teaching – Page 2 – Sebastian May

Action Research Project Kick-Off

Over the summer, I designed and set up a new programme of student partnership work, and in September recruited 12 student partners to our online team. Students will be directly involved in the co-design, support and feedback of a range of online projects throughout the coming year, with the ethos of working more openly and inclusively with the community of students we’re here to support. The basis of much of my academic work, therefore, is one of partnership and co-creation. A short briefing paper outlined the role of student partners and made the basis for a recruitment and induction plan that followed, establishing roles, responsibilities, and a code of conduct.

UAL Online Student Partners programme outline, Word

Building on my personal interests in play and storytelling, and how these ideas can impact students’ experiences, I set out to develop a short storytelling activity, which I am now looking to investigate more closely.

Mapping stories

The activity includes students exploring and adding to a number of storytelling elements on Padlet, after which they will be able to explore a map of stories on Miro. Students are then able to write or produce their own short story, before publishing it on their Miro map. Outside of the activity, they will be asked to digest information about the activity, provide their consent, and complete an activity evaluation at the end of the process.

To begin with, the stories map will only include one central story, and it is essential to acknowledge my own directive power in this process as researcher and writer, having created the overall design of the study, the activity and elements such as the central story, which acts as a starting point for students. The idea, however, is that as students add their stories to this map, this then culminates into a large network of stories that represents the community of participating students; and this could, in theory, grow over time.

As play, the activity embraces some ideas of spontaneity and choice. Students are able to choose from a number of existing stories to respond to, however the more students contribute the larger the number of stories to which they can respond. Students can take part in the activity whenever, however and from wherever they choose – of course within the duration of the research and within technological limitations – but they will not be limited by the inflexibility of timed lectures or workshops.

How I got here

Much of my day-to-day work embraces iterative design thinking and I decided to apply some of this to my action research project. I began by creating a mind map of ideas, thoughts, and potential ways to explore different topics of interest. I also added outstanding questions and dependencies to this map. I then connected different ideas to see if there were common or connecting elements worth exploring further. This quickly became a helpful resource to help me guide my research, and I have returned to it numerous times to compare my initial ideas to my ongoing research and plans.

In fact, I found this mapping exercise so helpful, I decided to create a secondary map that gathers relevant research, reading and references in support of my project. I found this a helpful way of gathering citations and having a better understanding of connections between authors, theories and readings; as well as potential gaps I might want to further explore. So far, this map has been an incredibly helpful tool I plan on using as my research progresses, contributing to this along the way.

To capture my ideas, I also began to develop a briefing document for students that outlines the activity in more detail. I have found it helpful to keep this documentation student-facing, aligning this with the idea that the students I work with are student partners and I am keen to keep processes as transparent as possible. Capturing my ideas in one short document has also helped me develop and revise some of the research detail.

Student-facing storytelling briefing, in Word

Starting to plan

Although I developed my action research plan with the possibility for the activity to take on a cyclical process and to be run again in the future, I outlined my plans against a 6-month timeline, aligning this with my work and PgCert schedule, including relevant milestones. I’ve been continuously using this visual timeline to track milestones and actions, updating it along the way, adding relevant steps and requirements as and when needed.

Trello also became one of my biggest friends, helping me to capture ideas and prioritise detailed actions.

Research question and ethics

One of the biggest challenges so far has been developing a concise research question that captures my interest and supports my enquiry, including the data I hope to capture. Working through the ethical form helped my review all aspects of the project and my progress so far, and raised some interesting questions for me particularly around project scope, what is achievable within the time and space that I have, and how I can work most effectively with my student partners. Our follow-up tutorial also helped me look at my research question in a new light, and focus in one what I might be able to accomplish as an academic, questioning my own power within the research, rather than questioning large concepts such as storytelling and play. My current research question:

How can I enable a sense of connectedness among creative students through digital storytelling?

