PgCert Reflective Blog

2024

I have added the info above so that my MyBlog site is not deleted.

https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/

I have added the info above so that my MyBlog is not deleted.

Week 7: The afternoon session focused on preparation for the SIP presentation. Below are my thoughts around 3 activities which I found particularly useful

What is an academic presentation?
In our group we felt that:
As an academic you are part of a (academic) community and you reference other people and put your own hypothesis into the context of previous research.

They are often analytical and factual and less emotional than for example the Ted Talk format

This final idea is a more general thought around giving presentations: You need to be clear that it is not about what you want to tell people but what you want your audience to be left with

Little Red Riding Hood
Great group working activity. All three groups approached this in different ways. Our approach was based around us as actors who had played the parts of the woodsman, the wolf, grandma and Little Red Riding Hood and talking to camera in a documentary type scenario. This seemed like a simple way to talk around the story rather than try to retell it in its entirety. I felt we worked together really well and democratically identified our approach. When we presented we each spoke for a similar amount of time which again felt very inclusive

1 minuet presentation
Less is more. What I found really liberating was that you really needed to strip away and focus on the ‘nitty gritty’. What I found freeing about this was that our 10 minutes SIP presentation always felt far too short and suddenly it now feels generous. While working at Queen Mary I attended a series of the three minute PhD presentations which must have had a similar aim.

This session took place using the Collaborate Ultra online classroom software that we use on MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise and was a fascinating session for 2 reasons.

• Firstly, the students must have been exhausted having just had just had 2 hours of online lectures. 
• Secondly the Hong Kong students are historically more reserved and less willing to volunteer their thoughts unless asked directly. 

From a group of around 30 students, around 50% contributed to the online session and there was a real senses of empowerment in what we were discussing.

During our 45 minutes we identified 2 key topics that students felt particularly passionate about. These were:

• A cross cohort peer to peer communication platform
• Work experience opportunities

The actions that came from this were:

Margaret and Charfi set up the ‘Global’ WhatsApp group which is proposed to be the main forum to share cross cohort information. This would be in addition to the ‘local’ cohort specific WhatsApp channels that are already in existence. Although the London cohort have proposed Facebook as the key cross cohort information sharing platform, Facebook is not used by any of the current Hong Kong students. I have now emailed the London group and asked if anyone would be happy to take on the roll of the London group WhatsApp administrator.

Katherine initially proposed the idea of work experience opportunities and I set up a Google doc which I have shared with her. The purpose of this is to define how we could tap into our personal networks to help create a number of work experience opportunities within the arts and cultural sector.

Link to Transcript [Google doc] – This is a very interesting document which breaks the student suggestions into 3 categories. My contribution is not evident as I was talking and the students opted to use the chat feature rather than use their microphones. Even as an exercise this was great practice for the students who engaged with this activity with real enthusiasm

I still didn’t have my research question but had this window of opportunity of a thirty minute slot  with the London Unit 1 students during their very first face to face weekend (our course is a January start). As I thought about the session it became obvious that I needed to ask them about their thoughts and not just tell them about mine, not to complain of missed opportunities but to look at future possibilities. The slide above was on screen the whole time and was really a question focuses on what we could do as a community rather than what should they expect from the course.

I explained to the students that I am on the PG Cert and that this was part of my own research. This all felt very relevant to them as the whole weekend had been spent on discussing the importance of research and ways to approach it. They were happy to be recorded (audio) so that I could go through and make additional notes. 

Students were very interested in connecting with the HK cohort and had already planned to attend a face to face session in Hong Kong and a motivational factor for one London students to take the course was that her parents had previously lived in HK.

Actions:

The London students had already created a very active WhatsApp group. In addition to this, it was proposed that a Facebook group as well as an Instagram group could be set up and the Hong Kong students invited to join

Concerns:

Collaboration should be built into the course and be core curricula rather than extra curricula. We discussed examples where this was already established (such as unit 3). In addition I discussed the Online Intervention (Unit 7) which counts towards the students’ final grade. I used the ‘Tic Tok project’ from last year as an example of cross cohort team work. 

I work on a distance learning course – MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise, which has two cohorts of students, one based primarily in London and the other in Hong Kong. The taught content is mostly similar but allows for some geographical and cultural variation. The international aspect of the course is mentioned in the online prospectus.

