Changing mental gears and putting yourself in student's shoes

NightCafe AI image of male professor returning to be a student
Gazing at Learning

The other day I was doing some reflecting on my own "return" to being a learner after my doctoral journey ended. Last semester I took a course on negotiation, which I saw relevant to both work and also for my role as a member of our union's contract bargaining team this round.  This course was a graduate-level course, and is typically taken either in the first or second term of a graduate student's journey in the Conflict Resolution program at my university.  While the semester was busy, I rarely broke an (academic) sweat.  The course was challenging, don't get me wrong, but I found the number of readings manageable (since I have my TTS routine), and the number of words that I had to write for papers was 5,000-6,000 cumulatively in the semester (and maybe another 8,000 across the forum posts throughout the term).

In the grand scheme of things, this feels normal for a graduate course (from a design point of view), but it feels easy having gone through the experience of completing a doctorate. I think classmates who were in their first master's program and may have just returned to school either right from undergraduate studies or after a hiatus, probably found it a bit more challenging.  This reminded me of the many times that colleagues don't put themselves in the student's shoes when designing (or teaching) a course.  They think that something is easy because they can produce a 6,000-word paper in a month (not a term) so they might think that this is acceptable to ask of learners who are just learning the ropes. It seems like we often superimpose our current skills and capabilities on our younger (less experienced) selves, and that doesn't help serve our learners.

Last term I completed the negotiation course (yay!), so I saw that experience through. Now, as I am pondering what else to learn (I did say I was a lifelong learner), I am wondering if others have experienced that kind of shift in mental gears, whereby if they have completed a higher degree (e.g., Master's) they find undergrad courses (e.g., a sophomore level course) too boring.  Do you roll with it and enjoy the change of pace? Do you challenge yourself with your own challenges?  Do you not sign up for those courses?  And, how does being a learner again impact your ways of being in the teaching (or designing) role you have?

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