Record of Observation or Review of Teaching Practice
Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: MA Global Collaboraration
Size of student group:
Observer: John O’Reilly
Observee: Liz Hayden
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 See previous ROT for Adam
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?
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
How will students be informed of theobservation/review?
What would you particularly like feedback on?
How will feedback be exchanged?
Part Two
Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions:
The Pedagogy of Ritual
The group in Liz’s class are Masters students studying Global Collaboration, a degree comprising participants at UAL in Camberwell and others joining online from Kyoto in Japan. It’s 0900 in London and 1800 Kyoto, the class bookends the very beginning and ending of the Monday workday, and the assumption of this observer is that the dual group of students are already highly motivated, engaged and perhaps keen to be inspired. It’s why Liz’s opening question is really effective: “what are you currently working on and what do you hope to get out of the session?”
The student responses are a way of tangibly gathering, materialising, the group around ‘matters of concern’ (to use a phrase from science and technology studies scholar Bruno Latour). Expressing these matters is a way in which the students form themselves as a group (or to use a word Latour and educationalist John Dewey might say, how they become a ‘public’). Project management itself is also the practice of making publics around particular matters of concern. Tea will be the physical matter of this class that sparks thinking around other matters involving project management.
Each student responds individually, outlining a different project that they’re working. One student’s project involves seven workshops with 50 people and is working through with many different elements to this project, such as running workshops in the community. Another student is interested to find out about scheduling, while another is working on a project about materials with designers – her concern is being able to step outside the specific interests of this research, she would like a different perspective and thinks that a project management approach might work. She’s also worried about ‘time’, ‘I would like to create a plan’.
This concern with focus and time is also a feature of other students experience of project management – one student would like to know how to continue to engage their audience, ‘something that would help manage what happens when there are delays and when you bring other people into the project’. This gathering of interests is such a simple but effective pedagogic strategy by Liz, it makes me think about the tacit teaching and learning skills in the practice of project management.
In a class such as this where the students are postgraduates with experience of working life, the authority of the teacher to speak to the subject really matters – lecturers often confuse embarrassment in the feeling they are talking about themselves with setting out their own professional experience. Making professional experience visible also enhances the value of scholarly and research texts used in class.
Liz notes that she’s been working in industry for 25 years, and today she’s brought different sets of slides around project management – a corporate version and an ‘indy’ version (it would also have been useful to note some of the starry brands which Liz has worked with).
As the students are articulating their interests in the session, Liz is istening and responding to students, asking them questions, while tearing up strips of paper, passing them round to people, and begins, frames, the lesson with the idea that, “lots of things can be started with a cup of tea.”
The class will make this cup of tea together, step-by-step, and she asks each person to name an action they will do in the practice of making a cup of tea.
“I will decide which tea I want to drink”. “I will pick my cup”. “I will talk to my cat as I make it”. “I will need to think about the temperature for the tea.” “I will pour milk?. “I will pour water into the cup.” “I will add the teabag.” “I will pour it down the drain and start again, warming the teapot.” “I will stretch because I am tired.” “I will prepare cakes with the tea.” “I will plump of the cushions.” “I will put flowers in the tea”. “I will put on music and drink it.”
Though this is a teaching moment there are so many things that can be analysed as data for further research. There is a very tangible Learning Outcome that is being practiced in this opening to the class that Liz discreetly draws out attention to: “there are lots of jobs that need doing with a group of people.”
She asks the students to close their computers then she brings out a kind of ‘handbag of curiosities’. She has containers of tea and talks about planting seeds she brought back from a visit to India 25 years ago.
Tearing more strips of paper and handing them round to students, Liz says, “things happen because of tea.” The students wrap the paper around a circular wooden block and put some soil in it with the tea seed. “There are special things we need to know when looking after Tea and one of the special things we need to know is to add coffee, it helps the soil.”
There is real student engagement that comes from purpose in this task. It is a fascinating pedagogy of analogy, that is more than analogy. It is understanding and planning and growing-tea-as-tea, and it is understanding and planning and growing-tea-as-project-management. Its material, teaching charisma comes from Liz’s choice of tea as an everyday object and the material stories she tells around it. Handing around broken eggshell she says, “the tea plant needs eggshells to protect against slugs. Remember you need to protect your project. Protection could be a consultant or some of the specialist skills. Put in another seed so that there is an idea and there is a backup idea.”
There are three immediate thoughts that come to mind in response to this partial observation of the class.
The first thought concerns Liz’s very special curation of materials and the tea ritual she constructs as a pedagogic device for participation, it has the charm and charisma of all rituals that demand attention and a bodily practice. Liz has created an affective teaching experience.
The second thought is to consider how it could be made even more effective for the students in Kyoto in terms of their participation.
The third thought is that this is the second time I have seen part of this class, the first part of the class in the collective planning of tea, I participated in at the micro-teaching event. I have had time to think about it, the impact of her teaching exercise on colleagues was tangible. Liz’s pedagogy is that of a tightrope walker, there is spectacle, excitement and risk for those participating. It is a kind of performance storytelling whose sense of risk allied with intellectual purpose is utterly compelling.
#affect #magic #emergentclassroom
FYI
Niccolini, A., Zarabadi, S. & Ringrose, J. (2018) ‘Spinning Yarns: Affective Kinshipping as Posthuman Pedagogy’. Parallax. 24
Orr, S., & Shreeve, A. (2017) ‘Teaching practices for creative practitioners’, Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. Taylor and Francis Group.
Part Three
Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged:
Thank you for your very insightful and delightful observation… my confidence in the classroom has measurably grown having digested and processed much of this terms work… I still have a wish list of investigations to do!
I am most aware of the second point regarding the students in Kyoto, it causes much discussion and I was aware whilst planning this session that it would again be a cause for more discussion… In the observation I worked with a teaching assistant to partake in the exercise to camera for the students abroad and online, which was the first step for me into understanding the problem space further. As a result of this I am particularly interested in using some techniques I have used professionally when sharing content and products with an online global audience. This however does require more extensive planning and a small budget. In the hope that it may be possible I have discussed my ideas with the previous course leader who has arranged for me to test further the session and I am going to approach the course leader and ask if it might be possible to make a proposal to test in the autumn term.
I am also interested in discussing with colleagues in the creative computing lab how skills in house could be shared, as having previously worked with AI and VR to create magical customer experiences I am well aware of the costs involved in doing this successfully. However feel there could be opportunities to harnessed to enchant learning experiences further.
I was honoured that Orr & Shreeve was cited as it was number 2 in my top 3 papers from the reading list!