Friday, 21 September 2012

Careers, Dick and Conferences


My difficulty career wise is a habit of shooting myself in the foot.  This usually happens when the organisation I work for crosses my line.  Yes, I have lines and when there are crossed my career changes.  I often wish those lines were not there.  Here’s an example.

I worked for a university and because their funding was reduced, gradually they pruned services for students.  First it was tutors.  They went from having 40 tutors across the UK to a single one, namely myself.  Great savings but at what cost to the service they supplied.  Then they decided that printing and posting out the course material was too expensive, so everything went online and students had to read it on screens or pay for their own printing. 

I watched the train wreck happen powerless to control the disaster.  Students who had paid for the course got nothing but web links.  I had visions of future education were learning consisted of vast online banks of information which students did not look at but merely had to know where to find them.  The job of educator was to become akin to a non- speaking tour guide who ushered clients from one virtual site to another encouraging engagement.  As the process continued I was called to a meeting at the main office to discuss further cut backs with the course team. 

At this meeting I felt duty bound to point out that a high percentage of students were not even finding their way to the courses website homepage.  Never mind tackling the online assignments.  By now tutorials were cut back to once a month, so for an eight-week course you were halfway through the course before you realized students were lost on the web.  During the consultation it became apparent that the next cost cutting exercise would be to get rid of the last remaining tutor, me!  By now, to be honest, the course had become a mere shell of what it had been before.  Just a fake façade to lure in the paying pundits.  So I was ready to walk but rather than say so, I came up with a game plan of my own.

What we need, I explained to the course team, to make the course successful was a really stupid student.  The course team turned and looked at me in amazement and I elaborated.  Most students think or fear that they are the weakest one of the pack.  Whether through lack time to prepare or sheer ability, most students fear that every one else is racing ahead, succeeding and leaving them behind in their wake.  So why not create a virtual student.  We give them a plausible name and student ID and access to all the student conferences and an email address.  This student “Dick” will make postings to the course conference early on in the course complaining that he has not received the course material by post.  Then, I as tutor can point out that actually the course material is online and give the web address.  This will alert all the rest that the  course material is available.  The virtual student can keep everyone else on track regarding assignments by asking really stupid questions that will help everyone else’s confidence grow. 

The course coordinator leant forward and said, “there’s a problem, when it comes to the tutorial they’ll all discover that Dick does not exist.”  I smiled patiently and responded, “Oh no, that’s part of the beauty of the plan.  Dick’s first posting after the tutorial will be to explain how he couldn’t find his way to the venue for the tutorial.  Imagine how cheered those who actually attended will feel.  At least they got there, they were ahead already would probably feel quite smug.

I could sense a growing enthusiasm around the table.  The red headed course assistant burst in enthusiastically.   “Dick could be used to activate postings on themes in conferences.  He could express a need for career advice and then our response might trigger others to consult our career advisor.  My first convert!  I decided to fan the fire. 

“From previous analysis of student drop out dates we know the times in the course when we lose most students.  Dick can be particularly active during these points making postings to the conference saying things like, It’s all too difficult, I’ve had family/health problems or I’m too far behind etc ”

by now red head could not stop himself interjecting excitedly, “And of course the responses given to Dick from the moderator will be read by all the students and could help them hang on in during these critical points.”

I smiled my approval and went on to my next point as if uninterrupted.
“Another problem Dick will be able to help us with is conference posting etiquette.”
A deep sign from everyone in the room showed I had hit a raw nerve here.  The course director scratched his head and looked genuinely perplexed, I don’t know how Dick could have helped prevent the European tutor conference debacle.”

For those of you who have never heard of this, let me explain.  There was an online conference set up for lecturers within Europe which became infamous in net etiquette circles.  All participants had been trained in good online conference etiquette (be polite, never insulting, no rude comments, no capitals – ie shouting, no political postings, religious rants etc) but it didn’t stop the disaster unfolding.  Neither could the poor conference moderator despite his pleas for restraint and reason. 

