The micro-teaching day was an inspiring session from which I was able to learn from 6 other students and experience their approach to teaching. The teaching sessions encompassed multiple subject areas including product design, ink-making, a sound piece and introduction to to camera obscura and digital technologies for drawing. Everyone had a unique delivery and content and it made for some interesting observations and reflections on my own teaching practice for BA illustration.
In one of the sessions, Beth presented the group with print-out’s from a film and asked us to arrange the images sequentially. I found this a very accessible way of understanding the information before me, and meant that the entire film didn’t have to be watched or played in front of the group, and instead could be replicated for a varying amounts of group sizes or even used in digital contexts. As a group we discussed how there was scope for this being used digitally but still having the same ‘hands on effect’ such as being able to move the images around on interactive touch screens or tables. This is an approach that I feel could work well on the illustration course, especially as sequential concepts and narrative are important elements of the student’s output. Asking students to play with sequence through print-outs as a preparatory exercise for developing storyboards for animations or publication could be very successful in trialling and testing ideas for our students.
I really enjoyed a more practical approach to OBL, and loved a session from Augusta that taught us about making ink. Practical elements were introduced and we were given the opportunity to make the ink ourselves. It gave us a sense of excitement and achievement that was great to feel in a learning environment. The whole group seemed captivated too, which demonstrated that practical tasks can encourage engagement and support students developing knowledge through making. As the ink can be developed in several different ways depending on ingredients, it also demonstrated that students could benefit from an individual and unique perspective from this type of task. This session showed me that practical development within a workshop setting may help with both individual and peer engagement, promoting creative risk taking and problem solving whilst using trial and error to come to a resolution.
In Georgina Orgill’s presentation from the cross programme lecture, she discusses OBL without having the object in the room, and exploring alternative ways for students to learn through this method. She acknowledged OBL in a digital context and ‘removing lack of touch as a barrier to engaging with objects’. I found this interesting in relation to Jesse’s OBL teaching session from the microteach day, as he presented an audio piece that could only be accessed and exposed to students through digital media . This evoked deep contemplation from the group and a fresh approach that would be able to reach many student’s in different situations – lecture theatre, personal headphones, both small and large teaching groups, as long as there was access to audio. This provided new insight in how we can work with sound in our teaching on illustration, especially as podcasts and audio pieces are gaining more relevance on our programme which we are developing our teaching to incorporate this.