The personal learning journey

Today I received one of my assignments back from university. The module is called Reflective Professional Development and one part of the assignment involved a journal of our experience of the first year of the programme. At the start of the year, we wrote a 1000 word opening summary. This was supplemented by two 200 word reviews and topped off by a further 200 word closing summary.

It has been interesting to read the material through again and track my thoughts as the year has progressed. It has been particularly interesting to read my lecturer's comments, which included the following observations:

"Although sometimes frustrating, the world of the classroom is fascinating and needs the 'outside' view of someone like yourself"

I am the only person in the group not employed in the formal education sector, and I had expressed my frustration at one point at what seemed to me to be the very narrow world view of my classmates - in particular, a teacher of business studies who had never worked in the business world and certainly had no insight into the realities of the corporate environment. Most of the time I felt that the rest of the group looked on me as an inconvenience - someone who seemed to delight in rocking their wonderfully stable boats. Certainly, my tendency to grab hold of the reins of my own learning, rather than following the recommended materials seemed to be considered slightly subversive. I can only hope that, if nothing else, I planted a few seeds of informal, learner-driven learning that might bear fruit in the future.

"Your MA seems such a personal rather than professional journey... because the course has limited use to your work"

I found this an interesting observation. As I have mentioned more than once, I have abandoned all pretence of boundaries between my professional and personal life - to me it's all just one thing: my life. And at the end of the day (as someone I feel I should credit, but can't identify, once said) everything is personal if you're a person.

Which brings me to my closing thought. It's a theme I've flogged to death in pretty good company often before:

My personal learning environment? I'm living it! It's called life.

Yeah I'm a geek. So sue me ;-)