What does one do to take a break in the middle of semester?
TNL audits a class, that’s what. Every Thursday, she takes her afternoon off, sits with a class of 50 students to listen to a lecturer talk about teamwork, transformational leadership, organizational culture and lots of other fun stuff.
Horrendous piles of work piled high will weigh heavily over the edge but the old girl religiously applies her leave, turns her back to a possible mess and enters an oasis.
Learning something different is fun. Learning something that you can apply is greater fun. Learning in an environment where opinons are expressed passionately, real-life exeperiences shared and all she needs to do is sit back and listen is just as heady as a shot of adrenaline.
Here is one thing she learnt that was so cool.
- Lecturer gave students a leadership questionnaire to complete before class.
- Students had to rate how often they exhibited the leadership behaviors listed in the questionnaire.
- Lecturer asked in class whether anybody gave themselves a zero rating for any of the behaviours listed – ie. they did not exhibit such behavior.
- None did. All gave a rating.
- So all students had exhibited all leadership behaviours listed.
- Lecturer led class into concluding – if you continue behaving in these leadership behaviours frequently enough, you are becoming that leader.
- Easy, wasn’t it?
The whole class went absolutely silent. All looked fully at the lecturer.
That’s it? TNL could just barely hear the silent, “Ohhh……”
A quiet eureka moment.
Just as the lecturer explained that it was best to work on portions and not the whole lot of behaviours at one go, the cacophony of chatter and questions started.
Students who did not complete the questionnaire wanted to know where to get it. Some said it was in an email, some said they checked their emails recently and it was not there, some said it’s in the Workbin, etc. Sigh….
There are many more cool stuff that TNL had learnt and would like to share.
But now, she’s got to attend to the pile of work that is threatening to bury her alive.
We can’t have that, can we? No, sirree…. TNL doesn’t want to miss her eureka Thursdays.
We all need our Euraka Thursdays. Like you, I’m reminded of how I enjoyed attending classes, lectures and workshops that made me think. Sounded like this lecturer knew his/ her stuff.
Oh yes, he knows his stuff alright! And he sure made us think. Apart from the content, his main purpose was to get his 1st years transiting psychologically from JC mode to Uni mode. He wanted them to experience teamwork within the teams they were already in. It was not just about the concepts, theories, it was actually applying what he taught there and then when they worked on group projects. There were other stuff such as getting students to ask questions which probed for win-win solutions but that didn’t quite work out. Likely, its because they have not been reading enough. Overall, it was great! Too bad the class ends this Thur.