Trip to campus

I was very grateful that my (rare) day off coincided with the all module campus session at University and I was able to attend the session on the 22nd. The majority of the course is online and through self study it was nice to actually meet other students and see them in person rather than reading an online profile or hearing Skype voices. As I began talking to other students I realised I was already familiar with some of their work because I had been reading their blogs, which was quite a surreal experience because you feel like you almost already know them without ever meeting them, a bit creepy I know. I find this a strange concept and is something we are able to do in this modern age with all the Web 2.0 platforms. The term 'Facebook' stalking comes to mind and this is commonly used among  my generation to describe looking at someones Facebook profile!

Anyway I'm going off track, back to the campus session ... we began by introducing ourselves and then started playing a few games.

I found this took a bit of getting used to and because many of the tasks were left down to our own interpretation I found myself quite hesitant to begin. For instance the first game was to fill a block of twenty blank boxes with anything within a minute. I was initially confused by what 'anything' was and probably spent half the time just thinking about what to fill the boxes with and trying to sneak a look at my neighbours piece of paper. In the end I filled it with words of things that were on my mind like 'sun' (it was a sunny day) blue, holiday (dreaming of summer I guess!) some words relating to the course and as I was running out of time I started to do some quick drawings to fill the boxes. After looking around at everyone's pieces of paper at the end it was interesting to see how people approached the task. Some people only wrote words and some drew patterns and shapes. It was also to see who was more hesitant, like me and who got straight into the task. I think if I were in a situation like this again I would be less hesitant because I now realise there is no right or wrong and 'anything' can literally be anything!

The next thing we did was about Appreciative Inquiry. This was something I was not previously familiar with but now feel like it is a great way to approach problem solving by positively finding a solution for something. We used the BAPP Arts as an example and worked in our module groups to discuss how we could approach any problems we felt the course had. 

This is a quote I like about appreciative inquiry I found on the hyperlink Paula posted on her blog. 

https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/08/01/creating-positive-change-through-appreciative-inquiry

"Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is the art of finding deep strengths in an organization, then leveraging those to create ways to solve challenges and achieve success. The flip-side of more traditional problem solving, AI starts with finding the positive core, creating a vision of a more “ideal” outcome, looking at “problems” as opportunities to create this vision, and working forward from there. Essentially, it focuses on increasing what organizations do well, instead of eliminating what they do badly."
The 4Ds:

Discovery - Discover strengths. We discussed what works well in the course.
Dream - Ideal future outcome. What we would ideally like to happen?
Design - How could we make this happen?
Destiny - Putting the changes into action and formulating a plan.

After a short break we returned and discussed the course in our module groups. I was with Grace and Laura from module 1 and it was really great to talk to other people experiencing the same as me and also to talk to Paula about what is expected of us at the stage of the course. I realised that I should include more blogs about the Arts rather than soley sticking to the tasks. I think I like the structure the tasks give me which is why I have been following them so closely! 

Overall it was a great day and I really hope I am able to attend the next campus session!

Thank you Paula!!!!!!!!!!