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This is one of those posts where I don’t have a firm conclusion, I’m just thinking some stuff through. I’ve been thinking a bit about what the role of personality is in eduction, particularly online and distance ed. In my own institution, The Open University, there has been a long tradition of removing the personal from teaching material. While the course materials we produce are written in an accessible manner, they are not imbued with one person’s personality. Although one academic may write them, they go through multiple reviews, and editing. Course units are often attributed to the “The Module Team”, or “written by X on behalf of the Module Team”. The idea is that this is an objective view, created through collaboration to distill clear teaching material. The trouble with making them based around a personality is that this can be a barrier to accessing the content, if you don’t respond well to that particular personality (but the opposite is also true, it can be a boost if you do like that person). When I joined the OU removing myself from the writing was one of the difficult aspects of learning to write distance ed material, while still keeping it engaging and not too ‘dry’. I mean, who wouldn’t want my personality stamped all over their units on Artificial Intelligence, right? (don’t answer that).