‘MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise  has two cohorts: one in London and one in Hong Kong. This helps you to expand your collegiate network and ensures the worldwide reputation and relevance of your degree.’ (MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise, 2020).

Despite this, for practical reasons such as the London and Hong Kong time difference, both groups of students are taught separately and have separate Moodle courses which has generally led to a feeling of two isolated groups running in parallel rather than a single global community.

Now in the course’s fourth year I believe the time is now right to explore innovative approaches that focus around cross cohort exchange and collaboration. I am particularly interested in the role students can play in this process.  

Currently my question is:

Can various staff and student lead initiatives lead to increased synergy between the London and Hong Kong student cohorts?

Ref: MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise (2020) Available at: URL (https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/curation-and-culture/postgraduate/ma-arts-and-cultural-enterprise-csm) (Accessed: 30 January 2020).

• 

Session Structure
Great session that focused on how each one of us could turn ideas and thoughts into a SIP. The format was basically a presentation followed by pair sharing. There was then an opportunity to ask more questions and make a few comments and finally we would give feedback via post-it notes. There was a real energy in the room as each of us began the process of trying to piece together what our SIP might look like.

My Topic Choice
How can we create greater cross cohort integration between London and Hong Kong students?
I previously lived in China and have always been interested in communication and exchanging ideas. I work on MA ACE which although one course is made up of two cohorts – London and Hong Kong. The course is promoted as being very international but the two cohorts tend to exist as two separate courses rather than a unified group. This is one of the areas I explored during my elective unit – Curriculum Design and something I would like to explore in greater detail.

Feedback
Lindsey suggested Action Research as one possible approach. I already have experience of this from of working from a previous employer and I feel this try it out and evaluate it, approach is my default way of working. I am very happy to know that this is considered a relevant approach to the SIP.

I have added some notes that came to me while listening to other peoples presentations and feedback. These are listed below as bullet points.

• Transitional tasks for new students
• Ask students what they think would be useful
• In terms of cross cohort collaboration, what do students believe to be a valuable use of their time?
• Questionnaire – if relevant then use Google form
• Put any questionnaire feedback into Wordle to see keywords as a word cloud
• Co-present Unit 1 as ‘double act’ partnership rather than Andy on his own
• Lindsey suggested: Ruth Chang: How to make hard choices | TED Talk

Working with the students
I have decided to start my final PgCert unit in January. This is because MA ACE students have a January start and this means I will be able to work with them as they begin their CSM learning journey. At lunch time (after the Pg Cert session this mornings) I spoke with Andy Marsh who is the MA ACE course led. He is very supportive of my aims and based on this mornings session I proposed a cross cohort pre-course ice breaker activity for students to complete prior to starting unit 1. I will meet again with Andy in October to look at other joint cohort opportunities.

It is always difficult to know what ‘right’ looks like but I was doing everything I could to mitigate any confusion during the session. For my pervious class I had done a lot of preparation but didn’t have any slides, opting instead for a series of web links and a lesson plan. I had avoided slides believing them to be too linear however on reflection slides could give both the students and the me a structure that could bring a clarity that talking through a list of web links might not.

The session was observed by Jon and this post has been written prior to any feedback, however in my opinion everything went well. During the 2 hour session we recapped core information and I was clear that everyone fully understood what the topic – Online Intervention meant and what it looked like in regards a 24 week project. We looked at examples from the homework task and the peer feedback relating to this. Students worked in small groups to create project teams and used flipchart paper to record ideas. They then presented these ideas back to the class. Time keeping was perfect and although there were a couple of things I would have changed in the big picture it was all good. On leaving a couple of them thanked me and said they had enjoyed the session and felt motivated about their next steps.

What I got from this was that slides may be a very conventional approach to teaching but can help to bring clarity. I also made sure there was a slide for each task so that students always understood what it was they were supposed to achieve during the small group work.  

I videoed the session and the student presentations just as I always do but this time positioned the camera at the back of the class to get as wide a shot as possible – I didn’t know how much I would move around and didn’t want to walk off camera. On reviewing the material, I realised that a number of people were enjoying a joke (at the back). Could it be that in getting it ‘right’ I had forgotten to relax and that my keenness looked almost comic book? There could be a million reasons for their smiling but my note to self is to replace ‘right’ with ‘inspiring’ and to see what follows.

