Case Study 1: Knowing and responding to your students’ diverse needs.
Contextual Background:
I am a Lecturer in Narrative Media Design on the BA (Hons.) Graphic and Media Design course at LCC; a course that embraces the whole spectrum of Graphic and Media Design from print and editorial design to moving image and mixed reality. I teach across all three years of the BA. From year 1 to 3, the course gradually reduces the scaffolding it provides to students, enabling them to incrementally take more ownership of their academic journeys.
Evaluation:
For clarity, I am dividing student needs into two categories with further sub-categories. These reflect needs I’m addressing currently and are not exhaustive.
- Year-based needs: From Year 1 to 3, students require varying degrees of workshops, mini-lectures, conceptual and technical seminars, specialist sessions and 1:1 support. The students go from needing exposure (Year 1) to understanding specialisms (Year 2) and finally positioning and articulating their practice (Year 3).
- Individual Needs: Some of the individual needs (non-exhaustive) that I have found myself confronting are:
- Language Based needs: A large international student body naturally means the students have different levels of fluency in English.
- Learning Differences: Whether disclosed or undisclosed, I need to respond to each student’s individual requirements, while also looking out for the progress of the group.
Moving forwards:
For the purposes of this case study, I will limit myself to speaking more broadly of Year-based needs – while acknowledging that it is individuals that make up a year group. I would like to expand on individual needs in Case Study 2.
There are a few practices, ideas and/or strategies (highlighted in bold) that I have been an inspiration to me recently. I am working to incorporate them more into my teaching.
The idea of relationality is interesting, in particular the notion of radical relationality (Powell, 2013). I am still trying to wrap my head around these complex philosophical subjects but what I want my students to be able to do (in a distilled sense) is to understand that defining one’s position and practice is a complex set of relational structures that are both visible and invisible.
Further, it is only though understanding the complexity of structures and embracing them, that transformative collaboration becomes possible (Costa et al., 2023). I’ve recently completed teaching on the Professional Practices Unit, where we worked with the NHS on a live brief aimed at increasing Cervical Screening awareness. Being a cross-course unit, students were (intentionally) divided into groups with teammates from different courses. My colleagues and I planned a series of workshops that highlighted the value of collaboration; that it arises not just from the doing of a group project but from embracing the diverse nature of their (the students’) skillsets relative to each other and using the multiplicity of viewpoints to tackle the social, political and cultural forces shaping the brief.
Reflecting on how I’ve included some of these ideas and notions into my teaching practice, I want to create more dialogue with students around disciplinarity. As we introduce inter-,trans- and sometimes even post-disciplinary ways of working, the discipline of design constantly appears and disappears. This can be unsettling as an early practitioner. Students should understand design (disciplines) through the fluid nature of collaboration in order to be able to position themselves for an industry that is increasingly in a state of flux.
References:
- A Manifesto for Creative Producing:
Original Attribution-
Work originally developed as part of the Creative Producer Program for the Ars Electronica Festival 2021, a six-week program that gathered 22 practitioners with the aim of creating a Manifesto for Creative Producing. creativeproducing.online Allison Costa (US), Ana Prendes (GB), Christiana Kazakou (GB), Cui Yin Mok (SG), Hyash Tanmoy (IN), Illya Szilak (US), Ilona Puskas (HU), Justin Berry (US), Kavita Gonsalves (AU), Kazz Morohashi (GB), Kofi Oduro (CA), Komal Jain (IN), Lizzie Crouch (GB), Madhushree Kamak (IN), Maria Kuzmina (RU), Mark Bolotin (AU), Matt Gingold (AU), Nicholas Medvescek (US), Ravin Raori (GB), Robin Reid (US), Viviana Quea (AT), Zeynep Birsel (NL)
Harvard-
Costa, A., Prendes, A., Kazakou, C., Mok, C. Y., Birsel, Z., Quea, V., Reid, R., Raori, R., Medvescek, N., Gingold, M., Bolotin, M., Kuzmina, M., Kamak, M., Crouch, L., Jain, K., Oduro, K., Morohashi, K., Gonsalves, K., Berry, J., … Tanmoy, H., (2023). A Manifesto for Creative Producing. Creative Producing Online. Avalaible at: https://creativeproducing.online/ (Accessed: 13 Feb 2024). - Powell, C. (2013). Radical relationism: A proposal. In Conceptualizing relational sociology: Ontological and theoretical issues (pp. 187-207). New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.
Case Study 2: Planning and teaching for effective learning.
Contextual Background:
I am a lecturer teaching all three years on BA (Hons.) Graphic and Media Design at LCC. In Case Study 1, I highlighted the language and cultural barriers faced by many of our international students but was not able to expand on them. I will focus my attention on this challenge for Case Study 2.
Evaluation:
It would be helpful to differentiate language from cultural barriers. The two are intersectional, but also entail different things.
Language Barriers (in my opinion) arise from speaking a different language to the one of instruction. This affects engagement with course content that relies on academic jargon.
Cultural Barriers (in my opinion) arise from context and lived experience. They entail a degree of disconnect from (western) culture. This (often) affects engagement with knowledge framed from a euro-centric viewpoint.
Our current approach relies on reviewing teaching material – involving as many staff members as feasible. We also remind students of academic support and have dedicated support staff helping them. One of the areas not yet addressed is the collective experience of students facing similar issues. Perhaps we could help them support each other’s learning (Petrova, 2020).
