This week I delivered my first deliberately structured lecture using the session planning activities from last week. I delivered the same session twice and my key learning was that even with detailed planning and rehearsal two instances of the same session can be radically different.

The first session had a handful of people in and the engagement was relatively good. I got constant feedback on status of the task we were working through.

The second session was full of promise: I knew I had one good session in the bag, I’d rehearsed more and as the session came online more people were turning up. The wheels started to come off once it as clear that some of the students were using a different version of the software I was running the training session on. I should have been much clearer in the invite to the session – to be honest it hadn’t occurred to me that there was a version other than the one I was using. There’s a big lesson to be learned here on assumed knowledge and starting points.

Even once we had got over the issue that the session was now not going to be useful to everyone that had joined, some seemed reluctant to engage with ‘thumbs up’ or other indications in the chat that they were following along. What had seemed like an easy mechanism to ensure engagement, and one I assumed people would just use (because I would), appeared to fall on deaf ears. Of the 10 or so people on the call maybe 3 or 4 would actually post into the chat.

I have never tried stand-up comedy but it felt like my ‘act’ was falling flat.

There are a number of reflections on why this might be:

I didn’t make it explicitly clear at the outset what the expectations were for their active engagement, or if I did I didn’t make it clear what the impact might be if there was no engagement. Maybe setting it up as a social convention, being part of the group etc. might have elicited more ‘lean forward’ participation.

I also didn’t do an ice-breaker that could have rehearsed this form of engagement at the start of the lesson so as to instil the practice into the students for when the time came. This would have added a minute or two to the lecture but I don’t think I can genuinely claim that time pressures were a factor, I simply didn’t think I’d need to warm them up.

The bulk of the sessions seemed to go well though, those that could followed along, asked sensible questions and seemed to get value from what was taught.

Crucially I also managed to keep the session to time, pretty much.

This has taught me, although I already knew it, that I have a lot to learn or more that I need a lot of active practice at supporting student learning. In spite of my well crafted plan I only had that one route in my head and when it started to go off track I wasn’t as able as I would have liked to adapt quickly. This blog, this act of reflection, is a big help in figuring out how to do better or differently next time.

What I did well though was delivering the content with clarity and energy and I hope my genuine interest in the subject came across.

More active practice and more active reflection are the to key ways I need to develop further.