I loved observing Ola deliver her teaching session. This included self promotion with social media, web design and image manipulation. I didn’t have any idea of students prior knowledge but I did note that they were attentive throughout the session.

I made several observations including the sequence in which information was delivered. I felt that the session could have been improved had Ola started by showing examples of good websites and then taken the students on the journey of how to create such a website. Both of these elements were included but I felt Ola started with quite a technical aspect – which I found a little confusing, rather than the big picture.

Taking this idea for my own teaching session (examples first and then the brief!) I started by showing the students examples of work carried out by previous years, the aim was then to focus on the brief. I encouraged questions throughout the session and while showing the students examples, I began to be asked questions about the brief. There were so many questions that I eventually abandoned showing them project examples and instead focused on the brief. After 45 minutes the students all stood up and broke into groups. On standing up I remember overhearing one of the students saying that they didn’t understand. There seemed to be a general feeling of confusion in the room – not with the task but with the project brief and how this all fitted together. This did not seem ideal.

During the group activities the students were engaged and came back with annotations on flip chart paper and presented their ideas back to the group. Through their presentations I was able to see that they now all fully understood what they needed to know in order to complete their projects successfully.

Earlier this week during our the PgCert Curriculum Development class with James Wisdom, James went through our brief in a very open ended way. This led to moments of confusion and heightened emotion as we tried to grapple with what the outcome should look like.

Finally, yesterday in Lindsey’s session we did a ‘chase the paper’ exercise that looked at the pros and cons of different class sizes. There seemed to be roughly the same amount of advantages and disadvantages for both. Like many topics, perhaps confusion too can be seen in both negative and positive lights. In the context of James’s brief, confusion at least in my case has forced me to have conversations with my peers that I would normally never have had. Through these conversations I feel I have a better understanding of what is required plus a broader understanding of how and on what my peers will be focusing on. Despite a few reservations I now feel ready to start to write.

Footnote – confusion and group activates – during Lindsey’s class we did multiple group activities and despite being given instructions on what the tasks were, there was always someone who was unsure. Though it could be argued that discussing what the task is could be a good thing, because of the limitation of time it probably isn’t. I think where possible having the task as a slide would reduce this ‘confusion’.

Curriculum Design With James Wisdom (11th April 2019)

Lucy Panesar, UAL Education Developer (Diversity and Inclusion),  gave a very insightful talk about diversity and inclusion. As a middle-class white male I am exactly the type of person her talk would have been aimed at. Unconscious bias is a powerful thing and it is very easy to miss the bigger picture and forget that not everyone will share your view point.

She asked us to review the UAL Staff Development on Diversity and Inclusion webpage which was not only difficult to locate but universally seen as both uninspiring and lacking in detail. Link:  https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/working-at-ual/SitePage/46039/staff-development-on-diversity-and-inclusion . During the group activity (Inclusivity when designing the curriculum) I noted:

• Adapt materials to reflect the make-up of the class
• Perhaps have a workshop at the beginning of the course which highlights the topics of inclusion and diversity
• Make reference to relevant key people from diverse backgrounds and/or their sexual orientation where appropriate.
• Embed these topics into general classroom teaching.

During one of the classroom discussions with James we spoke about cultural behaviour in terms of the way different cultures learn and participate. We have a Hong Kong cohort (MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise) and these students are very reserved when it comes to participation. James recommended the John Briggs book – Teaching for quality learning in Higher Education, written while working as a tutor in Hong Kong.

We looked at student engagement in terms of who designs the curriculum and James mentioned the students studying at the School of Independent Study at UEL who designed their own learning (which needed to be agreed by there tutor). What was found was that this gave students a much greater sense of ownership. We considered terms including ‘co-creators not consumers’ and ‘engaged with, not presented with learning’.

Perhaps the most interesting insight for me was around a discussion connected with the process of learning. This was where a group of students sort to distill information that they had had to grapple with and went on to produce a simplified version that they felt was clearer and easier to digest. What they have failed to grasp was that it was the process itself of discussing and searching for clarity what was the learning and that just referring to the outcome would be of far less value to would be students of this topic. This has parallels with a project I worked on called Students as Producers. The idea was that students who had grasped key threshold concepts would create learning resources that would help other students learn. At the end I felt that the key benefits were for the participating students and that the resources themselves were not always beneficial for others.

Link: http://www.learningdevelopment.qmul.ac.uk/student-producers