Learning, Leading and the CSU Forum:(

Collaborating, communicating and sharing our ideas are ways that we learn from each other. In ETL504, TL as Leaders, communication is said to underpin all collaborative efforts and endeavors.

I have been using the CSU Forum for 2 years now in my distance learning classes. I have found that there is so much potential for the CSU Forum in the name of communicating and learning but it is generally used for questions about assessment, assessments and assessment. If you look at our different avenues to share in ETL504 we have 10 categories. Six of these categories relate to our leadership topics and two are about assessment and one was introductions. The number of hits on the assessment categories is 834 (that is excluding the out of office repetitions from Roy) and the hits related to actual leadership topics is 56. This leads me to believe that there is a ratio of 15 to 1 of assessment questions to topic questions. You could say that the assessments are real and meaningful and what gets tested, get taught. I would agree with this if the actual questions about assessment were probing, thoughtful, and reflective in relation to our readings. BUT...I am not finding this to be true. For example, twelve questions were asked about word count for our assessment. Someone had stated that LAST year's students were asked to write 6000 words. On our assessment document it says 2000 words. I am not sure why we would be looking at the past and not moving in the present. It wastes everyones time and energy where this process of sharing should be energizing and revitalizing.

Here is an interesting story about the Forum. In my last class ETL402, I wrote the instructor privately about my Forum concerns. I got back an email that mentioned the fact that we were no longer new students to CSU and that the professor guessed that these experienced students no longer needed the "crutch" of sharing as much on the forum. I think she was telling me to "grow up". I guess my feelings of always being able to learn from others was not relevant! I would never view sharing as a crutch. So...during ETL504 I wrote to Roy about the use of the Forum and was there a way to increase relevant sharing. His response was that many of the students in this class were new to CSU and therefore much of the sharing had to do with assessment. Moral of this story: OLD or NEW students need to be encouraged to create relevant, meaningful, reflective comments and questions. I think that we would all agree that it is not the answers we are interested but can we ask great questions. I know this is what I expect from my students and I would hope that CSU would also expect better.