Presenting back

Lastly, I am also exploring different ways to present my data and have been toying with the idea of mirroring the idea of the project in my final presentation. For example, is there a way for me to apply digital storytelling within my final presentation. I am currently looking at different presentation styles, visuals and formats for inspiration.

Bibliography

Bradbury, H. (2015). The SAGE Handbook of Action Research. 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP : SAGE Publications Ltd. doi:https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473921290.

Braud, W. and Anderson, R. (1998). Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences : Honoring Human Experience. Thousand Oaks, Calif. ; London: Sage.

Cook, T. (2009). The purpose of mess in action research: building rigour though a messy turn. Educational Action Research, 17(2), pp.277–291. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790902914241.

McNiff, J. and Whitehead, J. (2010). You and Your Action Research Project. 3rd ed. London ; New York: Routledge.

Exploring race & identity in the classroom

Exploring ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’, I was surprised to read that while UAL seems to retain students at subject discipline average (94%), the number of students gaining lower or no award is comparatively higher (6%); with a stark yet an unfortunately unsurprising difference between white students and Black student groups (Finnigan and Richards, 2016, p.4). When I began my academic work, I had always imagined that the creativity embedded within Art and Design studies would provide more opportunities for equity, equality and inclusion than other disciplines, and so I am now keen to investigate some of these discrepancies and possible interventions through my own practice.

On white fragility, Robin DiAngelo speaks of a socialisation that shapes our opinions about race “by swimming in the water of our culture” (DiAngelo, 2018, p.101). When we talk about personal identities and narratives, we must acknowledge the communities of which we are part, including our community perspectives. These will contain prejudices, relate to our own points of views and practices; however we cannot use this as an excuse for inaction. I very much acknowledge that even though I open opportunities for students to participate fully as themselves through their creative work and enable them to freely express their identities in the classroom, there remains a power imbalance between me, as a white man, making decisions on how learning takes place and how learning materials are designed, for example. DiAngelo (2018) writes that even though individual white people may be against racism, they can, and will, still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by ‘their group’, and I feel there is a parallel to be drawn here between this larger social construct and the microcosm of the classroom.

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper’s writing on Social Justice Education, the link to conflict resolution and ‘intergroup education’, is fascinating to me (Hahn Tapper, 2013, p. 422). Much of my work in the classroom positions me as a sort of facilitator to engage students in creative thinking and practice and this can create incredibly positive learning experiences. As the article highlights, this type of work requires an openness and understanding of different identities, and possibly an understanding of (pre-existing) power dynamics and inequalities, from everyone present, me and my students. I hope that the identity exercise I have designed as part of my Artefact will make a positive contribution towards this work.

Aisha Richards (2023) offers through Shades of Noir a range of practical tools, such as the virtual learning netiquette, which I want to explore integrating into my future lectures. I think the website offers a fantastic resource of journals, which could offer students a brilliant insight into this area of work, highlight to them a range of personal narratives to help them reflect on their own identities and creative practices, and support their research. I frequently ask students to consider their own geopolitical, sociological and identity-based perspectives, how these impact their creative work and the stories they tell, and these resources could support effectively such activities.

See my comments on other posts on this topic

Further notes and reflections

The university retains exclusionary practices that align to an old-fashioned idea of Art & Design studies being a privilege to enter in the first place. Art and Design being such a huge field, however, I wonder if there are recognisable differences between art practices and if there are areas of the university that are more successful than others in including everyone.

In my own teaching practice, there are conversations to be had with students about their own identities, particularly in position to the institution and me as their tutor; giving them sufficient time to reflect and respond. Identity exercises, like the one embedded within my Artefact, could foster this.

I thought Josephine Kwhali comment on unconscious bias aligned with Shirley Anne Tate’s lecture on hiding behind unconscious bias, calling on us to stop using the unconscious as an excuse for bias and racism. Kwhali very much addresses staff, but I wonder how we address this with students in a meaningful way.

