Record of Observation or Review of Teaching Practice
Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: CertHE: Preparation for Design, Media and Screen Studies – Skillspine Lesson Plan
Size of student group: 25
Observer: Lindsay Jordan
Observee: Lamprini Tzanaki
Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action.
Part One
Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review:
What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?
Skillspine Session – Narrative Photography: Creating a tableau.
As part of the curriculum of the course, students have Skillspine sessions once a week to learn new skills and approaches to their practice so they can use them to develop their project as well as well as experimenting with new techniques.
In this session we will be looking into narrative photography and how to create a photographic tableau to tell a story.
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
I have been working with this group for two months helping them to prepare a portfolio to apply for BA Courses in UAL and outside of UAL, on 1-1 tutorials. The Skillspine session that it’s being observed, will be the first time that I deliver a workshop type session for this group.
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
The students will explore a different approach to inform their practice. We will be looking into the genre of narrative photography and how other photographers and artists have used it so they will be able to develop more contextual awareness around the theme. We will also explore how they can use photography to tell and create story and all the different elements they will have to consider. The other part of the session will be to use different types of equipment such as Polaroid and pinhole cameras.
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?
The students will produce storyboards and photo shoots plans as well as digital and/or physical photographs.
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
Engagement is one of main concerns as students tend to lose interest and stop collaborating with their peers or interacting with the workshop. I think language barrier is also another issue which affects engagement as there are a lot of students in that group that struggle with the language.
There’s also a lack of facilities with classrooms that they’re not equipped for the type of workshops that we run in the course as the more tutorial/lecture rooms instead of studios especially when teaching photography.
How will students be informed of the observation/review?
N/a
What would you particularly like feedback on?
Delivery of the workshop and structure, communication with students, engagement and classroom management.
How will feedback be exchanged?
I’d like the feedback written.
Part Two
We discussed:
Arrival activities as a specific form of ice-breaker that allow for students to arrive during the activity, without penalising those who are there on time. Good arrival activities for diverse language groups might include games that use cards or counters. A card-sorting activity is one example, where each table has a set of cards (with key terms, icons or images) that the students work together to sort into groups.
The ‘no hands up’ or ‘cold calling’ strategy for universal participation, as encouraged by Dylan Wiliam in The Classroom Experiment. The principle is to ask a question that anyone can answer. For example, “Xing, tell me something about this picture.” If you feel even this would cause discomfort in your students, then simply scale back the audience – use it in one-to-one interactions while walking round, then on tables, until eventually they are comfortable answering (easy) questions in front of the whole class. It might take all year, but it’s progress in the right direction. You’ll probably be able to sense when you can get away with asking riskier questions. [NB some ISAs explicitly state that the student will not benefit being called upon in this way, in which case stop at one-to-one].
This schoolteacher blog has some great back-to-basics ideas about what ‘hands-up’ IS good for. I feel that there are a lot of good ideas emerging from the compulsory schooling sector that are adaptable for higher education, especially when scaffolding international students into UK norms and practices without ‘dumbing down’ the lesson. Many international students are in a strange, new culture where they don’t really know the rules, let alone whether they are comfortable with them yet. If you set out for them (ideally in graphic/visual form) your proposal for how classroom interaction is going to work, that may be exactly what they need.
We also talked about movement around the room and what might be called ‘embodied’ (theorists used to call it kinaesthetic) learning. The Buddhist tradition holds that the purpose of yoga is to prepare the body for meditation, which makes total sense when you do it, and find that what we perceive as the act of thinking is not what we believed it to be. We encounter the world with our whole bodies, and to sit in one spot in a classroom is to narrow our experience more than is necessary. Activities that move participants (and artefacts) around a room allow for richer communication and varied ways of encountering each other, which helps to build relationships and is particularly useful when language fluency is still developing. Think about the timeline activity we did early on in the term. Is there some key content that could be arranged spatially in this way?
That’s about it! Let me know your thoughts and then let me know when they’re up 🙂
Part Three
Thank you, Lindsay, for your feedback. It was a really interesting conversation about the challenges I come across when I teach as well as the opportunities open to me going forward.
We do use ‘icebreaker’ activities but mainly at the beginning of the course. However, introducing them within a different context (as arrival activities) makes me understand how I can utilise them at the beginning of all my sessions. I think they will really support my teaching by taking away that pressure of constantly looking at the clock and wondering how much more time to allow for late arrivals. They will offer a good starting point for the students that arrive on time since they won’t have to wait, and they can also take the opportunity to get to know each other whilst easing into the session.
The ‘no hands up’ or ‘cold calling’ recommendation is something else I will introduce into my sessions. I will explore different approaches throughout my sessions starting with one-to-one interactions and see how the students respond. I feel this would allow students to learn how to discuss different themes with each other and move more comfortably into collaboration.
I will also include a detailed and visual description of the schedule for each session: what the students are expected to work on and towards, and what the learning outcomes are. This will allow me to support students that may have preferences for either written or visual instructions. It will also support international students coming from a different culture and a different learning environment who may struggle with the idea of independent learning.
Finally, I agree that I should incorporate more movement in my sessions; both at the beginning during the arrival activities and throughout the entire session. This practice will also help with engagement and collaboration between the students and move away from the static way of learning that some students might also find difficult to deal with.