Overcoming ‘Culture’ Shocks: Learning to do things differently

This paper charts the journey over the last five and a half years to find ways to teach at the Open University in the light of a painful disability and the changes in circumstances this has brought. My paper focuses in particular on coming to grips with technology designed for distance learning courses for which I am currently running modules on international development for Masters certification. The paper details the difficulties I had in overcoming my own technophobia and assumptions that virtual learning spaces could not aspire to the educational quality of face-to-face teaching and learning. It likens the coming to terms with pain and with new technologies to culture shock that renders the sufferer isolated and without bearings. Students' and colleagues written feedback offer a helpful way of monitoring my own educational development. Overcoming the shortcomings has become an opportunity for greater creativity and engagement with unforeseen possibilities in the pursuit of responsible freedoms and the revitalisation of educational processes.