In my student experience strand of work, I would love to table some of the diversity questions highlighted on the Shades of Noir website. I frequently work with colleagues on experience and curriculum design and these questions are helpful prompts to unpick some of the practices, processes and designs currently in place across UAL online education.

Bibliography

DiAngelo, R. (2018) ‘White Fragility’, Peekaboo We See You: Whiteness, pp. 100–105. Available at: https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/peekaboo_we_see_you_whiteness (Accessed: 15 June 2023).

Finnigan, T. and Richards, A. (2016) Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design. rep. York: Higher Education Academy, pp. 1–24.

Hahn Tapper, A.J. (2013), A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 30: 411 445. https://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21072

Richards, A. (2023) Shades of Noir. Available at: https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/ (Accessed: 14 June 2023).

Witness: unconscious bias (2016) ucu black members’ standing committee oral history project. The University and College Union (UCU). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6XDUGPoaFw (Accessed: 15 June 2023).

Whiteliness and institutional racism: Hiding behind (un)conscious bias (2018) YouTube. Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET) at the Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lur3hjEHCsE (Accessed: 16 June 2023).

Practice, community and belief

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s lecture resonates with me in the way he assigns religion into areas of practice, community and belief (Appiah, 2016). He also talks about the idea of change, in the way we interpret faith to create ‘new traditions’, and says that practice can change over time, and so can belief. The unique way Appiah explores religion makes me think about storytelling and narrative again; how we interpret faith, and how we express ourselves through it. When I look at a group of people, such as students, they may indeed have similar backgrounds in terms of their faith, but it is through their unique experiences and expression that shapes their faith identity in individual, yet equally valid ways. I want to make sure I address this in the way I teach.

This links to the way the ‘Religion in Britain, Challenges for Higher Education’ stimulus paper addresses the idea of multiculturalism. Tariq Modood points towards ‘equality as the accommodation of difference in the public space, which therefore comes to be shared rather than dominated by the majority’ (Modood and Calhoun, 2015, p.6). For me, this is about both the acknowledgment of different stories, but also for providing an explicit platform to express these. Modood stresses that religion is a public good (as opposed to a private one), and giving importance to faith backgrounds and discussion in the classroom aligns with this idea that faith is owned and expressed by its communities, including academic communities.

Related to this, I thought the article by Melodie Holliday on giving up Buddhism based on some of the inherent conflicts within many faith-based systems is very interesting (Holliday, 2017, pp. 46–49). Inequality, sexism, corruption, abuse of power… many of these social challenges do not disappear when we enter religious organisations, yet they might lead us to discuss or consider our religious affiliations from different angles. Again, someone’s experience in this space will be deeply shaped by their own background and is worth listening to in an academic and creative setting, including in my own pedagogic activities with students. There are opportunities here to enable students to integrate their own faith backgrounds through practical applications, such as through their artistic practices, or through classroom discussions with their peers, which I would like to explore further. Some of the resources highlighted here may also provide interesting background information and inspiration to students trying to understand how faith and its expression may impact their practices, in a very reflective way.

See my comments on other posts on this topic

Bibliography

Appiah, K.A. (2016) ‘Creed’, Kwame Anthony Appiah – Mistaken Identities. The Reith Lectures, 30 May. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43ds (Accessed: 30 May 2023).

Modood, T. and Calhoun, C. (2015) Religion in Britian: Challenges for Higher Education. London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

Holliday, M. (2017) ‘I was a buddhist for seven years’, Higher Power: Religion, Faith, Spirituality & Belief, pp. 46–49. Available at: https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/journals/higher-power-religion-faith-spirituality-belief/ (Accessed: 30 May 2023).

Reclaiming sounds, empowering voices

Christine Sun Kim’s physical exploration of sound deeply resonates with my own desire to inspire students to investigate creative practices in different ways (Saltzman, 2011). In some of my drawing classes, for example, I encourage students to reflect on what mark making means to them, and how they might approach it within their own creative practice – beyond the use of pen on paper.

