My Practice -comparing two courses

[GraphDesProject]

 
In order for me to understand my practice better I am going to make a comparison of my f2f university courses and my online distance projects, which anyone from aged 14 upwards can undertake.
•at what points of your course are there opportunities to express opinions and instincts?

I believe that in all education, and perhaps especially in HE, a learner is training to be critical, sceptical, investigative. So it is really important that they can express opinions and indeed ideas. In the uni courses, as well as regular surveys and meetings with reps, there is a general ethos of welcoming discussion. I [think that I] enable this is all classes and in some written or reflective pieces it is expressly requested that own opinions are utilised. There is an academic caveat that these expressions are backed up by research or some other kind of justification. We train our students to be young designers and academics whose opinions are just as good as professionals’ opinions are – providing they organise them in a professional way. When we do peer assessment we prefer them to put their names to their comments about the work of their classmates to rehearse standing by academic opinions. The online private design projects also request expression of personal opinions about the work of others, ethics, sustainability and so on. But again these are expressed as “in what way do you think…” not just “do you think…” These are aimed at younger learners but again I ask them to back-up their thoughts with some kind of justification. Also when they are engaged in practical work learners are asked to evaluate against the need of the brief, not just to say “well, I like it!” so that opinions are really justified. The online learners are also surveyed at the end of a project and can add comments on the course blog. I am hoping to open a Study Cloud area too for more opinion sharing.

•at what point do you have to absorb information and how?

Both the uni and online courses are about graphic design, so both have many opportunities for visualising, making sketches from inspiration, developing initial ideas. This is perhaps the most frequent and effective way for visual learners to absorb information and to synthesise it. However, we also have plenty of q&a, which is more ad hoc in the uni course and more formalised in the written online courses. Both courses make sets of practical pieces resulting from a process of research and development, so the very briefs are methods of absorbing information. Theory is often synthesised in practical pieces that help explain how they work (ie: this week my year 1s are group working on Info Graphics posters supposedly for The Independent explaining semiotics). We have on-going visual communication and self-reflective evaluations in both.  Learners from both courses are required to run blogs, which have proved very effective for absorption of information and indeed generation of ideas from it. The uni course has a very full Moodle area with some required reading/viewing and plenty of optional stuff which backs up class work. The online courses have written materials or links to websites and videos etc that mimic this, always with questions for discussion and opening new trains of thought. Learners work at their own pace so they can recap or repeat if necessary. In both courses tutor feedback helps reflection and the absorbing of concepts.

•at what points do you work with fellow learners?

The f2f uni learners do this a lot both voluntarily and otherwise. Interim and summative crits and peer assessment allow critical engagement with peers, as does their FB page (no staff venture there). They also connect with other designers and design learners in internet spaces such as Behance, blogs (sometimes each other’s) and other design social networking sites. We do some group work, especially when there is a big workload or it is theoretically difficult. They seem to appreciate the theory support but don’t really like designing or getting graded together. We do quite a lot of mini group tasks in induction period and sometimes in class they are asked to form groups to solve problems. The younger online learners generally work individually with not much contact apart from the tutor. Some of the activities, however, encourage connectivism and getting out and talking to people, but these are not fellow learners. Peers could potentially comment on their blogs, but generally don’t. I’d like to open this up more – Study Cloud may help, or they could set up an FB group. I have just launched a group work option, where a group would work together through a project, but have not yet had a guinea pig group to test it on. Many of my potential learners are quite young and I do worry about setting an activity to get people talking to strangers when I cannot necessarily oversee the health and safety aspect.

As for me, I often work with fellow learners in MOOCs (lately!), at conferences and keep a really healthy discursive learning and “what if we did…” attitude going with my colleagues.

·  what percentage of the course is assessed individually or as a group?

Both of these types of courses and overwhelmingly assessed as individuals, though the uni course has one project in the first year where there is a group grade. This always causes friction! Yet design is a group work industry, even if you’re a freelancer. Have to weigh this up with “owning” own achievements. With the online course the new group work option asks them to decide whether they’d like individual or group feedback and certificate.

What do you think this says about your teaching approach, and what would you like to do about it? How might technology help, or hinder, you in this?

Overall it seems that technology helps the f2f learners connect with others and when it is voluntary they do it a lot. But there are also valuable f2f opportunities, especially the crits. I think my colleagues and IO have been more concerned with connecting our uni learners with others from the community of practice (professionals, experts, practitioners etc) than with each other. I also think that when we have encouraged group participation the aim has been the development of each individual rather than the collective group – but more thought to be done on that point…..On the other hand, the very nature of the online projects means that learners don’t have f2f chances to work together. It’s not a MOOC but more of a set of TOCs (tiny online courses). Also the asynchronous nature of the courses means that learners couldn’t necessarily connect while on the same activities. I still need to investigate Study Cloud more (is it me or is it impossible to get into; one issue after another…).  I think a balance between individual work and collaboration/connecting is the most helpful. Too much of either seems like ticking a box for the sake of it.

 

[imogenbertin]

Really interesting post about encouraging reflection.

Just getting people to start contributing online can be a challenge, let alone starting thinking “in what way…?”, and especially if they are mature students.

I found a closed facebook group which could feed into extra participation and peer assessment marks worked well with adult learners. It encouraged people to contribute ideas and comment on resources their peers introduced but using a forum most were already familiar with.

However, it is hard to avoid excluding people unless you provide a variety of ways they can gain the marks – this Forrester survey http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/11/forrester-privacy-concerns-faceboo/ indicates about a third of people are really concerned about their privacy in using facebook. About a tenth of my students did not want to interact using facebook if they could avoid it despite it being fairly key to their subject (digital marketing).

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