Contextual Background
One of the main challenges I experience, is that the students I teach have a variation of skills and knowledge of the specialist subject area or a particular task. Some students will feel overwhelmed by technical or theory elements and others won’t feel challenged enough.
Evaluation
Constant verbal communication is one of the things that helps me to recognise where students are struggling, either by feeling overwhelmed or not feeling challenged enough by a task. This doesn’t always work easily, as the students don’t always feel confident or willing to communicate their needs and they therefore tend to lose interest and not engage. Empathy is an important part of my role here and being able to handle these situations in a ‘non-patronising’ way is a challenge. The way I interact and communicate with these students is vital in their understanding that we all experience different learning journeys, despite ultimately aiming to achieve the same objectives.
Moving forwards
Pairing up/ Group work: Collaboration and working as part of a team is really important in the exchange of ideas and skills as well as building knowledge and fostering confidence. As mentioned in Case Study 1, most of my teaching incorporates group work but my aim going forward is to look into different approaches and to be more inclusive so as to support students better who struggle in group work environments.
Knowledge Exchange/ Object-based Learning: As part of the course, we include a knowledge exchange unit. Within this unit we make a requirement for students to visit museums and galleries as part of their scheduled timetable. This enables them to interact with a variety of work outside of their usual environment, thereby broadening their subject knowledge and allowing them to improve their contextual skills and appreciation. They are also assigned opportunities to collaborate with other universities as part of this knowledge exchange unit- again, exposing them to new and different sources of knowledge and approaches to work.
Learning by doing: The practical, hands-on approach (learning by doing) should offer valuable opportunities for students to experiment and explore their creativity at their own pace and in their own way. Learning activities that either have multiple outcomes, or are designed solely for the purpose of experimentation, should allow students to create their own challenges and opportunities within their own (safe) limitations. The hands-on learning approach also offers opportunities for them to evaluate their own idea development which will help with current or future projects. This is something I have experienced in class that has helped students to cultivate new skills and approaches.
When undertaking an observation of one of my peers, it was evident that even though the students all had the same instructions and were tasked with developing the same object, the tutor offered them different options of customisation which came with different challenges and opportunities. This is something I would like to investigate further to see how I can further adapt my teaching for a better student learning experience.
References
Gibbs, G. (2015) ‘Maximising student learning gain’ in H. Fry & S. Ketteridge & S. Marshall (ed) Learning, teaching and supervising in HE, pp.193 – 207
Lindström, L. (2012), Aesthetic Learning About, In, With and Through the Arts: A Curriculum Study, Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2012.01737.x (Accessed: 15 March)
Murawski, M. (2014) Hands-on-learning: Not just for kids. Available at: https://artmuseumteaching.com/2014/12/22/hands-on-learning-not-just-for-kids/ (Accessed: 10 March 2024
Willcocks, J. (2016) ‘The Power of Concrete Experience: Museum Collections, Touch and Meaning Making in Art and Design Pedagogy’ in H.J. Chatterjee & L. Hannah (ed), Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education. Oxton: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 43 – 54