Theories, Policies and Practice unit

My OBL micro-teach

I cannot overstate how excited I was to do this micro-teach. I haven’t engaged in any OBL teaching since lockdown and it’s an approach I’ve deeply missed.

Whilst preparing for the micro-teaching task I had my interim-PRA with my manager. This involved a discussion around returning to work amidst the ‘new normal’. At this point, I had only just experienced Judy’s session on ‘Emotional or extra-rational reading of an object’, and the physical response I was having to this phrase reminded me of her OBL prompts (Willcocks, 2020). I have obsessive compulsive disorder, so much of my hospital time is focused on encouraging me to simply ‘observe’ any unreasonable physical and emotional responses I have to stimulus rather than focus in on it. However, it was hard to avoid the aggressive increase in my heart rate and the sudden tension radiating from my spine through to my chest at the mention of ‘new normal’. I’d lost two family members in the early (pre-vaccination) days of Covid, one my age. I, along with every student I engaged with, was in mourning. Whether it was for a person or for time, the loss was huge. I attended the UUK conference on ‘Student Engagement’ in 2021, where I heard from Dr Fancourt of UCL. Their presentation on the ‘Covid 19 Social Study’ indicated that every mention of the ‘new normal’ correlated in a national spike in anxiety and depression (Fancourt, 2021).

The idea for my micro-teach was born.

Teaching doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We support students’ learning, but being a teacher doesn’t start or end there. Our students always expect us to go further, to provide pastoral support, or simply be available for a dialogue. Often, we become parental figures away from home. In the same way, I have gained…several hundred children. I fret about my students long after 5pm on Friday and long before Monday morning. So, in this ‘new normal’, how can we (I) apply pedagogic interventions?

‘To some degree, teaching amidst my children’s chatter has been a challenge, but one with its own sweetness and comfort. I think my students accept such interruptions because we all need now to be more fully human for each other. I miss my students. I sense they are hurting. I see that they are stressed, and the distance makes it harder to know what I can do to help or how I can help them find a respite amidst all the anxiety that is outside their door and sometimes inside their space. We can extend deadlines and adjust assignments, reduce our expectations of the outputs of scholarly work, all of which we should be doing — but none of this exactly helps us find new ways to be there for each other as human beings.’ (Brand, 2020)

Brand, A. S. (2020) ‘Field Notes on Pandemic Teaching’, Places Journal. Available at: https://placesjournal.org/article/field-notes-on-pandemic-teaching-1/ (Accessed: 9
February 2022)

I read widely whilst preparing for this session, and I was particularly interested in Cowans et. al’s Museum, Objects and Healing (2020). In it, the authors explore the psychotherapeutic potential of OBL approaches, investigating the opportunities for object engagement to act as conduits for exploring and facilitating well-being. Their conclusion? That OBL offered an opportunity to platform the humanity of our experiences (Cowans et. al, 2020), and for me, became the perfect opportunity to apply it to my workshop.

I did not want to be a mental health specialist or a disability advisor. Not only am I vastly underqualified, but I wanted to stay true to my vocation in academic development. However, it was important that I applied it in a way that would – by intentional side effect – support the wellbeing of our students.

Knowing I had a captive audience of educators, I wanted to highlight and explore the interventions we could apply to our teaching practice. Simple and practice guidance for adjustments to pedagogy to better support our students in periods of uncertain change.

My feedback was really positive – the group enjoyed the breakouts and felt the session was well structured and provoked productive and stimulating reflections. My only negative piece of feedback, which was shared across the group, was that they felt it was jarring when I mentioned – after the completion of the first activity – that I was teaching them as teachers rather than ‘students’. I agreed with the group that it would have been beneficial to have set the expectations for this at the top of the session, so that it wasn’t a shock half way through and they could have adjusted their engagement. None the less, I hugely enjoyed the opportunity to develop and deliver this session, and it’s given me food for thought regarding the potential opportunity to provide peer-teaching to other academic colleagues.

