Tuesday 3 February 2009
Reflect on Reflecting
We had a discussion with Hazel and Jonathan today to check up on how our reflective writing is going. It is a tad confusing because I'm not sure if they know what they want from us. I understand that it's thinking through writing and it's to encourage deeper thinking, but I'm not sure if anyone is clear on what we are meant to be writing about. Tuesday's lectures yes? Everything else yes, but only if it links to Tuesday's lectures?? Is anyone else any clearer than what I am? Care to explain? I get the understanding from the class that quite a few of us are wondering if we are doing it "right" and I know that Jonathan explained that there is no right or wrong way to do it but it's being examined so there must be. I think it might be quite helpful for either Hazel or Jonathan to maybe leave a comment on people's reflective writing just to let us know if we are on the right track or not. Today's session didn't make it any clearer for me, if anything I'm a bit more confused. Didn't realise until I started writing today's entry. Is there anyone on the same boat or do I stand alone?
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2 comments:
Hi Kate - I get your point.
Higher education is modularised: things are split into discrete, assessable ‘chunks’ – with the best intentions – to allow students to share learning as we do with Design Ethnography students. However, you can’t ‘chunk’ people.
People make connections between seemingly disparate bits of information – and that is what makes great designers. So, although we are keen to see what you have taken from the lecture series in Designing Innovative Research we also hope that this connects with your other modules, and importantly, with what you see, do, make, read and talk about. So if you look at the assessment criteria:
understanding of the processes required to effect innovative research
understanding of interdisciplinary research and the innovation landscape
understanding of how to pitch ideas at an appropriate level
You can see how this could be addressed by discussions of how Jayne Wallace’s use of cultural probes and other methods offer a new way of looking at gathering inspiration, how Sara Czaja or Norman Alm’s lectures had resonances for you, despite their disciplines being medicine and computing, or how you felt a news item explained the credit crunch using an analogy that made you understand it really well, which made you think about how you might use that way of telling your story in the future.
It is about thinking and making connections, and these emerge over time. Thoughts can be quite fuzzy initially. That’s good. If we all had thoughts that were fully formed and not shaped and influenced by things we come across, we’d be resistant to ideas, static, dull, and looking at careers in banking.
well... reflective writing is a bit like holding a mirror toward your thoughts. it is like a conversation, even argument, you have with yourself.
I often have messy thoughts (oh, I do, I do...), so I write them down and leave it for couple of days then come back. Then I could see the points that I made or missed. Sometimes showing this mad process to others is a bit uncomfortable, but often I find that other people can spot my points much quicker than I can do. So I keep showing it to the people I trust that will point me to the right direction.
About the marking in education... interestingly I never really thought that much about it when I did my master. If I was doing something I was really enthusiastic about, I would do it to the best of my ability in every possible way. Often I find that, becasue of my passion on the subject, I would love to learn about and try out other people's way of doing similar things. And if I have done my best and listened to other people's suggestions, there is very small chance that I can be doing it wrong.
Sometimes we just need a bit courage to do it, right here, right now :)
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