An Interview with Marilyn Poole
(“Inter” refers to the interviewer, “Poole” refers to Marilyn Poole)
Inter:	Marilyn, to begin with I’m interested in really the subjects you teach in a Sociology major. I know that you’re the Unit Team Chair of a subject, Individuals, Families and Households, and obviously you can talk a lot about the design of the online environment for that unit but you’ve got involvement in the wholly online unit and no doubt more broadly. But in terms of some of the subjects you teach, how do you see the key purposes of those subjects? What are their educational goals in your view?
Poole:	Well I think Sociology is actually very interesting. Obviously it’s part of a cluster of subjects which talk about people, which analyse the sort of things that people do. I mean, there’s history and there’s psychology and there’s anthropology and there’s economics. There’s a whole raft of disciplines which study people in various shapes and forms and the way they organise themselves. And so Sociology is one of those. And perhaps what makes Sociology a little bit different is that we look at contemporary societies, so we’re not perhaps interested in the exotic like anthropology. We look at contemporary societies, often contemporary urban societies. So you could imagine it’s a discipline where we are dealing with the kinds of things that are students are familiar with: their ways of life, their organisation, what they do, their careers, all those kinds of things. And I think one of the key things about Sociology, which I think we try and kind of bring this to the students’ consciousness and so that they understand it, is that what one might consider to be a personal issue is in the words of a very famous Sociologist by the name of C White Mills can be, it also can be, a private trouble can be a public issue. So for example, if you have a divorce in the family that can be very traumatic, it can be traumatic for the couple, children, etc. When you consider perhaps that 40% of Australian marriages end in divorce it’s a public issue, so Sociology looks at those sorts of things which might apply to the individual and then looks at them, how they apply to the society as a whole. And for that reason I think it’s a very kind of, student’s like it, it grabs them, it’s about their lives but they also understand something about the structure of the society in which they live.
Inter:	Now, I know it’s quite contingently based to talk about effective teaching and learning, it might depend on undergraduate or teaching at the honours or postgraduate level but if you concentrated at the undergraduate level Marilyn, how do you conceive effective teaching for quality learning in a discipline like Sociology, particularly at the undergraduate level? I mean, you’ve given insights into that already.
Poole:	Yes, it is again, I try and start from where the students are and okay, some of them are 17, 18, 19 and straight from school. Some of them, they’ve perhaps done a little work experience. Some of them are mature age students or have come back after rearing children or out in the workforce. I try to begin with where they are. That is the life, their experiences, those sorts of things and I try to build on that so that I can incorporate sociological theory about the analysis of society on their own experiences. And so that in the end they can begin to talk about more abstract things because we have moved in a very grounded kind of way from the personal to the more general social and structural. And I find that works quite well. If we’re talking about families, we talk about their own families. And in talking about the students own families they learn about diversity, they learn about diversity first hand in the tutorial. They don’t have to read it in a textbook or they can read it in a textbook but they learn about it, they learn about the way different families are structured, the way that people have been brought up differently. International students add something and I have quite a lot of international students and someone from China last semester was talking about the one child policy in China and how he thought it was fantastic. And people engaged him in a very sort of friendly discussion as to why he thought that was particularly good. And so they learn these things at the beginning and then they can start to build. You can start talking about the diversity of families when they already know that this diversity exists. You can start talking about the internationalisation of things when they already know it exists so it’s not an abstract kind of teaching, it’s very grounded, very concrete in building an experience.
Inter:	Now, when we talk about the different aspects, components of the teaching and learning environment, you know, you construct at teaching and learning environment to achieve good learning outcomes, you’ve mentioned what happens in the tutorial. What we’re trying to do is actually situate digital and online learning in a broader teaching and learning environment context. Now, would you like to talk a little bit about this is what I try and achieve in a lecture, the tutorial, in printed material before we get into the online dimension of your environment?
Poole:	Yes, I use lectures as a kind of stimulus. I use them to give the broad-brush kind of approach to a topic. If we’re talking about, say, in the Family unit we’re talking about love and intimacy, well we cover some of the theoretical aspects of this, how perhaps modern approaches to love and intimacy are rather different than 100 years ago and earlier. And so it’s a much more kind of formal thing. I bring in sort of new ideas, new theories, give them references. So my lectures are quite formal and this is where I would say, this is where they’re going to go when they’re going to do some further reading that. But the tutorials I try to make practical and I do try and divide people up into groups and get discussion groups going. I bring in stimulus material, often from newspapers. The Family unit is a wonderful unit because there’s always something in the papers or on the radio or on the television about families. It’s a joy, there’s material floating around the whole time and it’s fun because I can always key into something really topical and that makes it a very nice unit to teach, it makes it fun for them and fun for me because it’s not boring, you know, not boring year to year either.
