Case Studies 1, 2 & 3

Case Study 1: Knowing and responding to your students` diverse needs.

Contextual Background

The Diploma in Professional Studies at UAL is an optional form of study that asks students to spend at least 100 days in a work placement or series of work placements and to reflect on this experience between the second and final year of their BA studies. As a DPS tutor, I start working across the CSM BA Jewellery Design and BA Textile Design courses during stage 2 study to help students prepare for the out-in-industry year (approx. 80-120 students initially express interest undertaking the diploma with the option to opt out and progress into stage 3). During this time students are struggling to start thinking of how to approach professional practice, place themselves within industry and get the confidence to apply for placements.

Evaluation

To meet the students` diverse needs and lay the groundwork for understanding the nature and regulations of the diploma, preparatory tutorials and college briefing sessions on Careers & Employability, Health & Safety in the workplace, Disability Service, Student Funding, and Visas are set in place between the Spring and Summer terms of their stage 2 study. I offer 1-to-1 tutorials to facilitate space for dialogue about student placement plans with a focus on communicating their skills and creative ability through portfolios, CVs and Cover Letters to potential placement providers. Interrelated aspects I encounter as particularly challenging during these sessions for students are:

• consolidate their creative, practical and transferable skills gained through stage 1 and stage 2, so they can contextualise speculative placement applications;

• gain confidence and take ownership of their learning despite their learning differences and/or cultural background;

• accepting that the transition between academic study and real-life-experience is an integral part of the student journey and comes with challenges.

Moving Forward

Helping students to consolidate their creative, practical and transferable skills gained through stage 1 and stage 2, so they can contextualise speculative placement applications so far sign-up individual tutorials along with relevant sessions (CV, Portfolios, Cover Letters, Interview Advise) delivered by the UAL Careers and Employability service that I also join are in place. But having to juggle Year 2 main study demands and project submission deadlines with experiential professional practice learning opportunities is an additional pressure. As a result there is a poor turn up to these key sessions and tutorials, and even if students attend, not always benefit. This combined with the lack of well-defined paid internship roles that students could simply apply without the need of sending speculative applications have been ongoing challenges since I was appointed to this teaching job 5 years ago.

The difference however between before I started the PgCert and now is the way I view student difficulty to reflect on their existing creative abilities and how their personal experience, insights and evolution throughout their studies are already relevant to industry more than they think at the first stages of preparation to the year-in-industry and future professional development; to bring this into the student awareness the Microteaching Task: Object-based Learning and relevant content (i.e. the OBL session delivered by Judy Willcocks and context on the multi-sensory aspects in object-based sessions and instinctive reactions to objects as a key part of experiential learning in art/design context that can enhance learning awareness, encourage object analysis and critical reflection) could be applicable to my teaching context.

Looking back although I had no indication of my peers` teaching contexts the task to prepare and deliver a 20-minute learning activity based around an object brought to light how they approach OBL from a wider perspective, an opportunity to experience a rich variety of ways of teaching with objects.

One of the ways to taking this idea forward and experimenting with a new strategy would be apart from the 1-to-1 sessions to also deliver small group sessions and give the option to the students to either bring to these sessions their CVs and portfolios or an object or objects that can relate to. It could be anything, an outcome from the BA Jewellery and Textile design courses` project briefs, process, a tool they use, a material, a drawing, something they own, purchased, or even local currency, an object that reminds them of home and gives them sense of space and belonging. Part of the task could be a brief Curriculum Vitae of the object(s) and brief portfolio that illustrates/echoes the objects` background to bring it to life and render it employable. Interacting with their peers during the session is a opportunity for students to utilise a variety of already existing transferable skills including communication, team working, research and analysis as essential to any professional practice context.

My desired aims are students to step out from main study briefly and reflect from the perspective of their life-experience (e.g. cultural background, identity, learning differences) on how they make aesthetic decisions, form their understanding of key concepts (i.e. branding, style, ethics), relate to materials, see objects beyond their disciplinary training and more rooted in themselves, engage with objects more deeply and recognise what excites them most in the creative process. An exercise not to lose sight of the obvious and mundane, how their practices can actively link to who they are, how their past experiences can impact on their present learning experience as a continuum (Dewey 1938).

This way of engagement as a learning activity although it comes with limitations, it has the potential to start shaping an enquiry-based approach towards professional practice that often is alien to students, and a massive trigger of insecurity that relates to future employment within the creative industries. Yet, within my teaching context and remit what I can influence is the conditions for students to gain confidence and take ownership of their learning by facilitating space for reflection and providing the tools for the students to customise each of these learning opportunities to serve their immediate (e.g how to place themselves within industry and start applying for placements) but also their future professional goals upon graduation and beyond. This type of OBL activities could also be an attempt to enter the students` emotional worlds so that I can get some sense on how they are reaching to learning and offer more constructive guidance to approach industry in a way that is relevant, individualised and meaningful to them.

