Again, I'm taking part in an autoethnography , so I'm answering questions about our study group. Here is the next question:
How would you describe your level of participation over time? (e.g., occasional, regular, core member, shifted over time)
I think we met quite regularly at the beginning of our coursework. But then these meetings were very mission-driven, almost tactical. I remember we discussed specific homework assignments. We discussed upcoming classes and the progression of the classes. We would discuss the challenging aspects of the homework and even those related to APA. I had very little integration with APA, so it was great to have an academic professional in the group whom we could turn to for APA guidance.
How did shared language, routines, or norms develop within the group?
This is the toughest one to answer. I can't think of any "shared language, norms or routines" that developed within the group. But as I consider it, I think of some small ones. For one, we almost always had our cameras on when we met . . . And we almost always met via Zoom. We didn't conference call (unless someone was driving or couldn't be at their desk). So, I suppose that was the norm. Now that I think about it, no one ever said we had to meet via Zoom, but we did. In fact, I can't think of a time, other than the few times we met in person, when we didn't meet via Zoom. The opportunity to just call each other was there, but we always met via Zoom, and it was always an expectation.
I was recently talking to Andrew about class and our PhD program. Andrew is my go-to person for all things university or college related (see HERE). He is one of the few students who I actually compete with in my classes . . . lucky him.
I sent him one the other day, this one was about USC and the cost of its Masters in Social Work program (see HERE). It's a bit of a longish article, but wow is it powerful. On the heels of their college admissions scandal, which I still can't figure out. . . . I mean I get wanting to get your kid into a top notch school, but parents actually facilitating the cheating and the fraud? That's absurd. And for USC? That just shows that these parents weren't very smart about their objectives in my opinion.
Regardless, I sent this link to Andrew because of the cost of the program compared to the expected return. I've already done this calculation for my own PhD work, and you can imagine that since I'm late in my own life and because my job is helping me some, the return is significant on my end. Not so with the Masters in Social Work. The balance is incredibly lopsided on what it costs to get the degree (about 112K) and the expected salary for graduates (around 52K). Now, of course these numbers are stark, but that's a lot of college debt to pay off for a career field that habitually doesn't pay an awful lot.
The article discusses how a for profit, private company was used to help attract students. I don't find this to be that out of line. I have no problem with this aspect of the story. If there's a private company that a college wants to pay, great! But you better not hide the costs and you better not inflate the return.
Additionally, I think it's sad that (and the story doesn't discuss this as much) but I think they were taking advantage of student's and our society's own thoughts on social work. Noble? Maybe. But more noble than doctor or lawyer or any other job? Hardly says I. But I betcha if you ask kiddos going into schools these days they will say that it's more noble, and that's why they're doing it.
Describe how you initially joined the doctoral support group, what motivated you to join, and why you stayed involved.
I was not necessarily "motivated" to join the group. I think I went into it grudgingly. I am not a "group" person. Never have been. In general, if there is a team sport or a solo sport, I'll pick the solo every time. So, really, it's a surprise that I joined the group and stayed with it.
In what ways did the study group function as a community of practice rather than simply a study aid?
So just to double check I looked up the definition of Community of Practice, and what I found was that a "Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a passion or concern for something they do, interacting regularly to learn and improve their skills, share best practices, and build a collective repertoire of experiences, tools, and solutions to become better practitioners in that domain (Communities of Practice, 2020)" . . . and. . . . "Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope" (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner; 2015).
I’ve rehearsed my defense so much that I’m kinda at my wits end. Each morning for the last few days, almost a week really, I’ve gotten up and done a bit of work on the presentation, a few touch ups, a bit of improvements, but nothing too significant.
Last week I practiced with 4 or 5 people. I don’t know if it’s going to get any better. Sadly, I woke up this morning and I was supremely uninspired. I just want the whole thing over with. Either I pass or I have to go back and try again, but I want to move to the next thing. This sitting around is driving me stir crazy.
Were there points when the group played a role in keeping you engaged when you might otherwise have disengaged?
I’m in the midst of writing my defense. I may have written this before, so if I did, feel free to bypass. There are several different steps in finishing my doctoral degree. There’s the courses and classes of course. I needed what? 60 or 70 total credit hours to graduate? Of those only 12 or 15 are for writing the dissertation. So that leaves like 45 or 60 credit hours for classes. That was the first three years. Each semester and every summer I took between 6 and 9 credit hours just to complete that aspect of the degree.
