When entering room 80.11.11, I was greeted by about 100 fresh faces awaiting their first lectorial.
Brian conducted the lion’s share of the presentation delivering the seminar with his warm, avuncular tone, allowing space for an occasional contribution from his contemporaries to relay further information such as how learning will be divided, important dates and that ‘this will be your life from here on’.
Rachel drew up a chart on the whiteboard and Brian asked students to share their thoughts on what they hoped to achieve as far as learning goes. From recollection, the chart was divided into contextual and practical. The learning goals expressed by students were entered into these fields and the responses proved vast and interesting. This gave me some things to think about for my own learning aspirations. Aside from my hopes to enrich presentation and critical thinking skills, editing was mentioned by a student which is definitely something that could help me evolve… as a student.
We then read through a 5 page essay by Katherine Hayles entitled, Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes arguing that there has been an apparent shift in the concentration levels in developed nation’s due to the increasing use of technology. Ironically, I found myself distracted by my buzzing phone and the fact that the student sitting to my right was masterfully applying multicoloured highlighters to their text when all I had was a inefficient old pen to mark the dates, names and phrases. She had inadvertently made me feel under-prepared so I had to consciously and forcibly negate this ‘hyper attention’ that seemed to be snowballing as each new thought justified the next. Ahhh! Katherine Hayles! ‘Deep concentration’ could prove to be a challenge for me!
According to a report cited within the essay, many students spent 8.5 hours per day consuming media and have evolved toward multitasking. I am a fine example of this as I am currently writing this from work!
For me, the highlights of the lectorial were observing the students’ reactions to questions asked by Brian and the response to the shared learning approach applied by the school. For example, people seemed withdrawn when it came to answering Brian’s questions however, they were more than happy to freely and openly share their thoughts with their peers. I personally think that the latter is where much of the learning takes place.
Low-lights… hmm, I can only remember being really really thirsty, and please note that this is not a portentous clique like ‘I was thirsty for knowledge’ or anything like that, I literally hadn’t taken my water with me and couldn’t bring myself to pay $3 for a bottle from the cafe on principle.
Overall, the seminar allowed me to consider my own learning behaviour and the need to better prepare myself. I’m looking forward to the digital components, such as the blackboard and the blog, coalescing with general uni life so that I can buckle down and get the most out of my studies.