Not managing change: My misbehaving brain – TB872 Part 03 Week 15-17

This blog post is a bit of a ramble and a rant. I discuss my current struggles as a student. If you would like to only read about the content of my studies, please go ahead to the next post, bearing in mind that my interpretations of that content were produced in the context outlined below.

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Since completing my second tutor-marked assignment (TMA), I have lost steam a little, overwhelmed by university work in this final part of the TB872 module. I passed the TMA and was initially optimistic as this third part seemed simpler than the last one. In Part 02, due to the way my brain works (easily confused, anxious, and needing to think ahead before making decisions), I had gotten ahead of myself with my course work. I knew that I would have to be designing a learning system for managing change with STiP in my situation of concern, so I started reading about systemic approaches for analysing and designing in similar situations. I drew diagrams and filled out tables to help me process and understand what I was learning (so much information!), not realising that we would be doing a lot of this in depth in part 3 of the module. I included my process, diagrams and tables in my tutor-marked assignment (TMA) which unfortunately cost me marks—the tables took me over the word count, some of the diagrams were irrelevant and I had, as a result, given myself more work. On one hand it is a relief that my thinking process is somewhat inline with the module material, but I am frustrated with myself that I find it difficult to process a lot of the material without doing a lot of extra work.

I am overwhelmed partly because I am doing extra work to keep up, partly because I feel disempowered and incapable of doing what is asked of me, and partly because I feel greater pressure now to complete what I started. The pressure is entirely self-imposed. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to announce my goal of attaining a Master’s degree… maybe a postgraduate certificate will do? What keeps me motivated is knowing that I have felt surges of inspirations out of nowhere before—they will come again! Bad feelings are temporary! Sometimes I am inspired just by seeing the sunshine through my window. Sometimes it is pure stubbornness possessing me, transforming into genuine enjoyment as ideas come together and I enter flow states where my mind goes on its own journey without any pushing needed.

I have been trying, making sure to note down where I struggle the most as I go through the module activities. My main issues, I think, are:

1. Because of my mental health issues (and whatever comorbidities have arisen from chronic isolation and medication side-effects), my processing skills are lacking and it takes me a while to understand things to what I consider a decent standard—especially complex topics with multiple levels of abstraction
2. My circumstances limit my ability to apply what I learn in real situations (this is a big problem in this part of the module).

I am still waiting to hear back from my tutor about any advice or suggestions. As well as reaching out to my tutor with my concerns, I have chatted with people on the student forums and participated in online community events such as the perfectly-timed talk on ‘imposter syndrome’ organised by The Open University (OU) Black STEM Hub community. I believe the OU Black STEM Hub is an offshoot from the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) support groups at the OU Students Association, and they seem to be quite a new organisation. I initially joined to discuss EDI at the OU but I quickly found that the members and organisers were super welcoming and supportive, despite my concerns and queries about joining as a person of mixed heritage. I am extremely grateful for the community I found there, the encouragement and inclusivity. Everyone is encouraged to share their views, and it is brilliant to hear from diverse perspectives that share a mutual interest in raising up the voices of people who often feel like imposters in academic settings …is this what would be called a ‘Community of Practice’?

I have been learning about different systems approaches to social learning, including Critical Social Learning Systems (CSLS) and Communities of Practice (CoPs). In Part 03, the focus is more on social learning whilst incorporating our learning from Parts 01 and 02. We will be guided by our ‘learning contracts’ based on the Practitioner-Framework-Method-Situation (PFMS) model for understanding relational dynamics in managing change with systems thinking in practice (STiP) in situations of concern, and extending the S1 and S2 inquiries (S1 – Developing STiP capability through TB872; S2 – Managing change with STiP in a situation of concern) with two additional levels of inquiry. This is what I mean about the levels of abstraction being confusing, and making me want to cry. I really feel like my brain isn’t meant for systemic thinking because all I want to do is make a nice systematic list of tasks.

