I’ve thought a lot about my earlier blog posts and I think I’ve made some progress in class understanding. In my second and third posts I said something to the effect of “I have no idea what’s going on.” Now I think I come to an understanding about the topic around the time the topic is finished. I spend most of the topic work flailing around and then, after the final product is uploaded and I forget about it for a few days I have an “oh” moment. Not really an “ah ha” moment but a realization just the same.
I think my major barrier is I focus too much on the minutiae instead of looking at the big picture. It reminds me of a time I worked at a small company and the senior individuals kept telling me that I’m focusing too much on tactics and need to focus more on strategy; a version of missing the forest for trees. I have certain digital skills that I rely on heavily, every day for my work. When I listed to the topic prompts and the challenges encountered by the fictitious individual (junior) my first thought, and only thought often times, is “you are obviously missing some digital skills. I know some of the skills I have will solve your problem”. The point, however, is not to train up junior, its to put him/her in a frame of mind conducive for evaluating and deciding how to interact with the digital world in the context of the topic. Once Junior knows what he/she wants (strategy) he/she can then figure out how to get there (tactics).
I’m, frankly, surprised that I’m having so much trouble focusing/recognizing the big picture. Most of my progress in medical imaging research stems from recognizing, and keeping front and center, the big picture. Specifically, we must always evaluate whether or not what we are doing will improve patient outcomes. The sexy engineering aspects are secondary, and in fact useless if we can’t help the doctor do his/her job.
I think I’m quite good at operating with the big picture so I’m quite surprised that it takes me so long to find the big picture in this class. It now makes me wonder what other big picture issues I’m failing my students on. So far, actually, I consider the elucidation this particular shortcoming the most valuable part of the class. I guess there’s nothing like new material to remind you that there are many things you don’t know.