Bibliography:

Brand, A. S. (2020) ‘Field Notes on Pandemic Teaching’, Places Journal. Available at: https://placesjournal.org/article/field-notes-on-pandemic-teaching-1/ (Accessed: 9
February 2022)

Cowan, B. Laird, R. and McKeown, J. (2019) Museum Objects, Health and Healing: The Relationship between Exhibition and Wellness. London: Routledge

Willcocks, J. (2020) ‘Emotional or extra-rational reading of an object’, Central Saint Martin’s Museum and Study Collection. Available at:
https://arts.ac.libguides.com/c.php?g=686452&p=4906489 (Accessed: 9 February 2022)

Fancourt, D. (2020) ‘Covid-19 Social Study’, University College London. Available at: https://www.covidsocialstudy.org/ (Accessed: 28 February 2022)

‘Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem?‘ Allan Davies, Independent Consultant

Observations:

• LOs should use verbs which are measurable: causes more problems, terms are ambiguous for students particularly if student is new to discipline.
  • I was advised to use measurable verbs in my early teaching journey, and they’ve been a recurring feature of how I form LOs. During the course of this reading, I have looked at my upcoming week of workshops and have reworded the LOs in accordance to Davies’s advice. I ordinarily ask if LOs are clear at the start of a session, but I’m going to add this question onto my follow-up anonymous feedback forms so that students can express their views more comfortably.

• ‘The expectation that outcomes can be specified accurately and measurable at each level of the student experience is fanciful’
  • Couldn’t agree with this more! I am concerned that, especially in an art and design context, the focus on continually assessing outcomes leads to a reluctance to experiment. If students feel like they have to ‘play it safe’ all the time, where will we see the innovation on the fringes? The ‘failing forwards’? I’m currently working with several courses on pass-fail assessment, and the student work is demonstrably bolder.

• In A&D, outcomes aren’t achieved once, they are iterative. LOs in our field need to recognise the spiral nature of A&D pedagogy.
  • Not just the spiral nature of the pedagogy, but also the spiral nature of learning in those with specific learning disabilities (and beyond). The need for assessment at each unit feels both unnecessary and exclusive. We can use greater markers to identify ‘red flags’ for students i.e. how frequent is their engagement with the VLE, tracking tasks in Moodle, metrics from I’M IN.

• Applying them in an already busy landscape of levels, outcomes and guidance can just confuse the student more.
  • In my opinion, every member of academic staff should give students the opportunity to have an open dialogue around assessment outcomes at the start of a unit, rather than asking them to refer to the course handbook, to the UAL assessment toolkit, to the unit slides etc. I facilitate dialogues around assessment as part of my work with the Make The Grade academic intervention, and not only do students attain higher following these interventions, but staff benefit from having dialogues with students where they can clarify, reflect, and enhance the assessment guidance for future cohorts.

‘The act of assessment should be twofold. Firstly, determining whether the student has engaged with all the required learning outcomes (this is normally regarded as a pass). They, using the assessment criteria, determining at what process level the student has been operating, given the full boy of submitted work (…) fine tuning of the mark is negotiated afterwards.’

Further reading from this article:

Biggs, J. (no date) ‘SOLO Taxonomy’, John Biggs: Writer, Academic, Traveller. Available at: https://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/solo-taxonomy/ (Accessed: 27th January 2022)

• SOLO: Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome
• Based on complexity i.e. assessing students work in terms of quality
  • ‘Unistructural’: picking up on one or a few aspects of the task
  • ‘Multi-structural’: several aspects of the task, but not relating them
  • ‘Relational’: how to integrate the tasks into the whole
  • ‘Extended abstract’: generalised to a new domain e.g. hypothesise, reflect, theorise
• Attached to OBE (Outcome-Based-Learning), specifically constructive alignment:
  • Constructive alignment: how a learner demonstrably applies what has been learnt to their context and beyond.

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Course Designer Toolkit

Interesting, useful or controversial elements

University of the Arts London (2021) ‘Course Designer’, Learning and Teaching Exchange. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/teaching-and-learning-exchange/resources/designing-teaching (Accessed 27th January 2022)

Introduction and Resources List:

• Materials are organised informed by Biggs’s theory of constructive alignment.
  • ‘Constructive alignment starts with the notion that the learner constructs their own learning through relevant learning activities.’ Biggs, (2003)
• Institutionally specific focuses: course design to prioritise targets in decolonisation, attainment, CAF, digital strategy or innovative arts pedagogy.
• Student experience should be central to the planning process.