Through re-encountering myself as a learner I identify the terror students associate with learning something new and difficult. Students studying art and design in higher education are on a journey that involves identity transformation. As Kinniburgh (2014) points out in the context of design, students are developing dual identities as students and professionals from the moment they embark on their studies (Orr and Shreeve, 2017). Identifying the discomfort that arises from the uncertainty of a new territory (e.g. a year-in-industry) as a threshold concept (Osmond, 2009) is to look at ways working with students to scaffold transition and to potentially come close accepting that the transition between academic study and real-life-experience is an integral part of the student journey and comes with challenges.

Case Study 2: Planning and teaching for effective learning

Contextual Background

The Diploma in Professional Studies is an optional form of study that asks BA Jewellery Design and BA Textile Design students to spend at least 100 days in a work placement or series of work placements and to reflect on this experience between the second and final year of their BA studies. When students progress into the diploma year and are in professional placements, I  support their progress (approx. 60-80 students) through a structure that enables the cohort to navigate challenges within diverse professional settings, meet the requirements to qualify for the diploma and successfully complete the year. 

Evaluation

My main teaching format is online compulsory 1-to-1 progress tutorials (one each term or more depending on student individual circumstances). These sessions are tailored to the students` individual needs with a focus placed on sustaining an enquiring attitude towards industry learning. My aim is  to keep students engaged from the beginning of the academic cycle to enhance placement learning awareness in reference to the different levels of student commitment, suitability of placement activity and response to real-life-experience that is significantly differentiated from the college culture.

Discussions with students within the context of professional practice are never straightforward and inevitably tend to be intimate at times; keeping track of student progress, fostering a safe space to elicit student perception on the inevitable shift in their creative identity that industry learning entails and ultimately involves a repositioning of self in relation to their subject of study and worldview are ongoing concerns about the effectiveness of my teaching approach developed so far. 

Moving Forward

One of the strategies already developed to provide active support to students during the 1-to-1 sessions persisting through difficulties they encounter and make connections between new knowledge and existing understanding of their discipline as well as ensuring they submit assessment points for the final reflective summative placement report is diary-keeping.

The diary is a tool for students to gradually compile information for their placement report and it is not assessed however, students are asked to submit extracts from their diaries periodically throughout the year; these submissions help me to build a picture of student engagement with both their placements and their ongoing professional research and development. The diary extract submissions are also revealing difficulties students may encounter (i.e. welfare, terms/conditions of placement activity, ISA adjustments) which allow me to detect, openly address during progress tutorials and offer guidance.

It is a pedagogic challenge to empower students and encourage the practice of diary-keeping to play up aspects of placement learning that drives their creative potential whist they are often struggling to cope with the demands and resentments of unpaid full-time work. This dissonance between meaningful learning and actual world of practice and its constrains comes with ethical contradictions involved in performing an inclusive agenda and offering a cohesive student-centered learning experience. An affirmation on the effectiveness of the diary-keeping as a pedagogic tool to offer a more individualized and thorough support to the students is literature about the framework informed by the work of Michel Foucault. 

Mark Barrow`s article on Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect is concerned with the productive effects of educational processes such as assessment regimes in shaping students individuality by using methods like supplementary material (learning diary or journal), facilitating in this way self-reflection and self-examination to play out power relations inculcated in teacher-centered approach to learning. Drawing on Foucault`s Technologies of the Self, rooted in the historical constitution of the self – a genealogical investigation of moral practices outlined as epimelesthai sautou, “to take care of oneself”, a precept which permits individuals to effect by the own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being (Foucault, 1982), the article exemplifies how diary-keeping as a confessional tool (considering the practice of confession is at the heart of Foucault`s ethical study) enables students to confront their self, monitor their development as designers and consider their being in relation to the truth game of their discipline. 

As a chronological record, the learning diary exposes the developing character of the student in relation to the real world dynamics and the rules for the production of truth in their discipline that mirrors the discovery of the truth concerning oneself which with guidance influences the conditions to support students to set their own rules of conduct and foster in themselves the potential to be better able to care for the self.

In my teaching context encouraging more actively placement students to disclose themselves in an individualised process of learning requires the students to sustain a coherent narrative about their working practices, their thoughts and feelings about their developing course specific skills in respect to their own being as experience. In this process students are constantly updating and revisiting the narrative through ongoing analysis of placement activity in reference to their developing character. With emphasis placed on the application of discipline focused theoretical understanding to real situations as they are gaining experience of the workplace students could better integrate industry learning into a coherent personal argument which in return assists the students in dealing with the real power relations of the world of work.

Case Study 3: Assessing learning and exchanging feedback

Contextual Background

To meet the learning outcomes and assessment criteria of the Diploma in Professional Studies, students need to evidence 100 days minimum of placement activity and a 3,000-4,000-word Placement Report, describing and evaluating their learning and experiences, skills/employability enhancement and career development which leads to a pass or fail outcome.  

