End of term is nigh. In the Masters, we have six different subjects, each with their own projects and coursework to be completed, plus studying for the imminent exams, plus attempting to make whatever headway we can on our TFMs. And I, personally, am starting to burn out.
I won't bore you with the details of my fragile state. I'm sure you can imagine for yourself. But I wanted to reflect a little on what the effects of our demands on students might be. We all know about the emotional effects of overload, the stress and anxiety that all-too-easily can mar young people's experience of education. But what about their learning outcomes?
In some sectors, there's a belief that for a education system to be rigorous, it has to be demanding: the more we ask students to do, the more they'll learn. My personal experience is entirely the opposite. Personally, when I'm overloaded with tasks, I become much more cynical about their completion. I've been in this game a long time, and I know with a fairly high degree of accuracy how to do the bare minimum to jump through the necessary hoops to get a passing grade. When we have too much to do, our attention shifts from intellectual exploration and producing something we're proud of, to viewing the entire learning process of a series of hurdles we have to get over, one way or another.
It's not pretty, but I think it's entirely understandable: when there isn't enough time to do things well, one has to find a way to make sure that they at least get done, no matter the quality of the final product. But is this really how we want our students to approach learning? Will they, at the end of the day, have really learned anything, or just cobbled together a passing grade by whatever means they had available?
Sometimes less is more. I think of my (very different) experience at undergraduate level, where the model of coursework was generally short (1500 word) essays, as opposed to the 15-20 page monsters I'm currently producing. The focus was on writing something provocative, interesting, and original, which showed genuine understanding of the material, and prioritised concision over verbosity. Students were motivated, and felt invested in producing something they could be proud of, partly because we had the time to do things properly.
That's why I fundamentally disagree with the idea that the more we make our students do, the more they will learn. In fact, I think, a simple but well-designed task can be far more effective in promoting genuine learning than a padded, bulky beast of a project. We have to think of our students' lived experience when assigning work to them, and whether we're actually getting them to learn, or simply knock out whatever they can to make it to the next task.
Comments