Christine Sun Kim says that she is reclaiming sound as her own property, after previously believing that only those with access to sound naturally own it and have a say about it (Saltzman, 2011). There is something incredibly empowering in this, similar to the more ‘radical’ approaches The Horizontals express in their TEDxBrum video (Not all disabilities are visible, 2017), i.e. doing things the same way they’ve always been done no longer works. It would be interesting to use the two films as actual learning resources, using them to prompt discussion or reflection around students’ own positionality towards drawing, or other creative subjects, before or at the beginning of specific drawing activities.

Enabling and empowering students to approach drawing from a personal perspective, guided self-design and self-empowerment, also includes students of all abilities by design, and aligns with the Social Model of Disability.

A majority of students in my teaching context are from Black, Asian, or minority ethnic backgrounds. As Vilissa Thompson points out in her #DisabilityTooWhite interview (Blahovec, 2016), there is plenty of space for additional conversations around how students from different backgrounds experience not just living with disabilities, but also the support available to them. I want to ensure that the learning activities I design remain flexible and open enough for students to speak freely about their own experiences including the support they may want.

Khairani Barokka beautifully, although painfully, speaks of some of their rich and complex personal experiences, and how they may or may not align with “capitalist infrastructure, including the neoliberal structure of arts organisations and funding” (Barokka, 2017) . Creating spaces for such frank considerations in students’ academic experience can be vital to their learning as well as overall experience.

I am curious to see how I could enable students to feel more empowered, possibly through evaluating and constructing their own narratives within their practices, as well as storytelling techniques. What is the student’s own, unique story and retelling of their story? What is the student’s position within the world? How could they apply this within and to their own practice?

See my comments on other posts on this topic

Further notes and reflections

The guided approach to self-design and self-empowerment supports students in their learning. Even more, students may also find it helpful to consider other students’ abilities when collaborating, and these sources may empower them to approach projects with more understanding and respect for each other’s differences. It might also be a good springboard to make students understand the support available through UAL’s disability and dyslexia services. Considerations should be made around how these services were designed, how they are provided, and how students experience them.

Multidisciplinary sound artist Ubuntu (2020, p.177) outlines in their article that there is a “paradox of invisibility and hypervisibility inherent in intersectional oppression” that doesn’t always allow for openness and disclosure. As educators, this is something we must respect, even through our attempts to empower students to be their most authentic selves.

Bibliography

Barokka, Khairani (2017) Deaf-accessibility for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee while chronically ill. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22 (3). pp. 387-392. ISSN 1470-112X

Blahovec, S. (2016) “Confronting the Whitewashing Of Disability: Interview with #DisabilityTooWhite Creator Vilissa Thompson,” Huffpost, 28 June. Available at: www.huffpost.com/entry/confronting-the-whitewash_b_10574994 (Accessed: May 7, 2023).

Not all disabilities are visible. (2017) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhXcP65h0sI (Accessed: May 5, 2023).

Saltzman, D. (2011) Christine Sun Kim, vimeo. A Selby Film. Available at: https://vimeo.com/31083172 (Accessed: May 5, 2023).

UAL (2023) Disability and dyslexia, UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/student-services/disability-and-dyslexia (Accessed: May 7, 2023).

Ubuntu, R. (2020) “An Inquiry Into Disability + Intersectional Identities,” Disabled People: The Voice of Many, pp. 174–177. Available at: https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/disabled_people (Accessed: May 7, 2023).

Refining teaching on the go

This week, I’ve been delivering a series of industry experience workshops for pre-degree students. As the sessions were somewhat spread out, I got the chance to reflect on each day of teaching, including on student engagement, and to amend things as I went on to deliver the next session.

Warm-up exercise asking students about their creative practice(s)

Having delivered the first two sessions, I noticed a few moments where student were confused about the task at hand, so I went back to the original instructions and tidied them up. I also more clearly organised questions, and rewrote rewrote questions to make them more explicit and easier to answer.