Inter:	Now, there’s obviously the printed study guide material and no doubt you’ve probably got prescribed textbooks as well.
Poole:	Yes I do, yes.
Inter:	But I wonder, I’m a student and I’m coming into your online environment in the unit that we’re mainly focussing on, Individuals, Families and Households, what do I see as a student Marilyn, what is there for me in that online environment? What do you want me to do in that online environment?
Poole:	Well I will write to you quite a bit. I suppose you could say I’m fairly active in my communication with students so those students who, you know, log on, are going to encounter me quite smartly. I mean, okay, you know, you do give your welcome message and all that kind of thing but before very long you start getting messages from me if there’s, say, something, a film on the television, you know, I’ll put it in a pop up window, you know, have a look at this on SBS next Wednesday or did anybody see this in the newspaper today, etc. I try to communicate with them, perhaps in a similar sort of way that I communicate with the students in a tutorial. Now, this has its downside for those who are not logging on frequently. For those who are logging on very frequently they soon respond and we have an ongoing sort of conversation. But for those who log on infrequently I do agree my style have shortcomings because they probably get a little tired of me saying, hey, you know, what do you think of this or have you seem this or – and of course the students themselves contribute, I mean, I’m not the only one. They will write in and say, did you read so and so or I heard this on the bus, you know, and what did you think about it, etc.
Inter:	Now, sometimes when you, you go into a hospital and you go into the adult wing and you see white walls. You go into the children’s wing and you see decorated walls that make you and the kids feel very comfortable.
Poole:	Yes.
Inter:	I know it’s a very small issues but coming to your home page for that unit there’s a background image and I just wondered what the purpose of that was.
Poole:	Yes. Well, it’s about families and it’s actually, it’s quite a personal image because it’s actually my grandchildren of whom I’m obviously I’m very fond, but it’s also saying something about me. I’m giving them something of me and it’s also to make it less sterile…, it’s not the white wall. I actually wish I could put more visual images in. If I had my way my website would be full of images. I think otherwise, it can look a little dull, like it’s just words.
Inter:	So it’s really a way of projecting you, the person and the teacher into the virtual environment.
Poole:	The idea is, yes, it is, it’s a way of warming it up a little, livening it up, warming it up and giving a bit of me. I don’t expect to have anything of them, I don’t expect the students to give any pictures for anything but just to sort of communicate. I think there’s a lot that can be done visually that perhaps is not being done online. I mean, if I’ve got any criticisms of the online environment it’s perhaps we’re not exploring that enough.
Inter:	Now, there’s a lot of links to websites in that unit and the subject seems to lend itself well to do a lot of information searching on the internet. There’s a lot of electronic data on families and households and individuals.
Poole:	Yes, it is, yes.
Inter:	It sort of brings to the fore to me this whole graduate attribute, many multiple attributes around information technology literacy, but information literacy but relevant to the discipline of Sociology.
Poole:	Yes, yes.
Inter:	To be a skilled Sociologist you need to work well in these environments.
Poole:	You need to be able to work the web well and I think actually this is absolutely essential now for today’s graduates. And I don’t care which field they’re in, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Sociology or anything else, I suspect the work environment for many, many people is the ability to gather information, good information. I don’t mean nonsense information from very obscure sites which somebody’s, you know, blogged or whatever, somebody’s just put up. I think that students have got to be able to work efficiently and fast and be able to sort and sift the plethora of information that is on the web. And that is a skill that they will need to kind of hone while they’re at university so they can take it with them when they graduate out into the workforce. And, yes, there is a lot of information and yes, I do expect them to sort and sift, I really do. It’s an essential skill.
Inter:	And you mentioned you being there and asking students, you know, what’s your opinion of this issue? There’s a lot kind of rhetoric around, you know, online communities of practice, high levels of intellectual communication online can be achieved. The realities can be somewhat different at times in terms of the challenge of getting students to actually participate, contribute, but get involved more in that community of critique around the subject. What sort of strategies, Marilyn, do you use to try and engender a high level form of communication, collaboration online?
Poole:	Well, that I think perhaps I have been less successful in than in actual communication. I know people, perhaps more at the graduate level than the undergraduate do encourage students to put their work online and for other students to perhaps discuss it, critique it. I have not done that online. I do have some reservations because I have found there are some students who are relatively intractable in terms of logging on. They may log on and just look at the site once. I mean, I do check. I can’t check individuals but I do check and I do know that some students are not going onto the site. And I don’t quite know how you catch them unless of course you make it mandatory that they, you know. So I’m not sure what to do about that. I think this is a kind of blank with me because I’m aware of the fact I’ve got some students who are not participating in that way.
Inter:	You mentioned the things that happen in a very practical grounded way in the tutorial and, I mean, off campus students can’t attend those in person, tutorials.
Poole:	No, of course not.
