We had been asked to prepare a twenty minute microteaching session and then to be prepared to receive ten minutes of feedback from our colleagues.

Time was on my mind from the beginning of preparation for this exercise. I budgeted 6-7 minutes for introduction and explanation of the task, then 6 minutes for the actual drawing. This left around seven minutes for the discussion period. This was the open period with no structure other than several seed questions which I had prepared to get conversation going. I was asked to be the last to present. As a consequence of this, there were only 15 minutes remaining in the session by the time my turn arrived. I decided to reduce the time on everything in order to attempt to fit it all in. I rushed through the intro and then reduced the drawing session from 6 minutes to 3 or 4. This left about 6 minutes for discussion then time was up. Colleagues kindly agreed to stay for 5 minutes of so after to give feedback.

A simple restriction of timing had completely transformed the session for both the participants and myself. My carefully planned, and rehearsed, session became an exercise in improvisation. What should I keep? what can I omit? From feedback it was clear that I had not succeeded in priming everyone for the task. There was some confusion as to how they were to engage in the reflective drawing. This affected the outcome, and discussion after was focussed on understanding the task after-the-fact rather than reflecting on the broader issues which I had hoped to address.

This rather disappointing experience reminded me of a day last term when our technical team had been asked to organise a two day workshop experience for students in our theatre space. The first day consisted of sharing skills and facilities of the space with students and the second day was to be a creative opportunity, utilising these skills to create a piece of work in the space collaboratively. The first day proceeded well and the students left, primed and energized with the idea of creating work the next day. When they arrived on day two we quickly discovered that there was a scheduling conflict and that we would only have half of the day to make the work. After this last minute change we decided that the only course of action was to proceed with a truncated schedule. We squeezed the day’s activity into half a day. We managed to create a product, but it involved all action and little thought. Minimum time for reflection and no time to analyze, revise, refine develop after the initial attempt at creation.

In both of these teaching events, I plowed on, making the best of it. I have seen this happen with many other people as well. I suppose it could be seen as a fact-of-life in the teaching world. Schedules will inevitably be undermined by events beyond our control. I am sure, however, that plowing on and squeezing the lesson into a time period that is too small is not necessarily the best solution. I suspect it requires a speedy and complete rethink. Not easy to do in the moment with a class of expectant students sitting there. I suspect that it is better to revise expectations rather than attempting to “shoehorn” everything originally planned into a shortened session.

I am pleased to say that I had the opportunity to try my microteach again with the full time allowance. But that is for the next blog entry.