Another thing I noticed was that some students struggled with the idea of exploring their identities and embedding personal values within their creative work; a fairly complex subject but something I was keen to integrate within the class.

While I already made sure to spend time with student individually to go through this concept in detail, I also then added another slide to have students collectively think about the idea of identity.

For this, I repurposed an existing exercise (2) to explore biases and simplified it so it allowed me to explore identity as a general concept; this was more fitting for the topics I wanted to discuss, but also more appropriate for the level of experience in the room. The additional ‘identity iceberg’ exercise also give me a chance to engage students in another way, and made the lesson more flexible. The exercise worked particularly well for an online session, where I asked students to contribute their own thoughts about their identities to an online board.

Extract from online workshop and student identity exercise

Aiming to make my lessons more inclusive, I am really keen to connect with students personal identities and backgrounds, however this can be challenging with students that are new to this concept, new to this type of education, and students with whom I haven’t had the chance to build up much of a relationship or trust – which naturally happens when teaching one off sessions.

I’m also finding that students’ limited understanding of English is making it difficult for me to delve into more complex subject areas, so there are a few hurdles to overcome.

I noticed some lulls towards the end of some of the sessions, but I am wondering if this is more my own personal discomfort with periods of silence in the classroom, or if students are truly disengaged. When I move around the classroom some students continue to work on their tasks or seem to be discussing questions, so perhaps this is more something to monitor rather than intervene, but also understand that some students might need silences and breaks, particularly in challenging lessons.

To improve on this, in my online session I made it explicit to students that they would have time for silent or group working, which I think helped them as well as me, setting expectations and avoiding any confusion or discomfort.

Having completed a week’s worth of teaching and looking back, one of the things I would really like to look at in future is students’ level of previous education and experience, as I think some of the topics and ideas that I tabled were too complex for them, even after I simplified them and included additional exercises and support. It may also be worth exploring with students slightly simpler tasks, but giving students the option to delve deeper into areas of specific interest to them; particularly as there tend to be students from many different creative backgrounds in the room.

References

Teaching the identity iceberg: https://adl.org/sites/default/files/identity-iceberg/story.html
The Iceberg—Visible and Hidden Identity: https://www.wondriumdaily.com/visible-and-hidden-identity/

At the intersection of contemporary art and communications

As I am developing a new series of interactive workshops with students, I am drawing on my own professional experience and have had the chance to reflect on my creative practice. This practice has largely revolved around two strands of work, communications and contemporary art, and I have worked at the intersection of these two areas for almost twenty years.

Contemporary art and communications meeting ground: graphic © Sebastian May

While much of my day to day practice feels natural and instinctive, I have spent a lot of time bringing these key practices and areas of interest together; focusing on projects that would allow me to draw from both areas and embed unique and meaningful perspectives.

But what is the actual output, if I had to describe it to someone? And what is the focus, or kernel of my practice, if I had to summarise it?

Often, on the communications side, I dedicate my work towards communicating artistic projects, or supporting other creative practitioners. On the contemporary arts side of things, I develop work that communicates specific messages, aims to enthral audiences.

Stepping away and looking at my practice from afar, it seems like the one connecting factor, my interest / passion / ethos, revolves around storytelling. I tell stories in my works of art, I tell stories in my communications campaigns, I tell stories in drawing on my creative practice in communications projects and vice-versa. Knowingly or not, this is also something I have been interested in and practiced from a young age, sketching out comics, poetry and performing in plays, dance, crafting ceramic works and drawing.

Even my interest in play and disruption, may not stem from the actual desire to play or disrupt, but from the unique stories these modes of pedagogy allow me to tell and in which to involve others. This is something I am planning to research further and see how I might be able to approach it through various lenses.

Values and ethics in teaching

Observational notes at PgCert seminar. Image © Sebastian May.

