In a previous post I discussed on the merits of including emotional awareness on reflective learning.  Therefore it would be remiss of me not to put my preaching into practice and reflect on an incident which happened to me today.

As part of H817 I have been collaborating with my peers to construct a wiki, a collective resource for the group.  Now, this is only the second time I’ve participated in a wiki but I’ve wanted to try one out for a long time with a view to using them in my online teaching.  I even wrote about wikis for my H800 EMA, so I launched into the exercise armed with some theory but little practice.  Perhaps I was over-enthusiastic but in I waded, bravely making an early post and one tiny edit.  I’m the first to admit that I am far from being an expert on the topic in question and I looked forward to seeing how others would add to and improve my early postings.  That is, after all, the point of collaborative editing software.  With each edit the artefact becomes more authoritative and accurate (at least that's the theory) and if the baseline is low, the only way is up (Edutech Wiki, 2014; Esser, 2015).

I eagerly checked for subsequent edits, engrossed in both process and content.  I prepared myself for the emotions that might arise from my contribution being edited, aware that this can be both a positive and negative experience (Baker, 2008).  What I hadn’t expected was the humiliation I felt at comments made about my postings outside of the wiki on the tutor group forum.  I expected – no, I welcomed – edits on the wiki.  But the negative comment on an asynchronous discussion board crushed me and I felt well and truly chastened in front of my peers.  I knew my contribution could be improved: there were gaps in my knowledge and I hoped someone would pick up on this.  The criticism was justified but I had to understand why it had such an emotional impact.  And I had to accept that the emotional reaction belonged to me and not my fellow students.

As a doctor “of a certain age” I recall vividly the horrors of learning-by-public-humiliation on teaching ward rounds.  In front of my peers, I felt rather stupid and was immediately transported back to those undergraduate experiences.   In their model of reflective practice, Atkins and Murphy (1993) acknowledge the importance of emotions on learning, which may modulate memories, forge associations and create assumptions (Atherton, 2013).  Unpleasant emotions can lead to avoidance behaviour,  as manifest by my immediate response to stay away from both forum and wiki.  As a reflected upon this I realised that my fear of looking stupid in front of others had led me to resist enabling comments on my blog.  I only recently allowed this, after being inspired by Weller (2011) and the experience has been nothing but positive.  Comments from peers have made me question my assumptions and delve deeper and more laterally into and around the subject.  So why react the way I did?  My previous experiences came from an era that (thankfully) belongs to the past.  Which, I now see, is precisely where I want them to stay. 

This reflection enabled an awareness that I hold two opposing positions  – the desire to be part of a community of practice (Wenger, 2000) whilst simultaneously isolating myself as a protective mechanism.  It has also tempered my eagerness to use wikis in my teaching.  Perhaps a more balanced view is to ensure that my students know how and why to use a wiki or other collaborative editing software (Esser, 2015), and to be mindful that if you don’t feel safe to collaborate online, all the good learning design and Web 2.0 tools will be useless. 

References

Atherton J.S. (2013) Learning and Teaching; Cognitive theories of learning [Online].  Available at www.learningandteachinginfo/learning/cognitive.htm (accessed 20 Feb 2016).

Atkins, S. and Murphy, K. (1993) ‘Reflection: a review of the literature’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 18, pp. 1188–1192.

Baker, N. (2008) ‘How I fell in love with Wikipedia’ [online], The Guardian, 10 April [Online].  Available at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet (accessed 25 February 2016).

Edutech Wiki. (2016) ‘Wikis’ [Online], 17 May 2014.  Available at http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Wikis (accessed 25 February 2016).

Esser, C. (2015) ‘Can Wikis make Students Think (Differently)?’ in Capture: Conversations about pedagogy and teaching underpinned by research enquiry. The University of Winchester, Winchester [Online]. Available at http://www.winchester.ac.uk/studyhere/ExcellenceinLearningandTeaching/research/e-journals/Documents/CaptureVol2.pdf (accessed 25 February 2016).

Weller, M., 2011. Digital, Networked and Open. In The Digital Scholar : How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 1–13. Available at: http://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-digital-scholar-how-technology-is-transforming-scholarly-practice/ch1-digital-networked-and-open/ (accessed 25 February 2016).

Wenger, E. (2000) ‘Communities of practice and social learning systems’, Organization vol 7, no 2, pp 225-24