My program with KSU was a tad different than others. Mine had a “residency requirement.” I picked a program with this quite purposefully. I didn’t want a 100% online experience. I wanted to have to go to an actual class and meet actual people and professors. Well, I got that. Every summer I’ve had to take a trip up to Kansas and sit with a class and do homework, live out of a suitcase, and meet and hang with my classmates. Well, worth the experience. Far better than just online courses.
I'm just thirty minutes out from my comps/quals and I am stressing. I'm a ball of stress. I barely slept last night . . . part of that had to do with a 16-year-old son coming in super late and leaving super early . . . but the large majority of it is this meeting in a couple of minutes.
How did the study group influence your sense of belonging in the program?
My friend Andrew wrote about how he goes about studying. I stopped and did a double take when I read this in his post, "and have my computer read me the passage." What the what? Really? That is so cool?
When my organization develops our eLearning here we have to ensure we both write out what is being said, say through audio narration what is needed, and provide a visual representation. I love the fact that Andrew does this? How does he feel it changes the nature of his studying? What and when does he decide, "that's a passage I need to hear!"
Secondly, like that he finds himself hunting down YouTube videos to help explain concepts and procedures. There is a huge press in our industry for content libraries that can be immediately accessed in the field by our learners. Think about it, when your garage door breaks, the first thing most of us do is go to YouTube and find someone who has shared their own problems with their own garage doors and shared it with the world. I think back and can easily remember my pool, my garage door, my wi-fi light switches (which I still think should be termed li-fi or wi-li), my sons basketball goal, all of these have been YouTube searches for me in just the past three months.
I find it also very interesting to judge each content creator. I like to see how they breakdown complex procedures for their audience. I like that some of them have nothing to advertise, they're just being helpful and generous with their time and work. I like watching camera angles and whether or not they have specialties or if they're just all around handy folk. The best I think . . . in terms of content creation, philosophy, etc . . . is this one aimed at people who need fatherly advice called Dad How do I (see here).
How, if at all, did participation in the study group influence your motivation to persist in the program?
This is a good question and one that I have often considered. I'm a fairly persistent fella. When I think about this question, I think about other challenges in my life. I completed Ranger School (9/10 on the difficulty scale), Scuba School (10/10 for different reasons), Basic Training (6/10), Airborne School (3/10), RIP (5/10), and Pre-Ranger (7/10), and several other sundry Army Ranger training missions. All were challenging in their own way. And I completed them all.
I completed my MBA (3/10), my bachelor's with a double major in 3 years (4/10), and I will even include in these challenges some of the projects I've worked on through my jobs (3/10). I've written three novels (8/10), which took years of persistence to complete.
As I said, Andrew has a land acknowledgment in his syllabus. Specifically, it says: Land Acknowledgement: As the first land-grant institution established under the 1862 Morrill Act, we acknowledge that the state of Kansas is historically home to many Native nations, including Kaw, Osage, and Pawnee, among others. Furthermore, Kansas is the current home to four federally recognized Native nations: The Prairie Band Potawatomi, the Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas, the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, and Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska. Many Native nations utilized the western plains of Kansas as their hunting grounds, and others—such as the Delaware—were moved through this region during Indian removal efforts to make way for White settlers. It’s important to acknowledge this, since the land that serves as the foundation for this institution was, and still is, stolen land. We remember these truths because K-State’s status as a land-grant institution is a story that exists within ongoing settler-colonialism and rests on the dispossession of Indigenous people and nations from their lands. These truths are often invisible to many. The recognition that K-State’s history begins and continues through Indigenous contexts is essential.
Recently I got to work with my classmate and good friend Anne on an emotional intelligence program for her organization in Kansas City. Naturally it makes sense that I would take the opportunity to write a post about emotional intelligence and how our learning community deals with a learners understanding and reflecting on their emotions and accurately and getting in touch with them. The other day I wrote about Andrew and our leadership training classes.
That being said, we do delve into some emotional moments in our leadership training. Often it is in the form of the role-playing I mention above in response to Andrew. When these supervisors have to get up in front of a class and act, they are at their most vulnerable and it's easy to see. Many refuse to perform the exercises without coaxing and almost none would volunteer to go first. What's interesting is that by the end of the class many are volunteering and seem to get more out of the role-playing exercises.
