[KarenStrickland]

Hi

I’ve looked at this from another angle slightly and it has highlighted some assumptions I had about my students. Yesterday I met with on of my PGCert students who is a  lecturer at my institution, lets call her Susie…

Our PGCert is blended with most content being online and some workshops. When Susie and I were discussing her progress she was asking me questions about content readily available in our VLE, Moodle. I gently suggested she might like to have a look again at the course materials when she told me she found it a little difficult at times as she DOESN’T HAVE THE INTERNET AT HOME! Well, I was a bit flabbergasted and before I could stop myself, my words were out… “how can you possibly manage without internet access at home?” I asked. We had a fairly light hearted discussion about my assumptions and she did have a smart phone which is fine but not great for doing all your learning on. But in pondering this encounter it made me think about the discussion activity.
 
This learner was happy to engage in online learning but did not have access at home (or very limited through phone), arguably her access issues suggest her “readiness” to learn was restricted.
 
Her expectations were that she would keep her learning at work which she then found challenging to incorporate and was using an previous version of the module in print format. Obviously limiting her to older material.
 
This experience really flabbergasted me as I had assumed my learners working in HE would all have the access to online learning at work and home. In my previous role as lecturer in nursing with under and post grad students I was fine with acknowledging access issues but somehow have slipped into assumptive mode as lecturer in HE.

How does this relate to James’ post? Well the assumptions we make about learning and teaching need to be unpicked regularly. Just as we cannot assume that good f2f teachers and good online teachers neither can we make assumptions about particular learner groups.

Karen

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