As students are reaching the end of the year in industry before they return to college to resume their main study, ensuring they can contextualise placement learning and submit their final reflective summative placement report in reference to the transfer of disciplinary knowledge to actual world of practice and then back to academic study has been a key challenge.

Evaluation

As described in case study 2 Planning and teaching for effective learning my main teaching format already developed to offer active support to students throughout the year are online 1-to-1 progress tutorials. These session are driven by student individual circumstances and also provide context about the diary and placement report project brief. Since the outcomes of the placement year are evaluated on a holistic pass/fail assessment with no grading scale to measure the level of performance, assessing learning and exchanging feedback needs to be explicit to clearly indicate how well the learning outcomes are achieved and what the higher expectations aligned with meaningful learning are. As the nature of the diploma is defined by experiential work-based highly individualised learning conditions, it is essential to build in possibilities for dialogue early in the year to negotiate educational objectives and evaluative criteria that echo the student motivation/need, changing circumstances and shift in their creative identity that industry learning involves.

Keep developing a strategy to best facilitate a dialectic space that constitutes a fair, outcome-led assessment process enabling both teacher and student to track the development of learning and capture the whole learning experience as well as demonstrating that the objectives of the year are met has its complexities and limitations.

Moving Forward

Literature in preparation to workshop 3 & 4, The Learning Outcome Debate about assessment regimes in art and design based on functional models for fair frameworks of assessment was enlightening. Addison in Doubting Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation outlines examples of alternative pedagogies and a set of productive dialectic practices; frameworks like CHAT (Cultural, Historical, Activity, Theory, rooted in Vygotskian Theory as a framework with a focus on mediation in deploying cultural tools to aid the subject (learner) in addressing their object (motivation or purpose) with an apparatus to provide the necessary uncertainty that creative activity requires (Addison, 2014).

In my teaching context that falls into experiential/industry learning constituted outside the university culture for a year (yet still embedded into an in-between stage of the main subject of study), tolerating uncertainty is part of the learning outcomes; ambiguity and uncertainty are positive conditions and prerequisite for creativity and a creative pedagogy in higher education. To thrive in uncertain and unknown futures, students require resilience and an ability to manage ambiguity and uncertainty (Orr and Shreeve, 2017). The tension then between the real world dynamics and creative educational context needs to be at play as a driving force not to be resolved or overcome but explored and considered as a determinant of the quality of outcomes of student learning. It is in the process of continuous self-examination, self-reflection (as detailed in case study 2 through diary keeping) evaluation, synthesis and analysis of the real-world relationships, opportunities and constraints and/or apparently unrewarding experiences of placement activity that students are provided the potential becoming empowered to consider and conceptualise their discipline and its limits in reference to an assessment regime that “maps onto the world rather being defined by itself” (Davis, 2001). 

Aiming for an assessment experience that has utility beyond creative education and promotes a deep approach to learning means enabling students to make their own judgements about their performance and how they develop their disciplinary knowledge, work ethic, core attitudes, beliefs and values about their subject of study and the professional world for which they are preparing. In my local context of teaching a deep approach to learning also means preparing students for uncertain times; to use assessment as an authentic educative experience and not as a one-off, isolated event requires opening up space for genuine reflection allowing students to disclose their emotional world, the development of mind and character and breadth of their experience. This provides me some sense about the methods and intellectual processes on how students are reaching to the learning outcomes so that I can offer more constructive and individualised feedback and guidance to approach new forms of experience and the next act of production in their final year. Attached the project brief and a specific example of a placement report and assessment feedback as a reference.

References:

Addison, N. (2014) Doubting learning Outcomes in HE Contexts: From Performativity Towards Emergence and Negotiation, (pp 313–315), International Journal of Art & Design Education. Available at: https://23045626.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2024/04/Addison-2014-Doubting-Learning-Outcomes.pdf

Barrow, M. (2006). Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect. Studies in Higher Education, 31(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600680869

Davies A. (2022) Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design. Available at: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=3967630f5169ed34ca2fa378abca07f977ca7c82

Foucault M. (1988) Technologies of the Self. Technologies of the Self, a Seminar with Michel Foucault, pp 16-49. The University of Massachusets Press

Orr S. & Shreeve A. (2017) Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. Routledge Research in Education

Willcocks J. (2018) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: Object-based learning and the modern art school curriculum. Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural-historical_activity_theory

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Liminality. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

Further References/Reading:

Dewey J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Free Press

Jung C. (1961) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. An Autobiography. London: William Collins Books

Rogers B. (1961) On Becoming a Person. A Therapist View on Psychotherapy. London: Robinson

Shreeve A. (2008) Transitions: variation in tutors’ experience of practice and teaching relations in art and design. Doctor of Philosophy Thesis [PHD] Lancaster University. Available at: https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/studentTheses/an-exploration-of-how-creative-arts-lecturers-in-higher-education