I'm not normally nervous about teaching. In fact one person commented that they didn't know I did nervous: I do but not that often. I'm usually confident in my work and confident in my ability to cope with the unexpected.
So I'm blogging this reflection because I'm teaching a blended learning course, primarily online with a few help and support classes, and having taught the first class yesterday I knew before hand that I was nervous and afterwards I'm even more nervous about it.
I'm reasonably confident that the materials I've provided cover the content that is required and prior to this week I would have said that I'm reasonably confident that they are accessible and the learners can learn from them and practise and extend their skills as required. So why am I nervous?
Well I think the pre-start nerves were because it feels like it's out of my hands now. The phrase that springs most readily to mind is "It's out of my control" but for me that control isn't the control of seeing bums on seats and giving them chunks of my expertise in 'chalk and talk' style, rather it is the loss of that ability to assess how well the class is going, if they're getting the points and ideas, and to amend my presentation and teaching to suit the needs of the group. Words written on a page can't do that and although the educational aims and outcomes haven't really changed in this course (I've taught it face-to-face for the last 9 years) the style of each class has changed in response to the nature of the class. (I'm teaching numerical reasoning to non-mathematicians, the materials they need to cover haven't really changed in the last decade - they're still bad at percentages, at mental arithmetic and the like, which is why the content hasn't changed.)
My nerves after the first class are partially still based in that loss of adaptability. I guess I was hoping that the first class would allay those fears but it wasn't the case. If anything it made them flare up. I decided, as a matter of policy, to make use of a course blog as the main route of communication. I have done this before quite successfully on a number of occasions, although always with professional training rather than undergraduates. It didn't fill me with confidence when only half of the class knew what a blog was and how to use one, and only one person knew about RSS feeds. Not in the sense of "Oh, this is how you generate the XML" but in the sense of what you use them for and their strengths and weaknesses.
And that, I think, is why I'm more nervous now. Was expecting the students to use a blog to communicate a mistake? It's certainly not, apparently, a comfortable and familiar technology for them. If I'm wrong about that, have I misjudged the style of the presentation? Suddenly the reason I'm more nervous now is really obvious, as is the fact that there's not much I can do about it any more.
Only time will tell. It will be interesting to see how the marks and retention compare to previous years.
