Don’t know what to say this week. The flood of emails created a range of emotions for me. There was a certain voyeuristic pleasure in following the responses whether humourous or vitriolic. Listening now to the recording of the Elluminate session I’m now trying to recall what similar power plays I have pulled over the years – sometimes unconsciously.

Then Lisa again provoked my interest in another thoughtful post about control by personality. The closest I came was to look at how my expectations, demeanor and yeah my teaching style changes depending on the audience. I would readily adopt micro management techniques with mostly teenage students and very communicative and collaborative approaches with adult learners of English as a Second Language. Both seemed relatively successful according to feedback. Wendy, in the Moodle Forum, called this “structure.

Regardless, the power over a student’s ability to progress further or not was never far from the surface.

In the online environment the ability to rely on “personality” is more difficult as spoken words look very different on paper and out of context.