21 October – Evaluation of Teaching and Learning (DRAFT)
21 October – Evaluation of Teaching and Learning
Introduction
I’m currently teaching across multiple courses at Chelsea College of Arts and Camberwell College of Arts. At Chelsea I teach primarily on BA Interior Design, providing history and theory content for first and second year students. The MA in Interior and Spatial has recently migrated to Camberwell and there, albeit digitally, I teach studio practice to a unit of around twenty students, along with supervising their critical research papers (a blend of practical experimentation and theoretical writing). Previously, I’ve acted as dissertation supervisor on the BA Interior and Spatial Design course at CCA.
Due to the circumstances surrounding COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, I’m currently focusing my teaching development on remote learning and decolonising the curriculum (see elective blog posts for more information). Another issue I’m interested in, and something I’ll be exploring in my self-initiated project, is teaching large numbers of students online and how to assess them in an efficient manner.
A1: Design and plan learning activities
Decolonising Readings
For the last academic cycle I was responsible for designing and planning a book club (in my role on the BA Interior Design course), which was focused on providing history and theory content by first reading fragments of novels (The Glass Room, Invisible Cities and Species of Spaces) and then applying ideas found there to theoretical texts relating to interior design and architecture.
Previously my planning would entail reading these books over the summer, and writing a set of questions every few chapters for the students to answer in a workshop, leading to a group discussion period at the end of the session. While writing the questions I wanted them to be varied and sometimes oblique, catering to a variety of student tastes and interests, but by the end I wanted them to have a sense of a main theme in each book — a kind of grand narrative that they could take away. In The Glass Room for example this was that ornament is not a crime, something which runs counter to the many themes contained within the novel.
Taking into account what I have learnt throughout the PgCert course so far (particularly in my elective unit on inclusive learning) I feel the discussion element at the end of these sessions works well, mainly because it allows the students to relate the content to their own experiences and backgrounds. It allows students to make it their own with intersectionality and social identity, as Freire (2006) clearly states: ‘A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself.’ However, trialing my ‘Conversation Dice’ workshop (see Inclusivity Artefact essay on my blog) from the elective unit would perhaps be a good way to positively disrupt these sessions. It could potentially encourage those students who are more reserved to feel comfortable with discussion.
What I now think works less well in these sessions (and something I’ve erased from the sessions for the coming year) is having a ‘grand narrative’ in mind for each of the novels. While this gives clarity to the sessions and a strong foundation, it may not resonate with all personalities and backgrounds. Instead, this year, I will let the students develop their own themes, and then make them more concrete in the questions I set throughout (see blog post on using ‘play’ to eradicate bias in group activities). Whereas previously I wrote all of the questions in advance I’ll now be developing them slowly as the class moves along, utilising a more student-centred approach. And rather than just write the questions out, I will use a more varied approach of listening, watching and reading (see blog post titled Inclusive Teaching and Learning: Disability).
In the past I have always presumed the students want to hear what I have to say about certain books and readings. While this is important to keep them on the right track it’s better to stand back a little and allow them the space to develop their own theories and opinions, then for me to elaborate and organise them using structured and unstructured development [1].
Notes
1. This will be further buttressed by the tile method of brief design that the BA Interior Design course are using for all documents. Instead of including one image with the brief we are now using a grid of six hyperlinked images to fertilise multiple threads of enquiry and more varied outcomes, to give student agency and ownership over their own educational journey. Next year I may explore allowing students to bring their own favourite books to the session so as to intensify the individual nature of this planning approach.
Bibliography
Freire, P. 2006. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th anniversary ed. New York: Continuum.
Further Reading
Iniva 2020, Iniva Creative learning, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://iniva.org/learning/>
King’s College London 2018, Changing Cultures, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Changing%20Cultures_0.pdf>
Dr Susan Flynn. ‘The Creative Debut: privileging student voice’ Spark, no. 2 (2016): 95-97.
A2: Teaching & supporting student learning
Digital Engagement
On the MA Interior and Spatial Design course based at Camberwell College of Arts my teaching is less about lectures and large group sessions and more concerned with small seminar groups, group tutorials and one-to-one tutorials. I’ve noticed that remote, online learning has impacted the way I conduct group tutorials most, so I will take the time to reflect on this here.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown period I approached online group tutorials as I would in the classroom — which I later found unsustainable. Initially this worked in many respects as the students received the feedback they needed to progress their work, and the chat function on teams was great for simultaneous discussions and for swapping references. Within the group tutorial environment it was still possible to have meaningful discussions one-to-one, highlighted in UAL attainment guidelines (I attended staff development sessions on this in 2018) as the best way to bridge the attainment gap between different types of student.
While on a one-to-one level the sessions worked, I found it very difficult to gauge the engagement levels of the whole group, particularly as many students prefer to partake with their cameras switched off. Due to how the MA course slowly builds towards being more self-directed and towards peer feedback rather than staff assessment, I thought this was a very important issue to address. My main concern was that while I spoke to one student the other students became disengaged and stopped participating and listening.
