Introduced to 'The Reflective Cycle (Gibbs, 1988)' I then used this to consider the micro teach I gave last week. 

Description

What happened?

• I tried to deliver a 60 mins class in 15 minutes. 

Feelings

What were you thinking and feeling?

• Like a runaway train. 

Evaluation

What was good and bad about the experience?

• It is self-evident that I need to observe a lot more , and teach a lot more and improve at every step and opportunity. 

Analysis

What sense can you make of the situation?

• All things can be taught? Though you’ll never teach me to dance! But teaching isn’t a dance. Might I be better suited to some teaching situations than others? 

Conclusion

What else could you have done ?

• Observed the micro teach sessions the week before while self-isolating and I would have quickly understood what can be done in the time ! 

Action Plan

If it rose again, what would you do? 

• Keep it simple.

• Talk less, teach more 

• Give it to them.

The consideration of, and time spent on the exercise is in profound difference to the way reflection was considered ten years ago on the MAODE. That was an entirely academic exercise, entirely based on reading around the subject. I may be wrong, but I don't recall any elaborate process whereby we dug deep to develop and share our thoughts. Or if we did, on reflection, I had little to draw on - I was not a teacher. I had started this journey in order to learn how to create learning for businesses and organisations, not in the classroom or workshop. 

What I wrote, see above, was of less value than what others wrote and shared. It was a lesson to be part of an exercise, the second of seven or more, over three hours, where it felt as if we were being indulged. The tutor actively sought out our experience and point of view, pausing to develop a variety of insights that resulted and only as a final thought did we go to a description or summary that had been prepared in advance. This was neither an afterthought, nor the statement that would dominate all others. The way it was shared it simply become one more opinion in the shared and constructed meaning.

A number of things are profoundly different face to face: the context of the learning. We are in a place designed to study (albeit a teaching restaurant with dining chairs used as desks). But there are chairs, there is a teacher on her feet with a big TV screen at the end of the room.  This context includes other learners. You see and feel their response to the experience, how they take notes (or not) and how much a point of view, a conclusion or shared anecdote matters. Doing this in a group chat online is not the same; for a start only four out of twelve would do it. My experience of the MAODE was that those of us who shared our experience, learnt together and got to know each other online, were a minority. Did we gain from that experience, or was it an indulgent distraction?