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!