Table 1: My understanding of Part 3 inquiries

An example of a systematic process for braiding inquiry 1 and 2 of TB872 part 3:

1. Identify and engage with examples of managing change with STiP in various contexts
   • What are some examples of managing change with STiP?
   • How are you managing change with STiP in the examples? (BECM/PFMS)
2. Reflection: What insights have you gained? (individual learning)
3. Reading: Select module materials—which ideas and theories are relevant to the contexts and practices I am investigating?
   • How do the ideas and theories relate to my own experience, or that of others?
4. Reflection: What insights have you gained? (individual learning)
5. Discuss: Explore examples in forum discussions (co-inquiry, collective learning)
   • What are some examples of managing change with STiP?
   • How are other people managing change with STiP in the examples?
   • How does this relate to your own experiences?
6. Reflection: What insights have you gained? (individual learning)
7. Reading: Select module materials—which ideas and theories are relevant to the contexts and practices I am investigating?
   • How do the ideas and theories relate to my own experience, or that of others?
8. Reflection: What insights have you gained? (individual learning)

Part 03 will involve engaging in social learning with our peers, and ‘braiding’ our developing understanding with theoretical insights and our own reflections, to hopefully better understand how social contexts can constrain and enable the processes of managing change as learning. In practice, the descriptions of the module activities are really just reflecting the real life process of applied learning:

• You read some stuff
• You try stuff out
• You talk about it with other people
• You reflect on what you have learnt
• You use what you learnt to engage further

The ‘braiding’ process is not linear. It will be adaptive, which is how most everyday situations are—we decide to do different things depending on the information that we have, the changes occurring in the situation and changes in ourselves. In an academic context, it is a lot to keep in mind when you have to show evidence of the process and your insights with examples of systemic learning and epistemic reflection—not just what you thought, but why you thought it. In Part 03 it now also includes what and why others are thinking things in relation to situations where change is being managed with STiP.

Is this just one of the challenges of postgraduate study, or I am I lacking a set of skills and abilities that other people have? I think if I had a systematic way of managing these requirements, I might not feel so overwhelmed to the point of dissociating. The point is to ‘manage change with STiP’ though so I will have to somehow move past this since I am too stubborn to quit. As part of my commitment to approach my studies more ‘systemically’, I drew a diagram to try to make sense of it all. The diagram just highlighted all the things my brain is currently refusing to do.

I am glad that at least the diagram looks nice and seems to make systemic sense. Taking time to do these diagrams is one of my favourite activities in the study of Systems. So I guess I am doing a whole degree as an excuse to draw diagrams now. I am probably doing them all wrong if we are looking through the lens of Systems Thinking conventions, and precious time slips away when I get immersed in, what feels like, just a bit of casual graphic design, but I will not stop. I have to have this. It’s gently creative and logical, lets me do something that I know how to do, giving me a little boost that keeps me motivated.

Another thing I know how to do is summarise texts, so reading and summarising the different approaches to social learning has not been too bad when my brain isn’t too foggy. Because of the anxiety of falling behind before I had even started, I had done a lot of the reading from the module books in advance. Reading a second time was easier within the context of actually knowing what I was reading about. I will show my learning in another post, but basically the point was to get a gist of a few approaches in order to choose one to utilise in our own systemic inquiries for the remainder of Part 03 and the End-of-Module Assessment (EMA). The EMA requires us to design a learning system to manage change with STiP in a situation of concern.

In my situation of concern, there are existing systems in place for improving curricula and EDI integration across The Open University. I have already started inquiring in the Student Association EDI support groups and forums, and have contacted staff members for information. I have to shout out Nicole Lotz, the Deputy Director of STEM EDIA, who I am grateful for as she has been really helpful, open and welcoming. The information provided has given me great insight into systemic practice at the OU and a starting point for diving deeper. Students such as myself are part of the feedback systems that form what can be seen as an existing ‘learning system’ to improve the design of curricula. There are different ways that feedback is gathered, and there are whole departments analysing the data systematically. Ray Ison would probably consider the structured implementation ‘projectified’. There may indeed be systemic approaches that can improve the way that institutions like the OU seek feedback, learn from it and make changes in a way that is effective and inclusive. That will be my focus in this situation.

As part of the current system for learning and improvement, that I am aware of:

• the OU has a five-year 2022-2027 institutional strategy entitled Learn and Live, including a goal of ‘Equity’
• The Institutional EDI Plan (The Open University, 2023) and Access and Participation Plan (The Open University, 2024) were developed to implement the goal of equity, greater diversity and inclusion at the OU
• Every faculty participates in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)—’practitioner-led pedagogical research that informs evidence-based, student-responsive, inclusive and innovative approaches to teaching and learning’ (Scholarship and Innovation, The Open University)
• The Inclusive Curriculum Tool (ICT) supports module designers to embed EDI in curricula and the design of course materials.

