Week 2 - Reflection on a Past Teaching Session

Reflection on a session where you were supporting student learning

The occasion of teaching I want to reflect on was a portfolio review session, where I attended a university as a visiting expert. I began by delivering a lecture to a group of second and third year graphic design students, about 60 in total, sharing a selection of recent work from the studio I work in, and then discussing the role and responsibility of designers of the future (I.e. the audience!) in the world of sustainability and the environment. This was followed by a question and answer session, then finally one-to-one sessions with a number of students to discuss their work in progress portfolios.

The university in question has strong ties with industry, and the students benefit greatly from interacting with professionals, so they can see what area of the field they may want to specialise in. It’s really valuable for the students to see first hand what awaits after graduation.

I have chosen to focus on this experience as it combines two of the areas of teaching I’ve been doing the most over the last few years – challenging my presentation skills and personal one-to-one mentoring techniques. I think that I will be able to improve these skills and use them in an online education context in the near future.

In my role as guest lecturer and mentor, I wanted to inspire students to think about the responsibility of designers in the realm of sustainability, and to encourage them to be part of the conversation. It was important to me to also help individual students with their portfolios, with this being their ticket to potential jobs after graduation. I hope that the students were able to take something away from it and build sustainability into their processes and thoughts in future projects.

In the time leading up to the main presentation, I was quite nervous (and suffering from really bad morning sickness!) but found that once I started it wasn’t too intimidating. I tried to interact and ask questions of the audience to create engagement and a more relaxed environment, trying to avoid anything feeling too stuffy. I got the feeling that students felt intrigued and interested by the lecture content and my presentation method. I was able to ask a few of the students about their thoughts on it afterwards over coffee, which was a useful experience. From the learners perspective, I don’t think they had heard from as many female practitioners as they had male, so I helped redress this balance.

In the second half of the session, I spent time with students on a one-to-one basis, reviewing portfolios and suggesting developments to the work. I also suggested references for learners to explore, both contemporary and historical. In the role of mentor I tried to challenge the students ways of thinking to encourage them to explore options rather than settling for the easiest or first idea that came to mind.

Internal factors that influenced my decision-making included wanting to make sure I didn’t make the talk too long, and to strengthen my relationship with the university. I would count the sustainability message as one of the external factors. My sources of knowledge came from my experience in the industry and from previous experiences of teaching in similar environments. Presentation skills-wise, I had previously completed training at RADA drama school in presentation delivery, I feel that I have still got a long way to go in this area but each experience makes me stronger.

I think I could have managed the session differently by covering less information, but in more detail. As it was, I went through more case studies more briefly, to make it snappy. In future I would try a mix of these two approaches – a few case studies in brief, then followed with a more in depth one to allow students to get more out of it, and to base a question and answer session around this.

I feel pleased with how this event went, but know I can and will improve in the presentation of such content in the future. I would have liked more time to prepare for the main presentation before hand, this would have allowed me to feel more confident in my knowledge of the sustainability aspects.

I think this example of my experience in teaching and learning shows that I deal relatively well with the pressure of a large group of students, but prefer the intimacy of a one-to-one mentoring session. Both take different skills and are equally challenging. I would hope that the students benefitted from the event, as I thought about their needs and what I would want from a visiting lecturer if I was sitting in their place. My current limitations and constraints in my views of teaching come mainly from a lack of experience, I need to do more of it to get better!

The hypothetical actions I would take have already been mentioned above, but immediate actions would include completing this course to improve my planning and content creation of future lectures, with a view of creating content that inspires, challenges and provokes the students.