As we explore the range of policies, frameworks, strategies, codes, principles, guides, regulations and more … available to use within our creative arts context, I begin to wonder how I position my own academic practice within this peculiar and complex higher education environment. Indeed, what are my values? How do I position them against this vast area of existing materials? How to prioritise what’s available to me, and against my own values, ethics, morals and beliefs?

In my practice, flexibility, creativity, and empathy are values that I continue to embrace and embed within different approaches. In some way, these become lenses through which I use other tools, such as some of the frameworks discussed in our recent workshop.

The UK Professional Standards Framework makes for an interesting reflective tool through which I can sense check my own approach but also my own value system. Its’ three dimensions (Activity, Knowledge, Values) are relevant to all parts of my practice, although there are areas around assessment and providing feedback which I have yet to develop in more detail. Where the framework lacks substance is around truly understanding students, which is very much part of my work around student engagement and experience.

I also wonder about the focus on developing professional practices, inherent in the UKPSF and other frameworks. Within my own practice, I have been exploring spaces of play, opening up more creative spaces for students to engage, explore and learn.

For example, it resonates with me what Gielen and van Heusden outline in A Plea for Communalist Teaching, where they discuss how teachers should “facilitate interactions between students and encourage them to learn from each other”, something which play can beautifully facilitate, sometimes in a disruptive way.

It may be difficult to argue that these spaces directly impact professional development, however I do believe these spaces are critical in the development. If spaces become a tool however, does the lack of disruption they offer counter their initial purpose or use?

Similarly, looking through UAL Principles of Climate, Racial and Social Justice, which explicitly hone in on very specific themes, I wonder how I am able to make small interventions within my own teaching practice to integrate at least parts of the framework and integrate these with my own values along the way; the university’s principles of practice make for a brilliant technical guide. For example, where I am unable to make changes to course handbooks, how can my delivery or management of a course, or simply the way I engage with students make a different that meets some of these asks, as well as my own values and aspirations within teaching and learning? Much of my practice focuses on creating new work, using materials and products, so there may be some easy ways to integrate environmentally-friendly and socially conscious modes of production. I am also thinking about ways my team could bring on board a Climate Advocate or Coordinator to evaluate what we do more broadly.

Bibliography

Gielen, P., & de Bruyne, P. (n.d.). (2012) Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm Realism versus Cynicism.

Small group teaching: ideas

Diagram 1. Aspects of Small Group Learning Environment

I recently came across an interesting investigation into small group teaching by Gunn (2007), which I am hoping to investigate further. This is particularly relevant to my own work, which often involves smaller groups of students. An upcoming workshop in which I’ll be co-designing virtual learning environment routes with five students being one example.

Gunn highlights five key areas that influence small group learning: cognitive processes, experiential processes, interpersonal group dynamics, and physical environments. She further outlines that defining and structuring procedures and becoming oriented, conforming to procedures and getting acquainted, and recognising mutuality and building trust, are all key in effective group learning – which I hope to embed within my own session. For example, I am planning to embed a comprehensive induction, warm-up exercises to get to know each other, and discussion, to promote trust amongst the group.

Gunn outlines additional ideas by Johnson & Johnson that are worth considering:

Introduce, define, and structure the learning group
Clarify procedures, reinforce members for conforming to the procedures, and help members become acquainted
Emphasise and highlight the cooperative interdependence among group members and encourage their engaging in both trusting and trustworthy behaviours
Accept rebellion by and differentiation among group members as a normal process and use confrontation and constructive negotiation to help group members establish their independence from each other and the prescribed procedures
Facilitate the members’ committing themselves to and taking ownership of the group’s goals, procedures, and other members
Be a consultant to the group, providing needed material and information resources for the group to function effectively

Bibliography

Gunn, V. (2007). Approaches to Small Group Learning and Teaching. http://www.gla.ac.uk/learn/

Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, F.P. (1997, 6th edn) Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills, Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Object-based learning: microteach

White mug with gold rim. Image © Sebastian May.

I’m planning a 20-minute teaching session with a focus on object-based learning. Having given space to experiment, I return to think about spaces of play and disruption and how to integrate these two ideas.