Inter:	I mean, what’s your view about running the equivalent of an e-tutorial for the off campus student where in a sense their attendance and participation is being formally judged or assessed in some way?
Poole:	I think it’s a very interesting idea. I mean, it’s quite an appealing one. My concern would be that one of the reasons, perhaps one of the main reasons why students do not enrol on campus is because they are either distant from the university geographically or they’re distant because of their own time commitments. And there’s a reason why people are off campus and it might be that which makes it very difficult to get them together in a tutorial, whether it’s at Burwood or Geelong or whether it’s online. What, you know, you could choose Wednesday afternoon at 5 o’clock and I think you might be quite sure that some people will say, ah ah, not then, I can’t make it. And of course they do that with on campus tutes but they have a choice. I don’t know. There would be a practical consideration as to whether everyone would participate. I’m just a bit concerned about it.
Inter:	Now Marilyn, in terms …?
Poole:	It’s a very practical objection though, it’s not a pedagogical one, you know, it’s just – I don’t know.
Inter:	Okay, I’m interested in, like, formal assessment and, look, you set activities and so on. How can students derive value from what you’re doing online in doing the assignment work that they need to do or reviewing for an examination if that’s part of the subject?
Poole:	Well, the assessment actually for on campus and off is the same and so all my students begin doing a family profile which I think I’ve mentioned to you before. And they love it, they really adore the family profile and I think that’s what attracts them in. It’s what I describe as cheap and cheerful. It’s only worth 15% of the final grade but it’s the first assignment, they enjoy it, it engages them, off or on. The off campus ones are usually quite intrigued about how to do it, what should be included and so they start, I think they start communicating. There are some, you know, readings, fairly short readings so I can direct them formally to that but we do start conversations going through that very simple assignment at first. And that’s also the assignment which I think tells the students all about the diversity of families. So it’s a very simple assignment for both of them but it does, the on campus are engaged and the off campus are engaged. And it’s not really using DSO in some ways except to say it drags them in because they start to say, well, you know, and how do you represent divorce? Or I’m adopted or my father was adopted, what do I do? And then there’s this kind of, all these suggestions, some of which are kind of quite creative and then of course there’s the sort of standard ones as how one should do this, but it brings people together in a discussion. So that’s the first assignment, which is really quite good for that. The others are much more, I suppose, standard academic in that they are, the third years have two essays to do and so they read lecture notes, they read the readings, it’s the usual academic thing. And the second years have an exam and, well, preparation for exams is preparation for exams. I’m not sure that whether you’re using DSO or going into the library is that much different really.
Inter:	Now you sound really excited about Sociology and teaching it …
Poole:	I love it, I love it.
Inter:	… and I guess you really love being in a classroom, engaging in person and the very special atmospherics of being in that type of environment.
Poole:	I do, yes. Yes.
Inter:	What was your initial reaction when you heard about the University’s objective of having a suite of wholly online units and every undergraduate student had to take at least one unit wholly online? You’ve got one being offered which is very relevant to the discipline of Sociology and you’ve been supporting your colleagues in that …
Poole:	I’ve been writing it.
Inter:	… having to write it. But what was your initial reaction and how have you come to terms with that Marilyn and tried to contribute to that type of unit development?
Poole:	Well I was actually quite negative at first. I thought this is not a clever idea, this is a bad idea. I didn’t really buy it at first, I was unenthusiastic I would say. And then I was of course Associate Head at the time and it began to occur to me that perhaps I should be more positive in my thinking. And so I put to the area, which of course was Sociology, Social Work, Women’s Studies and Criminology at the time, and that perhaps we should consider a fully online unit, as a political thing for the area, that this would be a good thing that we could not afford to ignore it. So in other words I put aside my misgivings, my own personal misgivings and I would have to say actively promoted the idea that the area rather than perhaps a discipline should contribute to a fully online unit. And the area ran with it and some very clever ideas were discussed. We had an area meeting and some really very clever ideas came up. And in the end we decided on Sex and Crime, Justice in the Electronic Age, largely because we thought that most people in the area, or at least, it would represent the area best. I mean, we had some suggestions which were very good but they might have been just Criminology or just so and so. So the Sex, Crime unit we thought would [pull in], and it has done of course, I mean, that’s precisely what it has. So it was a good thing for the area, it was a goal for the area. And I personally, again, was a bit kind of, I’m not sure how this will work, but I have to say I have rather been converted. I’ve been writing for the unit and I’ve got really quite excited about it and in some ways I’m rather sorry I’m not going to teach it actually.
Inter:	It’s interesting Marilyn, is it a smart way using the technology to try and engender some curriculum reform? I mean, if there was no technological imperative to have a wholly online unit do you think working with a cluster of disciplines in your area you could have got them to come up with an integrative unit, interdisciplinary unit?
