This was a huge challenge. It made me really insecure about whether I do any actual teaching. I decided not to go ahead with my ‘Introduction to DPS. talk’ that I give to new students every year, and fished out a talk I did as an Academic Support Tutor a couple of years ago. I repurposed it for the talk around assessments that I do every year for students, and in doing so realised this would be great alongside the Academic Support session that is given as an interactive session. It was hugely revealing of what actually is my practise, where can I add ‘academic’ value. As I initiated the microteaching, I realised that I’d included far too much for the 20 minutes allocated, and removed the last section. My slides are at the bottom of the page.
This is the feedback that I got from the group:
Too rushed for the micro teaching
Well organised
Useful for students
Two activities for the first two students
Maybe use a source that is relevant to them
Why is this important, why should they use it, what they
Writing still important to industry – scripts etc – pitching documents
Connect back to the final year another big piece
Take into account accessibility: print bigger and make it bigger on screen
Send the reading before hand
Use easier text / ‘stupid texts’ / funny text
Reflections on the Feedback
Everyone was really generous in their feedback, and I really appreciated their participation. I chose a Design piece as I’m often worried about alienating students from different disciplines, but I could find something around employability and work based learning that would relate to all of them. The DPS website has a list of resources that I could easily use. I liked the idea of reminding them why writing is so important in industry, even if you feel like you are a visual creative. The details on accessibility were all valid too.
Microteaching: Observations on Yui and Kitty
Yui: Presented a piece on how artists have used physical bodies to translate their art. It was fascinating and radically different to my own experiences. This is the feedback that I provided:
- I loved the expression through body – as an animator traditionally that’s all on the page and my body is still and cramped, hunched over the computer
- And the idea of acting how my body feels is so self revealing!
- I like the idea of quickly saying out loud what you can see
- Again just too much for 20mins – but I can see this is part of a bigger exercise
Kitty: Presented this lovely piece on wig making, which she hid initially and made us guess what objects were in relation too – very fun.
- Great little exercise at the beginning, completely obscure and I had no idea what they are for! I got them all wrong.. Massage? Shoe cleaner? Shoe holder?
- Fascinating for me as I didn’t know anything about wig making.
- Agree that the fact that we haven’t used anything new is really interesting, great point! I would never have thought about it. And I wondered if it was a very niche industry and that’s why? A closed group of people passing down a craft as opposed to huge cohorts learning at uni?
- Historical context was fascinating for me (ex-history graduate!) The context of all this knowledge was fascinating.
- Timed perfectly!
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