I start with the object around which the learning will focus. Because the real hero of the session will be the process or practice, I decided to choose a fairly simple object – one that isn’t specifically aligned to any specific subject area: a white coffee mug.

In this scenario, and as Hardie explains, the idea is to “use objects to develop lively critical discussion, focused critical analysis, reflective thinking and powerful debates” (Hardie, 2015, p.20), which will take place in the second half of the session.

The mug is generic enough for students to apply different practices to it, and use it in different ways. And its simplicity also creates an interesting challenge for students to think creatively. For example, if students were to draw the mug, a completely white mug is fairly difficult to capture on paper. There is also something surprising about the white mug which will hopefully draw students in.

I’m also considering the group of students that will be in the room. They are a small group of teachers from different disciplines and with different levels of experience. Creating an inclusive lesson plan, therefore, becomes integral to the success of the session.

Students will have one overarching task, to interpret the object through an arts practice by making a piece of work about the object. I have come up with the following lesson plan / structure:

(1) Introduction (5 minutes)

As the overall lesson will focus on students’ embodied practice, I will ask students to stand up and connect with their bodies by warming up, lifting their hands in the air and then touching their toes.
I will then outline the task / challenge and structure of the lesson. I will explain that the exercise will be timed and fast-moving, to set expectations.
I will outlined the overarching concept of using chance or choice within the exercise – giving students opportunity to choose how learning will take place.
I will present students with different types of art forms / practices from which to choose:
- Curation
- Collage
- Dance
- Découpage
- Drawing
- Film
- Performance
- Photography
- Storytelling
- Writing
  - Poetry
  - Screenwriting
- …
Students will be able to choose a specific practice, or pick one at random. The latter element relates to the idea of using ‘chance’ as a form of play.
I will explain to students that one person will ‘win’ the learning object.

(2) Exercise (5 minutes)

I will ask students to use one of the art forms / practices to engage with the object in front of them.
They may collaborate with others.
They will need to be mindful that the object will be used by others in the group and mind move or change, so they will need to negotiate the learning space with others.
The exercise will be timed.
I will be on hand to support the exercise.

(3) Show and Tell (5 minutes)

I will ask students to go around the table and show everyone what they have produced, why they chose their specific medium, and explain their process. Each student will have one minute to respond.
Students will be encouraged to write down anything they find meaningful.

(4) Discussion (5 minutes)

I will ask students to discuss as a group the following questions:
- Which project resonated most with you, and why?
- How did you find the process?
- What difference did it make to be able to freely choose an art form, or assign one to you at random?

Rather than regarding the final part of the session as a crit about students work (Blythman, M., Orr, S., & Director, B. B. (2007), I will suggest an interrogation of the process of the session itself, rather than value judgements being made purely on the making of the artwork or even purely the artwork. The discussion will be framed in a positive light, finding ways for the group to connect with each other using the work on the object.

Having students choose another project as the ‘winner’ acts both as the ‘play’ element, but also as the ‘disruptor’, and the learning object disappears at the end of the activity.

Final thoughts

Through this session, I hope to help students develop some of the following skills:

Observational skills
Visual literacy (ability to ‘read’ objects, to find meaning from them)
Team working
Critical analytical skills
Various practice-based skills, e.g. drawing skills
Communication
Aesthetic judgement
Research skills and confidence
Inspiration

Due to the short duration of the session, there will not be time to investigate specific skills more fully.

I am separately investigating small group teaching.

Time permitting, I also hope to check learning objectives against UAL’s Creative Attributes Framework.

Bibliography

Blythman, M., Orr, S., & Director, B. B. (2007). Critiquing the Crit Final report. www.thestudentsurvey.com

Hardie, K. (2015). Innovative pedagogies series: Wow: The power of objects in object-based learning and teaching. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/wow-power-objects-object-based-learning-and-teaching

Students as Co-Creators

Attending last week’s Students as Co-Creators Symposium: Beyond Engagement (1), made for an inspiring day hearing from academics and students about dynamic approaches to teaching and learning.

