking about your practice/work as a site of learning not something that gets in its way.

As long as you know where you going with what you will hand in it is fine to make your own pathway there. The course is about your Professionalism, so we trust you to plan your time too.

It sounds like you are doing 4c because you are thinking about inquiry and you are in your professional community doing it.

Have a look at blog posts from people who have done Module Two for insight about how different people approach their time and Module Two – How they got there…

Campus session reflections

Here are reflections from the campus session today:

In our on campus session today, I begun realizing that the main task for me personally is to find myself within my inquiry. Reflecting upon it, some of the questions I thought about raising seem rather generic; when Adesola asked me why I was raising them in the first place, it quickly became apparent that perhaps I had to dig a little deeper.

Why do I feel a certain way about the topics I raised? Most probably because they affect me personally.

Ultimately, I have to think less of projecting an idea ‘over there’ and more of how to look for something ‘right here’ within myself.

Being faced with the aspect of ethics at the moment, I want to think more about how I affect things and how I am affected by things; knowing that I can only assume how I am affecting others, really.

Though ethics are being seen as quite a black or white kind of thing, I agree with Adesola that perhaps they are more reflective and therefor also personal.

Adesola mentioned Tina from Module 3 who was in two minds about whether she wanted to write her inquiry from a personal perspective or follow a more ‘academic’ approach by not doing so.

But why is it that we automatically divide between the me and the academics? Aren’t we allowed to approach knowledge and see it through our own eyes?

Do we think our own opinion might not sound as valid as it would sound if we spoke about it in third person, like It didn’t really affect us?

But no matter how hard I try to be objective, isn’t whatever I write ultimately my own take?

I am now planning on writing my inquiry from my point of view, reflecting my personal perspective on my own experience.

At this stage of my learning, I want to narrow it down to my inquiry topic as soon as I can so that I can allow myself to go deeper within the actual process of posing a question, or as we looked at it today, finding out what I would like to explore more. 

Read more from Irini 

http://irinibapp.blogspot.co.uk

Today I had my first campus session, it was an incredibly nerve racking experience as I didn't know what to expect. We started by introducing ourselves, where we were in the course and raising any concerns that we had. I had a question about task 2D - inquiry, I wasn't sure which practice to write about, education or arts.

Adesola asked us to write a poem entitled yesterday, it could include pictures or doodles if necessary. Once we had finished, we passed it round the circle and had to pick out key points that might tell us something about the persons interests or personality. This task was incredibly useful for me as I find reflective practice difficult and really helped me to find connections and things I am passionate about. It also helped me to identify how certain things affect me and how we affect certain things for example, the weather can have an effect on my mood. 
Next, we looked at the inquiry in Module 2 and what sort of questions we should look at. This proved to be difficult as we always wanted to answer the question instead of thinking about how it directly affects us. I personally think the trap that I will fall into, will be picking a question that is too generic and general instead of picking one I wish to know more about. 
A question that was raised was, "How can the arts be taken more seriously as a profession?" This is a question I have certainly asked myself many times, however it is too vast and not personal enough. 
Adesola was asked a question by a module 3 student asking whether she should write her inquiry from a personal or "academic" point of view. We had a long discussion about this and explored pros and cons for both avenues. I feel that it should be written from a personal prospective as the course is about exploring you and your practice. Also, it is your opinion and by writing "academically" it may give the impression that everyone feels the same. We also talked about how using ‘I’ can be academic also.    
This session really helped me to understand myself and how much I use reflective practice in my everyday life. 

Read more from Zoe:

http://zoevictoriapope.blogspot.co.uk

What do you feel, see, hear about this?

Please comment

Adesola

AM Skype chat

Today’s am skype session was great. It’s always so amazing to be talking to people who are all over the world. We talked about:

Blogging – we started off about how if you are  starting in Module One you may not be sure what a blog post should look like. Should it be informal, funny, personal, more formal? The conversation took us to the point that the blogs are for connecting. As such people felt that being more personal and informal and not tooooo long encourages people to read and respond. However some post might be more for yourself to reference back later in the Module or the course. We thought about writing for purpose. If you are writing more informally on your blog also remember (and practice) writing more academic style, which the university will require for the work you submit. I think you should start getting used to citing things as you write even if you are writing in an informal manor. If you practice citing then you get used to thinking about how what you are saying can connect with other people’s ideas. Danielle is going to post further about this.

danniausten.blogspot.com.

 We talked about some Module Two inquiry ideas, some ideas are: about how dancers look after themselves, injury and self-medication, the exchange of work place knowledge across a cast or group of performers, Why dance training does not rated as highly in some people’s eyes as desk based study. I am re-posting a great film of a speech by Sir Ken Robinson on this last topic. Saran D. and Sarah S. will post further on our conversation about inquiry questions.

http://sarahdunn88.blogspot.co.uk

http://sarahsmales.blogspot.co.uk

We asked what advice would people who have done Module One have for people in Module One now.  This seemed to be: blog , connect with people, Don’t’ Panic, keep notes to yourself. Anthony is going to post on this and also specifically about working from a cruise ship.

http://antgifford.blogspot.co.uk

James will write about attending a group skype session for the first time and what it was like.

http://jamesbapp.blogspot.co.uk/

We also talked about how all the choices we make and other people make (down to looking at your phone when it should be off for instance during a performance) are ethical choices. Ethics is about reflecting how we are experienced by others.