Vision and Values:

• ‘Reflect on your approach, values and beliefs: We are likely to bring a particular set of values to our teaching practices based on professional education, or industry, experience.’
  • Surprised there isn’t a broader acknowledgement of how our positionality informs our teaching practice. Westernised, Euro-centric, patriarchal influence isn’t just in the reading list but in the way we engage students. Our positionality underlines every aspect of our pedagogy.
• Advocates the inclusion of ‘self’ or ‘being’ alongside ‘knowing’ and ‘acting’. Stresses the importance of student agency.
• The role of ‘agency’ in course design: ‘e.g. student-led contributions, student well-being, student voice in assessment and co-marking, peer learning, students co-creating content, choosing texts, and co-evaluating courses.’

Defining course aims:

• Simply a course-level view of what a course is designed to achieve.
• Questions the guide encourage course designers to ask of the imagined ‘student’ in the design process:
  • What is their education history
  • What is their prior experience
  • What types of diversity exist among the students?
  • What are their reasons for studying and their future ambitions?
  • What are their expectations?
  • Where do they live? Do they commute?
  • Do they work?
  • What are their strengths?
  • How do these students learn
    • On reflection, I’m quite surprised that these should be questions we ask of a theoretical student – there should be an expectation that you are designing inclusively always: account for a non-Western and/or non-traditional route into HE; design for students of colour, and those who don’t have a eurocentric experience or expectation around education; design for the distance learner, part time working, care-giver; design for those with disabilities. It is only after we have taken these into consideration that we should design a course.

Crafting Learning Outcomes:

• Bad example of an LO: ‘Explore and analyse the role of digital media within contemporary theatre and performance, and illustrate and evaluate its use with reference to two examples.’
  • Too many action verbs that make it difficult to assess and confusing for students. I have seen so many of these in briefs that students have shared with me. Sometimes they are ‘informal briefs’, shared on email, so avoiding the QA process. What can be done around this? How do we meaningfully engage all staff with best practice in course design? The term ‘course designer’ made me think it was going to be something interactive which would soothe the realities of time poverty for many academics. Perhaps this should be considered.

Designing Inclusive Assessment:

I felt this section was likely misnamed, it didn’t feel like it reflected inclusive assessment. Credit where credit is due, it is a comprehensive walk-through how to create meaningful assessment for both learners and teachers, but I didn’t feel there was adequate focus on designing inclusively. There are checklists elsewhere in this guide, and I felt this section could have benefited from some practical guidance in inclusive design.

Course structure:

‘One of the key contributions of art and design pedagogy is the complexity and divergence of creative outputs that it encourages. This is world-making. Alignment with the world can involve taking a position on ‘the kind of society we want’ with students enabled to ‘construct their own learning.’ (p.3)

• This is really encouraging. Too often have there been discussions along the line of ‘that’s just how the industry is’. The power to change that ‘way’ within our institutions should be a major part of our course design and delivery. The ‘real-lifeness’ often referred to in this guide is something which is of undeniable important to our students – A&D courses are often nebulous, but we need to take responsibility to ground them in employability, for this to be a worthy investment (like it or not).

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Object-based learning at the Museum and Study Collection

Judy Willcocks

• The Museum and Study Collection was formed in the late C.19
  • Historical context: aesthetic appreciation had to be taught.
  • Response to hegemony of Western aesthetic: British art schools began collecting work which opposed this.
• WW2: Collection was stored underground for safety and was broadly forgotten until 1970 – increasing student numbers and changing fashions in pedagogy also contributed to its lack of engagement.
• 1970s: resurgence of art history and introduction of cultural studies. During cataloguing, the decision was made to become a museum for the college.
  • Benefit: acquisition of new technology has demonstrably evolved the design.
• Teaching practices: by C.21 art history was not in vogue. They want to learn actively, not in a passive role (i.e. traditionally curatorial).
• John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and David Kolb: key reading.
• Experiential learning: OBL.
  • Meaning of the object isn’t in the object, but the transaction between the viewer and the object is where meaning is constructed.
  • Influences: Jules Prown, Abigail Housen, Philip Yenawine, Eileen Hooper Greenhill.
  • In OBL, students develop teamworking, comms, analysis. A good way of addressing ‘troublesome’ knowledge. Multisensory experience and haptic opportunities contribute to an embodied learning experience.
• Scaffolding students: students work individually but on one project, analyse their questions.
  • Analysis of these questions can expose cultural or other positionality biases.
  • Description > deduction > hypotheses.
    • Material qualities of the object
    • What can one deduce from a close examination of the object
    • What is your grand hypothesis on this object: what it means and what its place in broader society might be
  • Understanding of how we interpret objects differently, not right or wrong answers, and every contributor adds to a richer comprehension of the object.
    • Could be helpful for my design workshops going forwards? An epistemology focus, not being stuck in being solutions-focused.