Using the UAL tutorial policy as a guide, to address these issues I first cut the group sizes from twelve students to two groups of six, so that the sessions were shorter. This seemed to help substantially, and then in one of the teaching and learning sessions we were introduced to the ‘Core Practice for Inclusive Online Teaching’ document and this was extremely useful. Next I structured the sessions around a more asynchronous approach. This meant splitting the students down even further into groups of two (which I would rotate each week), I would then give the pairings a reading (the flipped classroom approach has been discussed on the PgCert) and list of prompts so they could discuss their work together before the online session. Everything was self-paced and could be completed at any point in the week leading up to the online session. This cut the group tutorial time dramatically and it was left to me to nudge ‘live’ discussions in the right direction, and create thematic links between the students’ work that I could then use as a guide for how I picked the groups going forward.
In the coming academic year I would like to make more use of the suggestions from the ‘Core Practice for Inclusive Online Teaching’ document, particularly the ice breakers and different ways of checking in with the students throughout longer sessions. Such as responding to polls (generating graphs and other infographics would be great) and the various functions of Padlet that we have been introduced to in the PgCert sessions. It’s interesting that many of these techniques were developed for online learning but their application in IRL classrooms would, I think, be very beneficial to student engagement.
Bibliography
University of the Arts London 2020, Core Practice for Inclusive Online Teaching, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/211545/Core-Practice-for-Inclusive-Online-Teaching.pdf>
Further Reading
Bennett, S., & Barp, D. (2008). Peer observation – a case for doing it online. Teaching in Higher Education, 13(5), 559–570.
University of the Arts London 2016, Academic Regulations and Tutorial Policy, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/academic-regulations/tutorial-policy>
Teaching, Learning and Employability Exchange 2020, Attainment, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://tle.myblog.arts.ac.uk/category/attainment/>
Camberwell College of Arts 2020, Teaching Online, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://ccwteachinghub.myblog.arts.ac.uk/?customize_changeset_uuid=62aaa514-ac63-420f-8dea-95e6cf6c622f>
A3: Assessment & Feedback
Checklist Assessment
During the lockdown period, while teaching on the BA Interior Design course at CCA, I was tasked with developing a method, using teams, to informally assess large amounts of work, in a way that could be done very frequently as a form of ‘checking in’. Though it was informal feedback the grades of my student’s work had the largest increase from initial feedback to final assessment. As a result I’ve been tasked to conduct a series of workshops for other members of staff and to implement the assessment method across the course.
Previously, I have only had experience of giving verbal feedback in crit situations and summative assessment using the UAL marking grid and bespoke written feedback. While crits are beneficial for giving students an opportunity to practice presenting their work to an audience and participating in lively debate, I think they can often become more informal as the day goes on — and less equal — and it’s also a time when personal bias seems to come out in more overt forms. Bespoke written feedback can sometimes be biased as well, it can also be unequal as one student may receive more guidance than another. A more consistent approach may be needed.
After studying feedback from different teachers in attainment workshops, feedback is often ambiguous and can lead to students getting confused. I’ve observed different words being used for the same thing from formative to summative assessment. There is also an issue around how different tutors will interpret the marking criteria and brief in different ways. What one person thinks is ‘context’ another tutor might think the opposite. All these attributes of current assessment methods coalesce into an unproductive ambiguity for the student, and it also reduces the likelihood of them discussing their feedback together, because there aren’t any common datum points due to how tutors are encouraged to write their feedback in a bespoke fashion for each student.
To try and ameliorate some of these challenges during the lockdown period I developed a checklist approach to marking, something I want to explore in more detail for my self-initiated project. While using a checklist rather than unique written feedback may seem rather objective and sterile, it can actually help eradicate some of the problems highlighted above. By ticking set phrases that have been written in collaboration with the students [2] while picking through the marking matrix and brief (a beneficial process of self-reflection and mediation between institution and individual), it avoids personal bias from teachers by only allowing them to comment on phrases already known to the students. In turn this can also limit differences in interpretation from one tutor to next, and gives students a common ground — common phrases — to discuss their feedback together. This cycle of how a checklist style marking system works is in line with the values of the Academic Enhancement Model: evidence, dialogue, collaboration, action and reflection.
While different to traditional methods of assessment checklist assessment still adheres to the guidelines in the UAL assessment policy documentation. These include, but are not limited to, using terms consistently, clear guidance on how meeting the brief aligns with the marking criteria, precision and consistency about expectations.
Notes
2. BAME and internationals student achieve better grades in Personal Writing Tasks. If the feedback received for academic and professional writing tasks (where students typically achieve lower results) is written in a more personalised way, then it may see higher attainment rates. See Alexandra Lumley Et al. ‘Writing and attainment in creative arts curricula: Establishing and interpreting a new evidence base’ Spark, no. 2 (2018): 116-130.
Bibliography
University of the Arts London 2017, Assessment Policy, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/academic-regulations/tutorial-policy>
University of the Arts London 2017, Academic Enhancement Model, viewed 21 October 2020, < https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/59667/academic-enhancement-model-aem>
Alexandra Lumley Et al. ‘Writing and attainment in creative arts curricula: Establishing and interpreting a new evidence base’ Spark, no. 2 (2018): 116-130.
Further Reading
University of the Arts London 2017, Inclusive Marking of Written Work Guidelines for Staff, viewed 21 October 2020, <https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/205538/Inclusive-Marking-of-Written-Work-Guidelines-for-Staff.pdf>
Dr Susan Flynn. ‘The Creative Debut: privileging student voice’ Spark, no. 2 (2016): 95-97.
Emily Huggard. ‘Exploring student definitions of engagement: A reflexive approach to designing learning activities’ Spark, no. 1 (2016): 5-18.