I brought my research and feedback to a bi-termly Illustration Transition Meeting with my colleagues George Mellor and Dan Freeman to ask their for their advice and responses. The main points I raised after reflecting on my focus group feedback were:
- Implement progression early on – Progression workshops should start with year 1 and run into year 2 as well.
- Make students aware of outside things connected to UAL
- Invite previous Graduate Diploma students coming to speak to current students
- Build confidence for our next steps for ‘who we want to be’ [career options]
- Introduction to Transition Tutors at beginning of each year
- Inform students on what Transition Tutors are for
I took these points and my wider feedback from students to my colleagues and discussed the next steps on how this can inform our roles and teaching. The main thing we noticed is that our roles may not be static from year to year, as each cohort brings a fresh perspective, different experiences and presents certain challenges. For example some of these include:
- Cohort size ranging widely from 75 to 150 students between years
- Impact of cost of living on student experience and learning
- Impact of Covid Pandemic
- Neurodiversity
- Global Issues
Therefore we agreed to take on a more fluid approach to our roles, keeping with our core principles to guide the student journey from year 1 through to 3, and consistently reflecting on the current cohorts to see how we can use our teaching time to support their needs.
The meeting helped me to gain on insight into how I can respond to student feedback and implement some changes in the transition/progression delivery. I plan to work on this and build these suggestions into my delivery over the coming months:
- Work with the other transition tutors to include progression style activities in a subtle way to year 1s and 2s – they were cautious of talking about careers too early as felt students may not be ready.
- Make students aware of outside things connected to UAL e.g Add opportunities to the weekly newsletter (perhaps create a progression section? But name it something more exciting than ‘Progression’!)
- Create a space in the timetable for peer-led activity for students to work on progression activities.
- Invite previous Graduate Diploma students and alumni to talk to students about their experience of gaining a BA in Illustration and what they went on to do. Find a wider scope of disciplines that not only includes different types of illustrator, e.g. set design, writer…
This aims to respond to the students need of ‘what careers are out there that I can do?’
The challenge with this will be to source a budget to accomodate visiting speakers. - Build confidence for students planning next steps for future roles by enacting more peer-led activities.
- Introduce Transition Tutors at a welcome event at the beginning of each year. Add our titles to the staff noticeboard with a break down of our role.