First campus session 20.10.2017
Yesterday I attended my first campus session at Middlesex University. It was so lovely to meet Adesola and Helen in person and put a few faces to the blogs of students from Modules 1, 2 and 3!
We talked about a lot in the three hours but most of the discussion revolved around two key points; the 'big questions' and ethics.
It is often inevitable when asked to think about an area to look into that we come up with the biggest, broadest topic to tackle (the 'save the world' questions), I have definitely been a culprit of this in the past! So yesterday instead of shying away from these points, we used them as a starting point..
To begin with, each of the Module 2s talked about which big questions they had considered asking for their inquiries and then as a group we discussed more specific questions within. For example, Alicia was interested in looking at the behaviour of the children she teaches. From that we started to question what is 'good' behaviour compared to 'bad' behaviour and is that universal or does it depend on the society and a combination of other factors. More and more points stemmed off these and the questions were becoming more defined areas to look into.
We also talked about feminism, technology, community dance and aesthetics.
It was so interesting to hear everyones' ideas and how they intertwined with their practice and, as Modules 1s, Matt S and I were asked if hearing these ideas had provoked any questions of our own. I had by this point jotted down quite a few topics that had been triggered just from hearing other people's thoughts and I finally felt like I was getting my head around what was going on!
To help others who are maybe feeling a bit lost like I did...
For all this to make sense to other Module 1's and anyone who couldn't make this session we tried to find the best way of translating it for you...
Eleanor and I (with varying degrees of success) tried to show this by drawing an umbrella as the overall question and having all the smaller ideas as the rain droplets falling...
Meanwhile, Matt said that for his brain it would have to be something quirkier like,
"Think of the biggest question in the smallest way."
Hopefully that will help any of you with ingenious minds like his!
Another really helpful analogy that was brought up was the 'Tornado of Truths" and the idea was that the tornado starts as the big idea and as it speeds up and becomes more directed (towards the more specific questions) it also gathers up other ideas on the way.
A way of perhaps triggering a few ideas for questions would be to read through your past posts and see if there are any reoccurring themes or topics or maybe when you are writing you notice you naturally want to go off on a tangent about something. These are clearly subconscious areas of interest or relevance and could be something to consider looking in to. Don't worry about it being too broad at first just let yourself explore!
We also touched on ethics.
I haven't completely got my head around this term but yesterday it did slightly click into place. Ethical consideration would be taking into account all the possibilities of your questions to avoid causing any harm. You shouldn't make assumptions or judgements, instead you should make (as Amanda put it so well) 'informed opinions'. If you don't have all the information and if you haven't considered more than one angle you would not be being ethical.
I hope this is helpful to anyone who missed the session, it definitely helped me to unpack that from my brain!
We talked about a lot in the three hours but most of the discussion revolved around two key points; the 'big questions' and ethics.
It is often inevitable when asked to think about an area to look into that we come up with the biggest, broadest topic to tackle (the 'save the world' questions), I have definitely been a culprit of this in the past! So yesterday instead of shying away from these points, we used them as a starting point..
To begin with, each of the Module 2s talked about which big questions they had considered asking for their inquiries and then as a group we discussed more specific questions within. For example, Alicia was interested in looking at the behaviour of the children she teaches. From that we started to question what is 'good' behaviour compared to 'bad' behaviour and is that universal or does it depend on the society and a combination of other factors. More and more points stemmed off these and the questions were becoming more defined areas to look into.
We also talked about feminism, technology, community dance and aesthetics.
It was so interesting to hear everyones' ideas and how they intertwined with their practice and, as Modules 1s, Matt S and I were asked if hearing these ideas had provoked any questions of our own. I had by this point jotted down quite a few topics that had been triggered just from hearing other people's thoughts and I finally felt like I was getting my head around what was going on!
To help others who are maybe feeling a bit lost like I did...
For all this to make sense to other Module 1's and anyone who couldn't make this session we tried to find the best way of translating it for you...
Eleanor and I (with varying degrees of success) tried to show this by drawing an umbrella as the overall question and having all the smaller ideas as the rain droplets falling...
Meanwhile, Matt said that for his brain it would have to be something quirkier like,
"Think of the biggest question in the smallest way."
Hopefully that will help any of you with ingenious minds like his!
Another really helpful analogy that was brought up was the 'Tornado of Truths" and the idea was that the tornado starts as the big idea and as it speeds up and becomes more directed (towards the more specific questions) it also gathers up other ideas on the way.
A way of perhaps triggering a few ideas for questions would be to read through your past posts and see if there are any reoccurring themes or topics or maybe when you are writing you notice you naturally want to go off on a tangent about something. These are clearly subconscious areas of interest or relevance and could be something to consider looking in to. Don't worry about it being too broad at first just let yourself explore!
We also touched on ethics.
I haven't completely got my head around this term but yesterday it did slightly click into place. Ethical consideration would be taking into account all the possibilities of your questions to avoid causing any harm. You shouldn't make assumptions or judgements, instead you should make (as Amanda put it so well) 'informed opinions'. If you don't have all the information and if you haven't considered more than one angle you would not be being ethical.
I hope this is helpful to anyone who missed the session, it definitely helped me to unpack that from my brain!
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