Improving and Getting Worse

It's a funny old thing, teaching. Before PGCert, my teaching was incredibly safe. I would use PowerPoint presentations to talk through my hour and a half and basically presume that students were learning. It was in the very first few sessions of the PGC that I began to think about different ways of going about this; not nessecarily because of what we were taught, but how we were taught. We didn't sit and listen for hours at a time, the workload was spread between student and teacher. This was a bit of a revelation for me in two ways. Firstly, one of the major issues I had with teaching, was the fact that filling 90 minutes plus with constant talking and PowerPoint was hard work. Some of my lectures had over 100 slides and this could take over a week to prepare. Timing was also an issue, as until I took the lecture, it was very hard to judge exactly how long the session would go on for. This meant that material would either not get covered, or I would occasionally run out of slides before the alloted time. Secondly, students would get bored. At least, I imagined they were bored whether they were or not. if was taking a photography course which consisted of sitting watching a PowerPoint presentation for hours, I would be bored. This made me feel uncomfortable, and also incompetent.


As soon as I introduced student-based activities to my lessons, everything changed, and it is still changing every lecture.

It began with throwing a few questions in every now and then, and having a short re-cap at the beginning of sessions. Even this made a significant improvement - the students were given the chance to talk to their neighbor, to share their knowledge and understanding with the class, even to feel comfortable enough (now that the silence was gone) to share their ignorance with the class.

Since January I have been observed twice on my teaching, once from a peer and once from a PGCert course leader. It is these observation sessions that have most dramatically changed my ways of teaching. I have spoken about my first observation in a previous blog, and I had my second a week ago. I think that the refreshing injection of ideas was partly because the observers did NOT come from a photography background. They saw the session at face value and had ideas on how to make the lecture more interesting to them, even though they did not have any desire to learn the discipline to begin with.

Both observers found the session enlightening and became engaged in the subject matter, but both also suggested similar ideas to make things a bit more interesting. My second observation was on a two and a half hour session, which is longer than I'd choose to teach for, but is required. The session started with a re-cap and student-led discussion, and featured questions throughout from me. However it was brought to my attention that this could certainly be embellished upon. Rather than an hour lecture with the odd question thrown in before a break, the suggestion was that this hour could be split in to 10 or 15 minute intervals of PowerPoint, followed by 5 minute sessions of students discussing amongst themselves or completing activities. This not only makes the session more intersting for the student, but it gives me a respite from the constant talking. It also allows me to plan my sessions in very logical short blocks of teaching, opposed to the aforementioned block of a hundred slides with no real certainty on timings. On top of that, this method also gives me a constant way of assessing the students and checking the learning outcomes. My old methods of teaching really didn't give me much feedback on whether the students were absorbing information, or understanding any of the session material. This way not only gives me a plain indication of learning, but I think it is also an easier way for the students to learn. Rather than information overload, they are stopping to really embed the things that we've spoken about.

The title of this blog is Improving And Getting Worse. This is because the great influx of new teaching methods can also come with pitfalls. As I stated earlier, my teaching used to be safe. I am now taking risks in a couple of ways. Firstly, this is uncharted territory for me. I am employed by whichever faculty requires my services, and very rarely have the luxury of a curriculum to follow. This has it's upsides as I am not tied to anyone else's teaching ideas, but it means that if I try something new then I have no way of knowing whether it will sink or swim. Of course there is plenty of literature on methods of teaching and assessment, and I am slowly getting my way through Race, Brown and the rest of the gang. This literature, however, is no safety net. It is generic, and most of it does not deal with the field of art and design. As well as this, what works for others may not work for me, and it may not work for my students. I teach students fresh from A-levels all the way up to adult learners. I generally teach at level 4 regardless of age, but students differ significantly in terms of prior knowledge (particularly of IT - the younger students take to it much quicker in general), in terms of class participation, and in terms of learning motivation.

It is these factor's that determine the success of my sessions. I have taken identical sessions in the last WEEK with very different outcomes. Following a re-jigging/re-writing of a photography lecture, one of my classes showed marked improvement. They came out of their shells, the enjoyed the teaching, and they showed a definite understanding and knowledge from the session, proven by constant in-class assessment. The second group were completely different. They were reluctant to speak out in front of peers, group activity was very serious and carried out in almost complete silence. No-one seemed prepared to ask questions, and I got to the end of my lecture and activities a good half an hour before the planned session end. This was awkward. I always prepare for this circumstance by having extra notes and slides which would normally form a part of the next session. Unfortunately by using them, I am covering material that the students thought would be covered next session (again making look slightly incompetent), and by eating in to this material, I am then required to re-write the next session, causing a domino effect with the worse-case scenario of altering the entire course.

In this case I tried to fill the time by setting the students about exploring their digital cameras and making notes, but it wasn't as smooth and professional as I like my sessions to go, and in particular, end.

If anyone has managed to get through this blog and is still reading, I would GREATLY appreciate any comments or advice you have on situations where you have run out of material.

My lectures are improving, but with improvement brings risks.