I've not encountered before a class in which so few assignments have been completed. While I'm aware that there's been an extraordinary amount of disaster and illness among members of the class, it's still the case that only one person has completed as many as 3/4 of the assignments, which is the number needed to attain a minimum mark. Normally only a few members of a class -- 10 or 15 percent -- fall below that mark.

There's no way in which we can actually have a discussion of why that might be, because everyone will assume in the discussion that what I'm looking for are apologies and excuses, and I'm not. This isn't at all about what I want, or whether I'm bothered that people haven't worked. Yes, I know, teachers always say that; in this case it happens to be true. The work people do in this course isn't for me; it's for you, and for others in the class.

The marking process in this course is designed to keep me out of it except for two places -- one, deciding that doing 3/4 of the work is a minimum, below which a student needs to be able to demonstrate that she learned anyway; and two, judging the demonstrations of learning (the learning reflections). Beyond that, what I do is attempt to facilitate a situation in which doing the work assures you'll have the best possible chance to learn. I assume that people have good reasons for not completing assignments: I do not consider "excuses" as relevant. If you miss the work, there's no punishment; you missed it and you (and I) deal with the real consequences. An explanation or excuse may affect how I feel about it -- I'm sorry when people are sick or flooded out, etc., but whether there's an excuse or not we deal with the fact that work didn't get done. If you miss your fight, ultimately it doesn't matter why; you miss it, and deal with the consequences. People might be more eager to help you deal with them if they know you were ill, but the consequences remain.

One of the consequences, in this case, is often that there's nothing much to talk about in class meetings (which is where learning can most effectively be solidified and reflected on), or there's nobody there to talk about it, or both.

The fact that this has happened so often in this class suggests to me that there may be a larger problem that perhaps we can all do something about. But we won't find out about that in a face-to-face meeting because the presence of The Teacher means that everybody will be conscious of the way her words will affect what is an interesting power relationship between Teacher and Student. So I've sent the email you'll have received last night (if you read your email last night), inviting anonymous comments about what might be done to address what seems to me a pretty serious problem for all of us (actually, for everyone who's paid tuition to be enrolled in the class -- it's not actually a big problem for me).

It's possible, of course, that we've simply had a run of bad luck. But if there's something else that I could do differently in structuring the course to make sure that people are actually involved in an active and practical way, I'd like to know about it.  So far I've only had one response. I'd really like to see four more. I'd hoped to be able to print out and bring in the responses this morning to consider them, but since there's only one that seems pointless.

Getting on with it

I'd hoped this morning to have five recommendations of plays to discuss, preparatory to making a decision about what we'd read next. I postponed the start of class till 9:30 so that I could, after 9:00, format and print out the recommendations for reading and discussion.

In fact, though, we have three. I don't want to make the decision on that basis. I think it would be far better to use the time to work on a recommendation, to respond to the online questions about course organization, and to read the learning reflections that have been posted by other people (it's important to know what others think constitutes learning).

So, I'll take any questions anybody has, and set you free to do whatever work seems most immediate.