Remember the dull, disappointed feeling you get whenever a capable student does just enough to get by? Apparently not learning anything significant from your carefully architected lesson plans? Ignoring your enthusiasm? Attending in body but not in spirit? As a teacher, I always felt that there must be something more I could do to connect with this student group. As I tweaked and tuned and adjusted my demonstrations and Moodle shells and homework assignments and early interventions, I may have reached several of them – I certainly hope so – but the flow of these students never stopped.

I felt the other side of that equation last week. Working through a challenging online course on machine learning, I decided that I wasn’t sure I cared enough to complete the homework assignment. Having solved the first three of ten problems, I figured out how to solve the fourth – but knew that it would take another hour, perhaps two. Likewise, the fifth, with two or three hours’ investment required. Five more problems after that…

Then an opportunity arose, a conflicting priority. LinkedIn offered a “Week of Learning:” seven days of free access to their entire Lynda.com training library. I could spend my time and energy on a Photoshop class (I really wanted to learn more! It would be fun!) or I could continue with calculus and matrices laced with far too many Greek symbols. No contest, not even close. Photoshop, here I come!

I finished the second of two Photoshop courses last evening. I certainly did enjoy them, and I learned a lot. However, I now face the consequences of delaying homework. I skipped problems four through ten last week, and I have no intent to even start this week’s homework. I plan to watch future weeks’ lectures, but I have little motivation to do any more than that. Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding!!! This feels soooo familiar, though from the other side of the looking glass.

As students face a slew of competing interests – family, friends, work, other courses, emergencies, etc. – each one is (indeed, must be) responsible for his or her own priority choices. Often those choices diverge from their instructor’s, or, for that matter, from NMC’s. We focus on the potential each of our students could achieve, but our design, our energy, our delivery – our best – will not always suffice. Though this hurts, perhaps it is understandable. Some students really do need to address critical external issues first. A few find that they must alter prior plans, perhaps change major or even turn away from higher ed. Some simply choose to user their energy on something else. Education does not always receive the priority we’d prefer.