Apathy and Engagement
I was thinking about this last course throughout the night and this morning. My final postings showed my apathy for the content, curriculum, and instruction very clearly. I’m certainly not apologetic for being apathetic or showing it. It does lead me to wonder about apathy and engagement though.
I’ve always found that apathy from students can be headed off using some instructional and curricular techniques. In curriculum, I found that making the content relevant, applicable to performance, and entertaining was a magic combination for staving off apathy and boredom. For example, I created an information security training program once set to a wild west and bandits theme, linked in some important data and facts about the subject, and included some mocked up skits and games to keep the participants engaged in a rather dull topic.
Instruction requires both content knowledge and knowledge of facilitation. Finding ways to learn about the participants and their interest and link that knowledge to the course content in ways that are interesting and meaningful instead of obvious and dull. For example, in my information security training, IT professionals were required to go through the intervention too. This was an audience that clearly was inundated with security knowledge, data, and practices. By most accounts, the program I delivered was elementary to them. So I took the opportunity to ask them questions in the courses that allowed them to show off, stretch their application of knowledge, and provide more rationale for the rest of the class. This put that group in a different class of participant and also added to the value of the class for others. In fact, many people from those classes with IT professionals in them reported learning so much about protecting the company and themselves. A win-win-win for the stakeholders.
My point of this is to say, I was apathetic and felt that the content and curriculum lacked a certain entertainment and relevance value. More importantly, it lacked sufficient clarity to make the content even appear alive much less interesting. The instructor did try to engage me but did so in a way that I was singled out negatively and in ways that clearly violate my employee agreement with my employer, something instructors need to understand. The instructor’s feedback was also elementary and lacked sufficient content to provide information needed for subsequent assignments; further hampering my ability to engage the content in the most basic of ways-for the grade. I suspect that was not intentional with so many participants in class and all developing 20, 30, and 40 page papers but it is what came through.
My apathy led to disengagement on many levels. I was able to find distractions more readily and even seek them out when the thought of going to class was so unappealing that I couldn’t even log into the classroom space. I am disappointed with this last class and have expressed my disappointment to my academic team so they can work with the instructor and designers to make needed improvements to this course. My hope is that future students don’t suffer through this abysmal example of higher education.
As I stated earlier, I am eager to get onto my dissertation phase and will be making some prep for that course over the next few weeks. I will continue to blog my responses and reflections on that process. By this weekend I should have reviewed my drafted proposal and checklists again and have something more concrete to deal with regarding that process and set of items.
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