Moving forwards:
Sherry, Thomas and Chui (2010) suggest using every opportunity to increase cultural inclusion for international students. I wonder if we can build more activities into the delivery of projects that help foster engagement with language and culture. Through the TPP unit, there are two things that have stuck out to me as possible approaches.
- Object based learning:
In Year 1, we run a project called Personal Objects of Provenance (refer to Blog Post 2) where students bring an object that helps explain who they are. We use the object to introduce basic principles of graphic and media design while also touching on audiences and exhibition contexts. In a subsequent brief, students continue to investigate the object – using it to reveal hidden material histories, ties to culture and society. Perhaps it’s not as explicit as it can be, but the project is rooted in a desire to share and uncover cultural histories; tapping into the intersectional qualities of object based learning (Willcocks & Mahon, 2023). Unfortunately, students don’t always select an object with the degree of intention required and this is something to build on. - Peer-based activities:
These allow for language support in a more stress-free manner. Previously at London College of Fashion, my colleagues and I had the idea of co-founding a language club for students from different backgrounds to share their language. This was not necessarily aimed at providing the solution to language barriers but rather at acknowledging diversity. I believe acknowledgement goes a long way in uplifting students and I wonder if we can also acknowledge language barriers in studio-based activities and workshops. I want to use more of tools like Padlet and Miro where students can share feedback anonymously, hopefully removing some of the guilt that students struggling with language barriers may feel (Sherry, Thomas and Chui, 2020).
Finally, the degree to which students experience these barriers is worth investigating – as we cannot simply put people into one category. There is no prescribed solution to the problem but rather a need for us as educators to approach this with openness, enthusiasm, a desire to experiment and learn.
References:
- Sherry, M., Thomas, P. and Chui, W.H. (2010). International students: A vulnerable student population. Higher education, 60, pp.33-46.
- Brooks, K. (2008) ‘could do better?’: Students’ critique of written feedback, AdvanceHE. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/could-do-better-students-critique-written-feedback (Accessed: 13 March 2024).
- Petrova, L. (2020) ‘Language barrier as an issue within international students in the UK’, Medium, 6 January. Available at: https://medium.com/@petroval/language-barrier-as-an-issue-within-international-students-in-the-uk-a5b2d74559af (Accessed: 19 March 2024).
- Willcocks, J., & Mahon, K. (2023). The potential of online object-based learning activities to support the teaching of intersectional environmentalism in art and design higher education. art, design & communication in higher education, 22(2), 187-207.
Case Study 3: Assessing learning and exchanging feedback.
Contextual Background:
I’m a full-time lecturer at LCC, teaching all three years on BA (Hons.) Graphic and Media Design. A key challenge I face is the quantitative nature of summative assessment. Phrasing feedback based on assessment criteria descriptors is useful in seeking consistency but can also be a barrier towards students understanding the feedback due to its (at times) formulaic nature.
Evaluation:
- I take regular breaks while assessing work. Acknowledging my own energy levels has been important in being able to do justice to students’ work.
- I seek ways within the prescribed vocabulary to make my feedback feel personal within reason. As a rule, I try to find at least one area of potential that the student may have missed. This is useful in giving feedback that is both present and future facing.
Overall, these methods have worked for me. However, I want to seek ways to improve the engagement of students with feedback.
Moving forwards:
Brooks (2008) suggests peer-based assessment activities benefit students by supporting their independent learning journeys through a sense of ownership and collective experience. Biggs (1999) suggests through the examples of Robert and Susan that an active approach to teaching, one that challenges the students to solve a problem, could help close the gap between students that are engaged versus ones that aren’t. Parallel to this, I have been experimenting with the format of formative presentations and assessment (refer to Tutor Observation with Lindsay Jordan). During formative presentations, I recently asked Year 1 students to post an observation and a suggestion for each of their peers using post-it notes after their presentation. The students also filled a self assessment sheet in conjunction with the peer activity that determined what they thought their own grades were. Looking at the notion of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999), the idea here was to use the delivery of the session to help students align their learning through self and peer assessment to the intended course objectives. I would like to build on this approach moving forward, implementing strategies to make assessment and feedback more interactive.
Sometimes cultural barriers prevent engagement with peer-based assessment as it is not always a form of feedback that students are used to within a learning environment. I have learned that non-verbal communication and/or visual cues- such as the performative nature of adding post-it notes can help alleviate this to an extent (refer to Case Study 2).
I have had mixed results with optional feedback tutorials. While it helps some students, often they don’t take up these opportunities due to the perceived stress involved with this interaction (Brooks, 2008). At times, students use the opportunity to try negotiating or complaining about grades which isn’t fruitful either. That being said, I shall continue to find ways to steer the conversation towards more productive avenues, while alleviating the stress students may feel.
Finally, with LCC’s impending move to the new building, spaces will inevitably shrink and it will be interesting to see how assessment activities can respond. I resonated with the work of Russell (2010), looking at using low-stakes assessment points to inform other medium and high stakes assessment points as well as utilising a more integrated assessment approach across modules. This could be useful to think about both in the current context as well as the new building.
References:
- Biggs, J. (1999). What the student does: Teaching for enhanced learning. Higher education research & development, 18(1), pp.57-75.
- Brooks, K. (2008) ‘could do better?’: Students’ critique of written feedback, AdvanceHE. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/could-do-better-students-critique-written-feedback (Accessed: 13 March 2024).
- Russell, M. (2010) Assessment Patterns: a review of the possible consequences , The ESCAPE Project. Available at: https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/aflkings/files/2019/08/ESCAPE-AssessmentPatterns-ProgrammeView.pdf (Accessed: 20 March 2024).