Poole:	No, no, no, no I don’t, no. It worked, it’s worked. It’s actually, I think it will be a good unit actually. It is still, you know, in a sense in, it’s not final draft but it’s well on it’s way and I think it’s going to be an interesting unit actually, fun as well as interesting. I mean, it’s third level, it’s not for first years but it’s got a lot of meat in it and lots of ideas and I think you’re right, I think it’s going to combine the different disciplines in a quite unique sort of way.
Inter:	Now, you mentioned if you had a magic wand and you could wave it you’d love to have probably a lot more images or a visually designed unit online.
Poole:	Yes, I would, yes.
Inter:	Are there other things, look, waving this magic wand overall Marilyn, are there other things you’d like to see happen to really enhance the teaching and learning environment for the units you teach, you know, in a perfect world beyond the obvious things that you might say?
Poole:	In a perfect world I suppose in some ways I’m, I think students now, I think, you know, they’ve grown up in the television age where there’s a lot of sort of electronic communication and I think you have to recognise this. And if I could, I think I would make DSO much livelier. I mean, not just visual images but a little bit of music here and there, you know what I mean?
Inter:	Hmm.
Poole:	Now, this would be a lot of work I think to develop, to do it properly, you know what I mean, because you are competing with professionals, of course, who are producing television programs and things like that and there’s a very slick presentation whereas academics haven’t necessarily got those skills. But I would love to see just a little bit livelier, I think that would help because the meat’s there, the academic kind of content is there but I think we need to kind of spice it up a little.
Inter:	And finally Marilyn, if I was a new academic staff member to your area, the discipline, coming to Deakin, and let’s assume that I’m quite new to teaching or tertiary teaching, what advice would you give me in regard to settling in at a place like Deakin and doing well at a place like Deakin, in my teaching capacity?
Poole:	In your teaching, and you’re assuming that they will be doing online as well as face to face or just online or …?
Inter:	Assume that I’ll be working in a blended environment where I’m going to have to be quite good at classroom teaching and know about online and so on.
Poole:	Well I think if you were very new to teaching I would say, get to know people who you know are pretty good with students and see what you can do. Teaching’s a quite lonely activity in many ways. It’s one where we don’t really see each other formally a great deal. You know, when I began teaching we did a lot of team teaching and you could actually see what other people were doing, you could see how they worked a classroom. And there was perhaps more time given to that kind of thing, there’d be perhaps four or five of you and you would each kind of work out what you were going to do, and it wasn’t just talking heads. And in that sense I think you could learn a lot but now you tend to go into a classroom and there you are as a new teacher. What do you do? And if I’ve got any advice is talk to other people and see what they do. How do they run tutorials? What kinds of things are they doing? What kind of activities do they think work? Talk to your colleagues, go out to coffee, go out to lunch with them. Talk about what they do, how they manage things and that’s one way of also fitting in. And the other is really take advantage of whatever training sessions Deakin’s got to offer, which is usually quite a lot. You know, if you want to learn about Grade Book] learn about Grade Book. If you want to learn how to do DSO go to DSO training sessions but you’ve got to work hard as a new teacher.
Inter:	How important do you think it is to really develop the mastery of the discipline to be able to know it well enough to step outside and see it the way a student might see it, to induct them into the subject matter and the modes of enquiry of the subject? This can get a little bit lost at times, you know, we can talk about …
Poole:	Yeah, you can get lost at times. I don’t think I find it too, I personally have changed disciplines and so I, in a sense I kind of know what it’s like to move from one to another. And I think you’ve got to be very patient with students because you’ve got to remember that they’re doing perhaps Politics or they’re doing, you know, Gender Studies. You don’t know what they’re doing and they’re being inculcated in this is how you do History or this is how you do Politics and then there’s somebody rattling on, you know, and this is how you do Sociology. And students find this really confusing. You know, the historians are telling them when they write an essay they’ve got to footnote. Sociologists are saying, ah ah, we don’t footnote, you know. There are mixed messages coming to students the whole time. Now that’s alright, and I say to students, okay, it’s just different ways of doing things. There’s not a right way and a wrong way but you learn to be adaptable, just as you will be adaptable when you get out in the workforce. Okay, there’s not so much a right way and a wrong. You go to company X and they do things this way and then you’ll get another job at company Y and they’ll do things that way and you will learn. And it’s quite, you have to learn these things. And I think you’ve got to kind of give them a bit of a break, you know, it’s sort of, you teach them different ways of operating but be patient about it. I don’t think some people are actually, you know, I think you expect, they come in from high school and you expect perfection and I don’t, they’re not. First year students I think need really teaching how to be a university student. Our high schools probably are not doing that for us and so we have to teach them how to approach research or researching an essay, things like that. We often have to start from the beginning.
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