I'm sure some of this is due to the chance to get one under their belt and they realize they are within a friendly audience and among friends. It might also be that they are able to relax the negative emotions they feel regarding performing in front of a crowd, that stage fright, and are able to harness that anxiety and use the energy for learning. I look forward to the next opportunity to join the class so I can watch and determine if that first role-playing exercise, where habitually the emotional walls are still quite solid, is as effective as the last. I wonder too if we provide enough investigation into helping them with their emotions. As Sousa writes on page 61, "when a curriculum concept struggles with an emotion, the emotion always wins." It would be worthwhile for me to ensure the curriculum supports the learner's emotional journey through the class and takes advantage of the emotional walls where we can, and takes advantage of the learning opportunities when those walls drop.
Reference:
Sousa, D. A. (2017). How the brain learns (5th ed.). Corwin.
Andrew and Lauren both brought up the importance of humor in training. I'm glad they did. I know that when I was a trainer, especially when I was an online trainer, I used humor liberally to create engagement, social presences, and inspire a sense of community.
I found that using humor was a good way to bring the trainee's into the training community and embrace the medium. I also found out quickly about some of the pitfalls and challenges of using humor. Anything beyond surface level quickly cut to the quick and had the adverse effect. The trainer I interviewed for this week's assignment actually brought up humor as a tool and technique that he uses often as well. He found the same hazards existed for him.
Our training organization deliberately and expressly shies away from using humor in our courses. the classes we teach are quick, lasting usually no more than a few hours. Developing a rapport and using humor is tough to do in that time frame. Still, I see it as a technique that has it's uses. Already I've downloaded Andrew's two reference articles and can't wait to read them.
References
Anderson, C. (2020). His sense of humor carried the day: Using humor with nontraditional adult learners. Adult Learning, 31(1), 3-5.
Summerfelt, H., Lippman, L., & Hyman, I. E., Jr. (2010). The effects of humor on memory: Constrained by the pun. The Journal of General Psychology, 137(4), 376-392.
I sent this comic to Andrew today. It tends to wrap up a lot about what we have both been talking about regarding our dissertation processes. The committee is what makes the writing of the dissertation so tough.
Lately, Andrew has been telling me about his own struggles with his major professor. Everything he tells me is what I felt last year about my own!
Andrew and I discussed a learning principle the other day. He liked the principle that "everything else being equal, more time on task equals more learning."
I think about the number of times when a concept was difficult to impart in a lecture style course, and I would stay on it for longer and longer, trying different analogies and stories, asking for the learners to provide their own experiences, etc.
In terms of the online course, I think about designing course and how with difficult concepts we provide more resources, going from just the standard power point delivery, to reading, to images, to video, to video analysis, to reflective exercises, to discussions, and reinforcement in later modules as well. All of these different tools not only helped with reinforcement, but also provided "time on task" - Principle 9.
In terms of less is more, Andrew, I think about how in those online courses with all of those reinforcement tools, each was a small chunk rather than a huge block of learning. From the learner's perspective, because of the small nuggets of reinforcement, they might think it was less, in fact it could actually be less content, but the efficiency and effectiveness of the learning might be greater. Your "chunking" approach.
As a learner I would appreciate the ideas that you are throwing out about creating self-paced monthly modules instead of weekly assignments.
Andrew had a terrific discussion the other day about the field of Adult Learning and how our field is relatively new. Our class at the moment is borrowing a lot from Adult Development and showing the links between the two fields. Andrew brought up several different passages that highlight this relationship and how they are playing off of one another.
I found the same things interesting as he did; the two fields being brought together, AND the fact that research into the distinct field of Adult Learning was so nascent.
I made a note in my text on page 4 around the passage that states:
“Despite separate advances in the human development and learning fields, it is only within the last 15 years that researches have begun to consider how adult development and adult learning might be integral to one another.”
It was at this point in the reading I went back to try and find when this was published and felt sure it had to have been in the 80’s or 90’s. When I saw 2011 I was stunned. I know I’ve always felt my industry has not been keeping up with adult learning developments as much as they could have been in the past several years, I’d always assumed other industries might be doing more. I was surprised that this was more universal than I had imagined.
It does make me happy to see that my boss has invested in me and this field so much that he is sending me to these classes to get my degree. He recognizes that our industry can use this perspective and I’m enjoying being the person who gets to fulfill it.
Reference:
Hoare, C. (2011). The oxford handbook of reciprocal adult development and learning (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
