Mr B’s Masterful Space

Lucky this course is all about flexible learning, because lately it has needed to be about as flexible as a very flexible thing!

There are sayings that have been popping into my head lately in relation to my Masters coursework, like the-world-has-conspired-against-me type sayings. Like what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this type sayings. Like “there is a light at the end of the tunnel (but no-one has turned it on)” type sayings.

But to succumb to these would be melodramatic, so plough on I have, into the spine tingling realisation that I have 10 days!

But it is not the ten days on which I would like to focus, rather the struggles I am having with another USQ subject I am studying at the same time as FET5601. And flexible it is not – like Nelson’s Column – not flexible. MGT8038! The Nelson’s Column of USQ!

My working and personal life over the past month has been unlike any of the 36 months preceding it, and as such, time for being Masterful has been very, very limited and as a result I submitted my first MGT8038 assignment late – I worked hard to get it finished, learnt quite a bit in the process but submitted it late. My bad. I’ll live with the consequences. I went searching for them.

I found them… in the Assessment section of the course notes…

“Any assignment work received after the due date without prior approval (yep, that’s me) in accordance with the above may be penalised by deducting 20% of the total marks available for the assignment for each working day late. If an assignment is more than one week (5 days) late (yep, that’s me) without having made appropriate arrangements as spelled out above, the grade of F (i.e. fail) will hence generally be recorded for that assignment.

To be fair to all students, this policy will be consistently applied in this course.”

So, I get “fero” (that’s Zero spelt with an F). I can live with that. I can hear the lecturers… and I know (I’m a teacher for goodness sake!) I should have read all the assessment details! I should have been more organised! I should have planned! I should have this, that, and the other, etc, etc, etc. Oops, was that life interrupting? I should have ignored life! Nelso… (enough!)

So I read on, through the rest of the assessment guff to determine if I still had a chance to pass the course with 40% of my marks down the tube due to fairness (and my lack of organisation and dogged reluctance to ignore life!), and there it was… POW! A word that stumped me.

Andragogy!

[Context]… “This course (MGT8038) as you know is built around the principles of andragogy rather than pedagogy.” (again, from the MGT8038 Assessment notes).

No, I didn’t know this! How was I supposed to know this? Was I supposed to have picked it up during my reading of the first module? “Ah-ha, I am sensing some andragogy in the principles surrounding the construction of this course!” I did not know. This required some research.

Was this some instructional design homage to David Bowie? Was this a course churned out by robots? Was this a cop-out to excuse the fact that there was very little structure to the course? What was this ‘Andragogy’?

So I sat researching andragogy for one of my precious Masters hours. What a revelation. It suddenly put into perspective the niggling doubts I had about the way MGT8038 was designed, or rather wasn’t designed. This next copy and paste follows directly from the “As you know…” reference above.

“You are adult learners. You are studying a course that is aimed at equipping you with a better ability to face ‘real-world’ challenges of business and organisational life. In that world there are no such luxuries as having detailed guidelines and criteria for exactly how to approach and what to do in respect of all the challenges out there. That world can be very complex, uncertain, confusing, ‘messy’ and some even refer to ‘chaos’.

As we have said at the outset of this course – it is your responsibility to do good work and to submit a good assignment.

We assess whether work is good and you’ll get the feedback as we go.”

I don’t know about you, but this, as a rationale for the design of a course, does not inspire confidence. Reading, “you are adult learners… no luxuries…chaos” is not inspiring much confidence in this too-oft-life-interrupted-Masters-masochist! I read wider.

From my very surface reading of articles related to Andragogy I have gathered it is a theory of adult education and learning made popular by Malcolm Knowles, that has gathered its share of supporters and detractors in recent years. It distinguishes itself from ‘Pedagogy’ on a number of levels.

I won’t go into it here (check out this link and this link for more info), but it has certainly made me think very seriously about the instructional design of MGT8038 and FET5601 and the impact that the underlying theoretical precepts can have on the design of, and subsequent participant satisfaction levels within a course. I am also starting to wonder what effect these theoretical foundations have on learning, assessment and results.

As I am learning, I am an adult learner. Fairness equals consistency in the application of the rule. Late is spelt with an F, in block capitals! There are no luxuries.

So as I sip the last mouthful of my ‘97 Coonawarra Shiraz and stub out my Montecristo (made in Tabacalera, Spain!) cigar to the strains of Suffragette City, I can’t help thinking something is amiss.