For my reflection on the first semester of this course, I wrote a short essay about my personal experiences related to education, mainly comparing Korean and British education system. For my reflection on this semester, I also wrote a short essay, but this time I specifically focused on exploring the value of this course through sharing my own findings and experiences in this course.
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It has been already roughly eight months in Edinburgh and I have experienced quite a lot of things during this time. I have mostly enjoyed my academic and social life in here, but I still find difficulties in my academic life, specifically in terms of self-confidence. ‘The Future Of Our University’ was the most challenging course to me in my first year of studying, however, it was definitely worth it to take this course. As my reflection on this course, I would like to discuss the value of this course; in doing so, three elements—comparison between this course and other courses, the value of activities in this course and my general personal experiences—would be discussed.
Comparing this course to other courses, it is undeniable that this course was special and unique in various ways considering the course structure and the relationship between students and tutors. Firstly, the course structure of this course was really fascinating. It was so different from other courses. There was no decided structure at all in the beginning of the course. Everyone in this course involved in the process of decision making, often using consensus decision making model, from minor issues to major issues whereas structure of courses were already decided by the School in other courses. In addition, the relationship between students and tutors was really special unlike other courses. In other courses, it seems like the relationship between students and tutors are not that close. For me, it seems a bit like hierarchical relationship. For instance, in one of my tutorial groups, there was always an awkward silence about several minutes when the tutor asked a question since no one wanted to answer the question, being afraid of getting so many back-up questions or being pointed out that he or she is wrong. In this course, everyone seems like they feel comfortable and do not afraid to speak out. Also, ‘making apology system’, in the case when people cannot come to the seminar, was a brilliant system because it really means that people do know each other and care each other. Consequently, I think this course is really a valuable course and I would really like to recommend to other students to take it.
In terms of the value of activities in this course, there were substantial different kinds of activities such as reading-based discussions, workshops, physical activities and so on. This was also different from other courses. It was not having a discussion about certain given questions. Everyone made suggestions about interesting topics and readings that could be discussed in the seminar. Also for me, one of the another valuable parts was inviting people from outside of the course, learning about something that I was not expected to learn in this course such as listening to a little lecture about community, graphic design facilitation and so on. In addition, having group-run sessions from bureaucracy, pedagogy and permaculture groups was also a great opportunity to learn new concepts. In particular, permaculture was the concept that I did further research after the group session since it really inspired me. I think this might be one of the benefits from this course, learning new concepts that students are initially not interested in. In terms of readings, it might be true that we did not have a lot of readings. Although we had readings sometimes, we probably did not have sufficient time to discuss about them. Personally, I think we barely used a resource list. Yet, this can be understandable considering the fact that there were so many other activities that we did in the course.
With regards to my general personal experiences, this course was not easy for me as I mentioned briefly in the introduction. This might be because of not only a lack of language skills and self-confidence but also special characteristic of this course. Even though there were some questions that I could have answered and given my perspective, I was not able to do so because I did not have enough confidence and always got nervousness when I tried to speak in a big group. Everyone in this course seemed so confident, however, for me that was really challenging. Also, most concepts and topics that I learnt in this course were not quite familiar to me. In tutorials for other courses, I can make some contributions since there is always a given list of tutorial questions, which means that if I do all readings and preparation, it was not that difficult. This course was different from those, so it was not easy for me and I could not make sufficient contribution to the seminar. I also wrote and thought about this in my reflection on the first semester of this course, however, it is a bit disappointing that I have not really improved a lot in terms of such issues. Nevertheless, I believe I can improve this at some point if I keep trying hard for the rest of studying years.
To sum up, having reflected the value of this course, sharing my experiences, it is clear that this course seems like such a beneficial and interesting course considering its uniqueness and incalculable values. This is a perfect course for students who want to experience different educational circumstances. There might be students like me who often find difficulties due to language ability or self-confidence issues, however, this does not mean that they cannot join this course. I firmly believe we should keep pushed ourselves outside our comfort zone, being positive and trying harder to find ways to getting more confidence and to generally improving personal mindsets.
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[the implications of these for next year’s course]
-Be openminded? (Consider various types of activities)
-Do readings? (Might wanna do more readings and have enough time to think and discuss about them)
-Make attempts to try a lot of things? (e.g; use of consensus decision making model& making apology system)
-Enjoy:)
lovely and very useful. feeling daunted about trying to write my own reflections!
thank you for this, Chawon! it was really nice to read your perspective on this course as a learning experience
Thanks for sharing this Chawon, I really enjoyed reading it.
Thank you so much for writing these two reflections. I read them together and shall ‘review’ them together as I feel that this is the way they were intended.
Firstly both pieces are very well researched, I really enjoyed your comparison of the South Korean and British educational systems as a method of critique.
Secondly what I got from these posts is the bravery that you had in taking this course. I personally found it intimidating in the first week or so surrounded by people who seemed well acquainted as well as knowledgeable of the intricacies of the failings of the British academic system, but this pales in comparison to how it must have felt for you, not having grown up in the British academic system and with English not being your primary language. I am full of respect that you committed to the full year.
I think your posts highlights a failing of the university in that British students need to facilitate a better academic environment for those to which English is not their primary language so that people like yourself feel more able to contribute freely. It must take courage to study in a foreign country and I think students to which this landmass is their home need to do more to aid that.
Following on from this, your post for me highlights that we as a course were maybe not very good at facilitating a space where students to whom English was not their primary language could feel confident. I am interested that you feel that readings would aid this and agree that this is definitely something that the course should think about going forward, not only to provide structure but also to be more inclusive. As we were all trying to formulate a course together, a practise that I am sure we would all agree is more complex than imagined, we maybe should have taken time to stop and think about which voices are being heard the most and attempt to amplify those who were quieter.