There have been reviews of the ICT, such as Veuger, S.J. et al. (2023), which will be useful to read later. I shall also be scouring the many other papers on STEM EDI projects available on the Access, Participation and Success webpage. As for the curriculum that inspired my choice of situation of concern, papers written by the professors behind the design of Systems curricula using Systems methodologies at the OU offer further insight (Ison R. et al., 2003, 2007; Ison, R. and Blackmore, C., 2014; Maiteny, P.T. and Ison, R.L., 2000).

While I wait for help from my tutor regarding how to deal with the more challenging aspects of TB872 Part 03, I am also waiting to have software for disability support installed on my computer by StudyTech on behalf of Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA). In case you are curious, it has been three months since I started my module and seven months since I applied. I did recently get an email with links and codes for installation of the apps but the process was not straight-forward so I had to call to arrange an appointment for training / tech support (twelve hours are included in my support package, and my appointment will take two of those hours). Mysteriously, I received a microphone and power bank in the post from them, and when I called to arrange my appointment, I was told that apparently they are part of a ‘mobile bundle’ for one of the apps. I am very curious how I will be using them and am mostly intrigued about the apps as I am a nerd for productivity applications.

I am, however, quite concerned about privacy issues, and will be reading the privacy policies before installation to see if it’s worth installing all of them. Hopefully their business model (working with providers for large institutions) means they get enough income through long-term agreements that gathering personal data is not the main priority. Unfortunately, nowadays there is no reason for a business not to do both. Is this a justified and sensible concern in today’s climate or an excuse for paranoid deep-dives into surveillance technology—you decide! In any case, it is another distraction, and yet another step between my wanting to learn and the learning taking place. Unable to properly place my attention where I want it to be, all sorts of other things are creeping in. Again, I know it will pass. I am grateful that support is available. I look forward to making the most of it, finding a direction towards clarity, and moving aside the distractions as I feel that surge of inspiration again.

References

Access, Participation and Success (no date) eSTEeM. Available at: https://www5.open.ac.uk/scholarship-and-innovation/esteem/projects/access-participation-and-success (Accessed: 27 February 2025).

Ison, R., Blackmore, C. and Armson, R. (2003) ‘Learning participation as systems practice’, in. International Workshop on Teaching and Learning Participation in Higher Education, Brighton, UK. Available at: http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/particip/networks/workshop03/ison.html (Accessed: 28 February 2025).

Ison, R., Blackmore, C. and Armson, R. (2007) ‘Learning Participation as Systems Practice’, Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, 13(3), pp. 209–225. Available at: https://oro.open.ac.uk/8581/ (Accessed: 4 January 2025).

Ison, R. and Blackmore, C. (2014) ‘Designing and developing a reflexive learning system for managing systemic change.’, Systems, 2(2), pp. 119–136. Available at: http://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/2/2/119/htm (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Maiteny, P.T. and Ison, R.L. (2000) ‘Appreciating systems: critical reflections on the changing nature of systems as a discipline in a systems-learning society’, Systemic Practice and Action Research, 13(4), pp. 559–586. Available at: https://oro.open.ac.uk/173/ (Accessed: 19 January 2025).

Ramage, M. and Blackmore, C. (2020) ‘Part 3. Social learning systems for managing change’, TB872: Managing change with systems thinking in practice. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2303527.

Scholarship and Innovation (no date) The Open University. Available at: https://www5.open.ac.uk/scholarship-and-innovation/main/ (Accessed: 1 March 2025).

The Open University (2023) The Institutional EDI Plan 2022-2027. Available at: https://university.open.ac.uk/equality-diversity/content/equality-scheme-objectives (Accessed on 27 February 2025).

The Open University (2024) The Open University Access and Participation Plan. Available at: https://university.open.ac.uk/widening-participation/aps-england-access-and-participation-plan (Accessed on 27 February 2025).

Veuger, S.J. et al. (2023) ‘Inclusive Frameworks in Online STEM Teaching and Learning’, in J. Keengwe (ed.) Handbook of Research on Innovative Frameworks and Inclusive Models for Online Learning. IGI Global, pp. 28–51. Available at: https://oro.open.ac.uk/92330/ (Accessed: 27 February 2025).