So this was going to be a blog about player-managers, which I delightfully assumed was so much a football (NO, NOT SOCCER FOOTBALL) concept that I’d have to explain player-manager first. So I go to Wikipedia, and it turns out Curly Lambeau, who not only played for and coached the Green Bay Packers, but also founded them. So while assuming I have to explain player-manager, I end up introducing myself to the concept of founder-player-manager. Green Bay now play at Lambeau Field.

Nothing is named after me because I make to many annoying assumptions when trying to be helpful. Which in a way is a much better introduction to this blog than the one I had planned. I wanted to muse on the distinctions between teaching and learning as roles and structures, and whilst demonstrating the separation between the roles and wondering whether it is a case of never the twain shall meet?

So does the MOOC change this, or perhaps exacerbate this? Is MOOC teaching a skill similar enough to standard elearning that it requires a new pedagogy? Has the pedagogy been tested for scale? Is there a now “massive” distance between lecturer and student that the MOOC drop out rate reflects a group of self-directed masters and PHD students, while losing those who need for want of analogy, a shepherd?

However, this seems assumptive over the roles of teachers and students, but I think, innately, the role of teaching and learning involves some form of validation. People want either the kudos of being validated by themselves for having learned and applied something new, or being told by an external body they have learned something new. The validation is problematic as inevitably it has some emotional involvement, and this risks complicating the process of teaching, but also introduces fear, nerves and anxiety into the process.

So how could we get around this? Well my first thought was poacher turned gamekeeper, or player and manager would alleviate this situation by reducing the distance between the two groups? But how much of education is built on a requisite distance so as to provide a sense of leadership? Does MOOC scaling work because certain groups of people don’t care for this distance, or that it can be used in effectively adult lifelong learning as there is an explicit assumption of self-direction and unsupported learning?

I think the answer, is in a way “Openness” but also, simply “showing your working”. The more people can see your processes and working then the more scope there is to relate to the person itself. Showing your working is almost showing your weakness and showing your thinking, merely producing the answer reduces the teacher to a black box emitter of pure knowledge, like a modern oracle of Delphi.

Showing your working is however a phrase with massive scope for other approaches. Could teachers be students in over classes? Your maths teacher sitting next to you in English? A science teacher passing you the ball in physical education? A problem shared is a problem halved – but what of imparting knowledge – where there is no mutual need – in fact the direct opposite?  Perhaps ring fence some time in a lesson to talk about what you’ve learned in the topic this week? A bit like this blog post.