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Emotional or extra-rational reading of an object

My responses to this object are in green.

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All-cohort seminar: Evaluation in art and design

This was the first seminar I’d experienced with the whole cohort in-person, and it was uncomfortable. However, ever optimistic about the potential learning opportunity, a moment to reflect seems needed.

Firstly, walking into a room full of predominantly unmasked individuals was jarring. I remember Dr Daisy Fancourt from UCL saying, of the Covid19 experience, ‘we are all in the same storm, but we are in wildly different boats’. For the last two years, like many, I had been in a leaking dinghy. We have lost two family members to Covid, one in their 30s, one in their 50s. This was pre-vaccination stage, and it was utterly traumatising. Seeing their caskets through a Zoom feed from the funeral parlour was particularly painful, and is an image that persists in my mind and jumps up whenever the opportunity arises. Furthermore, my mother is a frontline worker in her 60s, and my sister-in-law gets harassed at the supermarket she works at for handing out masks to customers. So, as much as my peers not wearing masks wasn’t an act of defiance directed at me, I found it very unwelcoming.

Inevitably, I reflect on the impact for students. My manager asked me to speak to Course Leaders about opportunities to move upcoming online sessions onto site. I am ordinarily very compliant, but when Course Leaders say they want the workshop in the building, I have started asking them why? I dig down, and if I conclude there is no advantage to the session being delivered onsite (is it using the facilities? Is ‘in-person collaborative work’ specified in the LOs? Have students said this is what they want? Have they even been asked?), I stick to my guns. We have to advocate for students because, as much as we like to pretend there isn’t, there is a persistent power dynamic which compels students to agree to whatever staff advise. I agree that students should be encouraged to come in to use the technical facilities, or if they feel they just need that social connection, but the advantages of keeping students safe, trusting them with work flexibility, and recording content, far outweighs presenteeism. I joined several Course Committee Meetings last term, where students lamented the loss of flexibility onsite learning had brought, and praised the institution’s technical evolution, advising that they have been able to stabilise their work-life balance. I truly hope we do not throw this all away.

The other downside of the session for me was the return of the loudest voice, something which – I have observed – thrives in the seminar environment if not carefully managed. When reflecting on my experience of undergraduate education in our initial tutorial meeting, one peer interjected:

‘You say you don’t have the cultural capital, but you sound like you do.’

That peer does not know me, and is projecting unfounded assumptions. What that student doesn’t see is the 12+ years of being patronised and spoken over within higher education institutions, including UAL, until I had reached a stage of acceptable cultural capital whereby I can ‘perform’ the academic in a group environment. It took me to being in my 30s to finally gain an entry level academic position. That peer is often talkative in class, and drowns out the voice of others.

In the early stages of being an Associate Lecturer, I was grateful for ‘the loudest voice’. It made my classroom less quiet, it made me feel like I must be doing a good job – someone is engaging. However, as I evolved as an academic, I began to see the loudest voice as a threat. Now, it is an indication I do not have a democratic space – other voices are being drowned out. This was easy to manage in the online space – schematic canvases offered my students the opportunity to contribute at the same volume. However, as I return to the onsite environment, my personal experience in this seminar has led me to consider how I can put interventions in place to ensure the learning environment is as conducive to development as it can be.

I have my first few onsite sessions coming up next term, and I have decided to integrate a discussion on group norms at the top of these workshops. I have prepared a whiteboard (online to democratise responses) which will ask them to identify what group norms they want in the group, and which they don’t:

This is wholly experimental, and is informed by my research into group learning dynamics (Jacques and Salmon, 2006). However, with iterative evaluation from myself and the students, I hope to develop a useful tool for an equal and supportive learning environment.

Reference:

Jacques, D. and Salmon, G. (2006) Learning in groups: a handbook for improving group work. 4th edn. New York: Routledge ​

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