Professor Catherine Bovill outlined the different relationships that we may engage in with students, from active learning to co-creation and partnerships. She describes the latter as creating the most ‘equal’ playing field. My biggest take-away from the conference was that whatever we can do to work more closely with students (as partners), even small interventions, will immediately improve their experience. This felt encouraging.

Throughout the day, I captured some interesting ideas, for example asking students to bring in localised / personal examples and connect these to their work. This is something I’m beginning to do in my drawing sessions and aligns with the idea of culturally relevant pedagogy described by Maria V. Luna-Thomas and Enilda Romero-Hall (1) and UAL’s online learning framework (2).

It was also interesting to see some of these ideas resurface in one of our PgCert sessions later in the week and how they worked in practice. I noticed some of them even neutralised each other. For example, during one session students were asked to create name cards (Teaching Intervention A) to facilitate communication and connectedness across the cohort. Later in the morning, however, students were then asked to rotate around the room (Teaching Intervention B) and I noticed that many lost their name cards along the way. I observed students looking slightly lost in their new groups, looking for each other’s name cards.

I thought one simple solution would have been to provide everyone with sticky tags that stayed with students throughout the day. I also thought there might be more playful ways to create connectedness amongst students, perhaps using association or role-play activities. This is something I hope to test in the future.

Further notes and reflections

I wondered about my own role in the situation above, if I should have pointed this out during the session or have helped the group make introductions.

With an interest in play, I’m also curious to look at some of these approaches in more detail. I wonder which approaches might even be considered or dismissed as play; what does it take for a learning approach to become play? I also wonder if some of these approaches are successful if they take on a disruptive nature. For example, can impromptu games engage or unsettle students? Does it come down to the individual in the room? More on this later.

Additional interventions to engage students referenced at the conference:

Using voting tools to start more personal conversations and creative processes, which I am planning to trial in some of my upcoming online sessions.
Asking students that they’ll be expected to summarise their class at the end of the session, which I believe is something that requires careful planning as putting students on the spot like this could cause unnecessary stress and does not feel inclusive to different abilities.
Explaining the reason behind learning approaches used in the ‘classroom’.
Asking students to use the classroom space different or move through the space during the class / lecture, e.g. one lecturer asked students to highlight traffic circulation patterns by physically moving through the lecture theatre.
Asking students to evaluation sessions, units and courses – and most importantly telling them that this would be expected of them at the start.
Creating safe spaces for discussion, amongst students.
Aligning class work to outside ‘real world’ examples, such as work lead by other institutions, such as the Design Council.

References

Hosted by AdvanceHE in Manchester.
Luna-Thomas, M.V. and Romero-Hall, E. (2023) “Culturally relevant pedagogy in digital praxis fosters an inclusive environment that embraces multiple ways of being and knowing, promotes democratic learning experiences, validates learners’ pre-existing knowledge, is bolstered by empathy and care, and fosters co-creation of knowledge across cultures.”
UAL online learning framework area 5 states: Be proactively inclusive. Take a universally inclusive approach to developing (digital) learning, environments and experiences that are fundamentally welcoming and accessible for everyone. Nurture the student community and celebrate diverse contributions to the curriculum, culture of UAL, and future of the global creative industries. Offer the support students need to succeed throughout their studies.

UAL online learning framework Download

Bibliography

Luna-Thomas, M.V. and Romero-Hall, E. (2023) “La Clave: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Digital Praxis,” in S. Köseoğlu, G. Veletsianos, and C. Rowell (eds) Critical Digital Pedagogy in Higher Education. Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University Press (Issues in Distance Education). Available at: https://read.aupress.ca/read/critical-digital-pedagogy-in-higher-education/section/01b49dc8-5d84-4f6f-a302-41fdc708d47b#cvi (Accessed: March 10, 2023).