The next Group skypes are March 31^st

What do you think of our conversations??

Adesola

In the nicest posible tone....

For all modules there are different things you are asked to give us for assessment. BUT in each module what you hand-in is linked it is not a load of independent documents. In Module One you are making a portfolio telling one thing. In Module Two you are telling one thing: about a plan that is linked to your practice and will complete your BA. In Module Three you are telling us about one thing; a Research project. But because life is multi-layered you maybe handing different aspects or parts of the one idea but they are all linked in telling the same story of each module.

All the work we are doing on linking experiences, networks, reflection why would we then ask you to chop things up and not relate things to each other. In some cases – like Module Three you are asked for a document and then there is a brake down of each section but they are part of the same thing!!

The sections are like the way a book has chapters each chapter has a particular part of the story but they relate to each other to make a whole picture. The sections are like chapters of a book each section has its part but they are put to together to make the who report.

For everyone please remember that the assessment work is not a load of hoops we want you to jump through to get the prize of passing. We want to understand what you have been doing, we want you to be able to articulate it in away that anyone teaching at BA level will understand and also at a level where you can tell other people about your work in your professional world. Why would we want to read the same thing repeated again and again in different short documents that don’t relate to each other? I guess I would hope that you could see we are not trying to give you tasks like hero’s in a fairytale that get more and more difficult to see if you deserve a BA. All the work we do about web 2:0 in Module One shows that of course you can find the ‘knowledge’, ‘information’ but what is its value/ meaning. What makes it important is the unique view/ ideas/ experiences you have had and how you give it meaning. That is most important and then it is important that your special voice on the topics can be heard and there are standard ways for people to hear you; the guide-lines for how the work is to be submitted is just so you have experience in presenting your voice in away that will be heard in the establishment of a university setting because a BA is a university artefact.

Please try to make sense of what you are doing. At the beginning of each module we ask you to take a leap of faith into the ideas and activities but by the end do not be doing things because you think you have been told to, have a reason for doing them for yourself also. If you need to grab hold of that meaning and its slips away talk to your advisor that is what they are there for. There is no secret society holding the knowledge: we want you to do your best, do well this world needs all the brilliant, fulfilled people it can get.

Most people are doing this but just a reminder:

Put your name on your work – simply so we know who its from

Put page numbers on it – simply so we know the order of things

Put things together – so that you link your learning particularly to you and your practice.

Use words you know the meaning of

Check the meaning is what you think it is, not just how it is used in Metro or the Sun

Don’t rely on one word to give meaning to a whole sentence – write to illuminate ideas.

Feel you are a part of something: your interesting voice within the context of hundreds of others in books and journals too. 

Respect yourself and what you think by presenting it clearly and respect yourself by respecting the work others have done. If you thought it then probably someone else has too. Find your published soul-mates: what they brought to the ideas you are interested in too. Don’t reinvent the wheel find out about the wheel.

OK then

!!!!

Adesola

Developing a picture

I know everyone is busy so I have marks sections 'Module One', 'Two' and 'Three' but as always try to read the whole post. Something I think is useful to a Module One might be just what you needed to think about in Module Three. We are all connected.

Module One's

You will be thinking about the portfolio that you are handing in for assessment. At this point in the module you are starting to reflect on the whole activity. Although you did things in sections the portfolio is asking you to present an overview or summary of what you have learnt. I find it very hard to do this if I start at the beginning of something in terms of time, and work my way to the present day. In other words if you start your Critical Reflection with talking about task 1a and finish with the last task it is hard to give a meaningful overview of anything but a schedule. This is because your learning probably did not develop one thing after the next. Some ideas might have 'clicked' straight away, some might have 'clicked' and them you found deeper meaning to them later. Some may not until next module!!! It is unlikely it was a step a-b-c sort of process. I don't believe in linear constructs anyway, and I don't think learning is like that. So trying to tell the story of your learning as a straight timeline is very difficult. But everyone has their own way of doing things. In the post below I talked about different approaches. I find organizing what I want to say into themes works best for me. Think about which works for you? Give yourself time to try writing your final Critical Reflection a couple of different ways. Just like with the reflective journal there are many ways to write about the same events. Remember also we are looking for links to ideas from other people - citations from books, journals, articles etc... that have had an impact on the way you looked at your activity in this first module. Have a look at:

Assessment portfolio

http://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2010/11/assessment-portfolio.html

Module Two's

I love this video because it talks to the importance of analysis see paragraph below. But it is also about how important it is to create a research model that has thought about the effect your activity has on the people you interact with. Thinking from the perspective that they have their own story and you are just a small part (maybe a 10 minute encounter) of something much bigger than you could know. THAT is what ethics is about - thinking about how others will experience what you have created. This video shows how if you do not think about this you will limit what you can hear from them. You will limit what you hear to what you expect them to say. I would love you to comment on what is wrong in the video in terms of research in the comments below. 

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare

Module Three's

I cannot stress enough that the inquiry is NOT about collecting data it is about analysis (see film above). The inquiry hangs on what you do with the data. That's not just re-writing what people said or putting what they said into a beautiful chart. It is about you thinking about what it means informed by your unique experience, the literature you have been reading and the experience of having been there when the data collection was happening, oh and what was said!! have a look at this post too.

Weeks 6,7,8 & 10 (Module three particularly)

http://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2012/03/weeks-678-10-module-three-particularly.html


So what do you think? 
Love your comments
Adesola