A2: Teaching & supporting student learning
I have demonstrated extensive experience teaching and lecturing in both professional and academic areas, constructing lessons and lectures with small and larger groups respectively. This expertise was obtained in several climates as both a business owner and as a university lecturer, not just at UAL[1].
I have been teaching in education for the last 3 academic years. It is commonplace for me in my capacity as a member of the course faculty to support workshop sessions and provide peer learning where necessary. The action would involve navigating the class and answering any questions the students may have, especially on my specialist topic of broadcast and audio/visual content creation. My action also includes the instruction and underpinning of the video editing portion of the exercise.
My practice also involves supplementing the process with the addition of with online support, for tutorials, or teaching complete lectures via teams in the backdrop of the Pandemic.
I have increasingly aimed to build my practice based on the core values set out in the UK Professional Standards such as:
Core Knowledge
- K1 The subject material
- K2 Appropriate methods for teaching, learning and assessing in the subject area and at the level of the academic programme
- K3 How students learn, both generally and within their subject/ disciplinary area(s)
- K4 The use and value of appropriate learning technologies
- K5 Methods for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching
- K6 The implications of quality assurance and quality enhancement for academic and professional practice with a particular focus on teaching
This also aligns with the professional values of:
- V1 Respect individual learners and diverse learning communities
- V2 Promote participation in higher education and equality of opportunity for learners
- V3 Use evidence-informed approaches and the outcomes from research, scholarship and continuing professional development
- V4 Acknowledge the wider context in which higher education operates recognising the implications for professional practice
The techniques I use when initially interacting with the students, include getting a sense of their academic situation regarding the class. On reflection, this leads to 2 questions:
- Are the students embarking on a new process?
- Are they increasing their knowledge in a familiar yet incremental practise?
This information is informally gathered from colleagues and data/registers. Once in front of the students, I use the transactional approach which involves:
- Explaining who I am
- Some general info as to why I am there
- How I arrived to be their lecturer
- How I am going to interact with them academically.
I use this approach to add a sense of transparency to my practise as well as adding context to the sessions and illustrating the circumstances as to why I am in the position to pass on this information.
I break down the course content and state the deliverables expected upfront to prevent any confusion. Using tools such as PowerPoint slides, Actions involving camera equipment and or mobile phones, encouraging and nurturing discussions and student discovery, I then break each element of the module down including what I am going to teach, and the method used.
I follow this practice using the tools previously outlined, with constant student comments, questions, queries, and feedback throughout.
As quoted by Predicting students’ cognitive learning activity and intrinsic learning motivation: How powerful are teacher statements, student profiles, and gender? – Verena Jurik, Alexander Gröschner and Tina Seidel :[2]
“Feedback influences student learning and achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Positive feedback encourages students to return to or continue with an activity, and they report more interest in the activity (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999). Supportive teacher feedback can lead to deeper thinking (Chin, 2006).”
I use this process to include them as much as possible in the teaching practice as well as the learning.
This operation involves techniques such as empowering and encouraging the more adept students to help other students practically outside of the classroom-based session. This is especially evident in my video editing classes where I ask the students to not only assist each other but to feedback to me the task using informal tutorials before the next lecture for analysis and then review.
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S104160801400019)
[i] As well as teaching at UAL I also teach the courses Web series Creation and Editing and Postproduction as part of the BA course in Media Production at London South Bank University