Going back to the induction as well as revisiting the early lectures of the Teaching & Learning module of the PGCert, I realise that there was an enormous disconnect in my brain between the first part, before I became ill, and after, while still recovering, up until the submission of the assignment. I simply forgot everything I had learnt prior to becoming ill. Despite my struggles, this process of revisiting the lectures and redoing the work has been an extremely valuable learning curve. Through doing the PGCert and being a student again, I have so much more empathy for students, especially concerning the amount of information they are expected to remember. Never again when a student emails me asking me a question about an assignment will I get annoyed and write back: ‘as per the brief….!’. I made exactly the mistakes I berate my students for making – I didn’t read my brief well enough, I didn’t check the learning outcomes, I simply plunged ahead. I realise that I need to be far more rigorous with my own processes.
Reflecting on the first PGCert session: I thoroughly enjoyed re-watching the lecture recordings. It also helps that I am currently on leave so I can focus 100% on what I am engaging with. Listening to James Wisdom’s lecture in light of new government policy cutting financing of HE arts education made me realise what a precarious position the arts are in. James emphasises that arts education should challenge all assumptions and the status quo. No wonder the government is cutting funding to arts education. I can’t imagine the current government wanting people to challenge the status quo. However, we will continue to invite our students to do so.
Having received complaints from a couple of students saying they had been taught very little since coming to UAL, James’s comment that students at university level expect to be taught as at school, and that instead they need to understand that they have come to a place to learn, was helpful!
James’s question asking whether the following hour of teaching will be the best way these x number of people could spend their time is a something I need to consider when developing my pedagogical methods. I also appreciated his comment about good teachers being made not born. This gives me hope that I can improve.
Victoria Odeniyi’s lecture Reimagining Conversations with Multilingual Students discusses the many challenges of teaching a diverse student body, and the effect of teaching in a language that is not their mother tongue. She drew attention to how we need to be aware of the language we use – it should not be too colloquial nor too specialised as both forms of language may be difficult to understand. I read a blog post by a Chinese associate lecturer on the PGCert where he discussed how he battled with the meaning of certain words in his first briefs when a student at UAL. He drew attention to the words ‘critical reflection’ and the way this is misconstrued as being negative if directly translated into Chinese characters. This has made me realise that I need to make sure my briefs and lectures are more inclusive, paying attention to the words we use, making sure that they are neither too specialist nor too colloquial.
During Victoria Odeniyi’s presentation of her research project, a very interesting conversation developed around the place for silence in the online learning space. This is something I have been grappling with, always trying to fill the silences. The other issue I have been grappling with is getting students to actually talk online. They seem to prefer to write in the chat box. The comment she made about embracing this new online learning space and the way students engage with it helped me to realise that I need to be more accepting of this new mode of teaching, which, while certainly having some disadvantages, also has advantages.
I also learnt, from the experience of being a student again, that it is more difficult to talk online than to write in the chat box. You cannot cancel what you have said and the conversation moves on rapidly. This has helped me understand students’ preference for using the chat box.
All in all, I can already see how doing a PGCert will benefit my pedagogy.