It had started off innocuously enough with a posting by a lecturer in Spain about the need for a printed copy of the course material to be sent out to all the tutors at least.  Another lecturer commented on the grammatical and spelling mistakes in the former posting in a rather offensive nit-picking manner.  Before a day had passed, the tutor in Spain had pointed out that since he was fluent in Italian, Spanish, German and English it was very rich to be scolded by someone who could only function in one language.  This prompted an angrier response, at which point the online moderator had intervened and called on both parties to account for their postings.  Neither would back down from a flaming escalating series of personal attacks including some unsavoury slights on someone’s mother.  A rather obscure university online conference was now being read avidly by all participants instead of the normal 15 out of 200 as the vitriol and intensity grew.  In desperation the online moderator took decisive action, he barred both from making any further postings by withdrawing their permissions to post from their profiles.  Now they could only read postings but not post their own contributions. 

Silence reigned for two days but figures monitoring the conference remained unusually high.  Obviously people were waiting breath abated for the next thrilling abusive missive.  Unbelievably, a normally innocuous mild mannered tutor from southern Spain took up the cudgel on behalf of his colleague and sent in a posting about how the English were insensitive and anally retentive due to their public school system.  There was a furry of heated responses and the fire was on again as heated as ever and spreading. This time when the online moderator warned of consequences there were five immediate postings on the theme of free speech, which triggered twenty the next day.  Righteous indignation followed when the first five freedom of speech posters were barred from the conference.  By now, there was 100% monitoring of this obscure online conference.  Some tutors were clocking five hours a day online waiting for the next exciting instalment.  A senior moderator with more experience took over at this stage and said that he would start disciplinary proceedings against whoever broke conference etiquette from that point on.  There was silence on the conference for two hours but the tense expectancy grew as all monitored the conference. 

Then at 11..30pm on Sept 23rd there was a single posting
“Bugger you!”
The moderator was as good as his word and not only took away the contributors posting privileges but wrote a terse letter of starting preliminary disciplinary proceedings to the culprit and copied the same to the whole conference.  Like lights on a Christmas tree the postings took off in one-word entries from all over Europe
“Bastards”
“Hitlers”
“Fascists”
These came from different tutors but grew in intensity and tempo.  By the middle of the night at least 80% of postings to the conference became swear words and they grew in their virulence as if each one was desperate to outdo the previous offering.  The senior moderator gave up and pulled the plug on the conference and closed it all down.  It became known to us all in the trade as the Fully Unexpected Conference Killer or FUCK as it was shortened to.  Just mention of it had course directors losing sleep, if this was how tutors behaved what would happen if FUCK ever happened in a student conference?

With this background, I wanted to show how Dick could have been deployed in such situations.  The course director was lost and red head was looking puzzled.  I clarified, for example Dick could have made a posting along the lines of “Last year on our online conference there was a suicide caused by poor net etiquette.  Poor Harry, a mate of mine, was on a course on the enlightenment to recover from a messy divorce.  Little expecting that hurtful postings would end his life.  It was so distressing that I had to drop out of the course myself and that’s why I am repeating the course this year.  Can I urge everyone to make sure they respect the vulnerable members of our student group and adhere to online etiquette for all our sakes!”

I finished by saying that was only one of many tactics that could be deployed by having our virtual mole, “Dick” in place.

The course director coughed and said, “I can see you’ve given this quite some thought and the idea has merit.  Perhaps we can have a meeting to build on the Dick idea.  He could have another useful role to play in tutor training.  For example, by inserting a Dick into a conference to challenge etiquette, tutors could be trained how to address such issues more efficiently.  Sort of a trial run so to speak.  I do think Dick has legs, what do the rest of you think?”

Red head nodded vigorously and the rest showed approval.  Dick was good to go.  It was time to pull the pin on all of this.

I began
“I’d like to point out that we started out with good course material with excellent tutors.  Then to save money we dumped the material online, got rid of the tutors and  tutorials.  The fact that this course team has spent this meeting talking about an non existent student Dick, on a course with hardly any tutorials and zero course materials seems the natural conclusion of this whole enterprise.  It would appear to indicate that now we have reached the natural climax – a course team with Dick all on their minds.”

Yes, indeed it was time for another career change!


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