Month: February 2025

Introduction

BA Graphic Branding & Identity has been on the Amber Accountability Framework by UAL in the academic year 2022/2023. As part of the Accountability Framework we, as the teaching body, received specialist assessment training and alll our assessments have been second/triple-marked by the course leader during that year.

Evaluation

Being supervised by several parties during the assessment process surfaced emotions and insecurities within the teaching body. Our intention during any assessment process always has been to be nurturing towards the positive aspects of the student’s work, but equally highlight where there is need for improvement. “Feedback identifies a gap between what is understood has been demonstrated and the standard of performance expected” (Price et al, 2010) With the additional layer of having to take into account elements like the awarding gap, an equal spread of grades a.o. assessing students’ work became a labour of mixed emotions and started to feel in parts more political than educational. This has affected my abilitily to assess purely based on evidence leading me to doubt my own assessment procedures. 

In this case study I focus on recent summative assessment practices, specifically the complex situations us lecturers encounter in the attempt to ensure parity during the said period. As the teaching team of a Year 3 unit called ‘Self-Initiated Project’ we decided to combat these mutual emotions around the assessment by setting up rigid frameworks to help enhance transparent and fair feedback further. Ahead of the hand-in date we created pre-written feedback templates and a detailed matrix for each grade which were organised against the Learning Outcome in the Unit Briefing. Within these frameworks, the members within the teaching team were free to add their own personal assessment strategies and personal voice to make sure the written feedback didn’t become too formulaic. I approach the assessment empathetically in-line with the UAL guidelines which advises to “[connecting] with your own feelings when…writing the feedback” (Dwyer, 2020). This scaffolded approach of assessing and benchmarking student’s grades and writing the assessment using an agreed tone of voice and sentence structure has been emotionally very helpful.

Figure 1. Huber, Antonia (2023), Assessment Feedback Template, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Figure 2. Huber, Antonia (2023), Assessment Matrix, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Moving forward

1. As a teaching team we make sure we set aside extra time during every project briefing to unpack the academic language of the assessment criteria and learning outcomes as the same language will also be used in the written feedback. An Q&A at the end of the project briefing has been proven valuable. 
   
2. We started to include a student-led formative assessment whereby students assess themselves against the learning outcomes to enhance their embodied knowledge around the assessment criteria we deploy.
   
3. We set aside more time for feedback tutorials in the following term to be able to talk the students through the grades and the written feedback.
   
4. In the postgraduate course of Graphic Branding and Identity we introduced an asynchronous lecture around the concept of feed-forward. Feedback can only be effective when the learner understands the feedback and is willing and able to act on it (Price et al, 2010). The use of language of this concept has been particular interesting to me and I intend to dive deeper into Price’s approach.
   
5. Spaeth highlights this emotional labour of assessment and the conflict between amplifying our emotions to maximise nurturing feedback and distancing ourselves to be more efficient and mitigate burnout when assessing increasingly large volumes of students (Spaeth, 2018). I am investigating how these two elements can co-exist.

References

Dwyer, K. (2022), Compassionate feedback: Ideas for prompting reflection on compassionate approaches to feedback. Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/73b9e100-e4db-452f-8109-0600aff48b96 (Accessed: 1 April 2025)

Price, M., Handley, K., Millar, J., & O’Donovan, B. (2010) ‘Feedback: all that effort, but what is the effect?’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930903541007 (Accessed: 1 April 2025).

Spaeth, E. (2018) “On Feedback and Emotional Labour”, Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice.

UAL (2020) “Adjusted Assessment Guide for Students”. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/369404/Adjusted-Assessment-Guide-for-Students-2022-23-PDF-565KB.pdf (Accessed: 1 April 2025)

Contextual Background

I am comparing two teaching sessions which I helped prepare and deliver for the MA course Graphic Branding and Identity. The first session “Brand Identity” consisted of a convoluted and thematically challenging task around brand social justice and decolonisation. I used the second session “Brand Audience” in the following week as an opportunity to address the problems of the first session, deploying alternative teaching methods.

The first session’s workshop and homework task were based on an asynchronous lecture and contained a vast amount of brand references to critically unpack the topics ‘Social Justice’. The examples given were relevant,but seem to not connect with the students. Additionally the task was bolted on the previous week’s “Brand Experience” session whereby the students were asked to revisit the said brief and analyse the cultural references of their designated experience brands. We asked students to assess whether they appreciated the brand references they encountered during their brand experience as authentic or appropriated to then interrogate any issues related to decolonisation and summarise their finding using the What, So What, Now What model (Rolfe, 2001). 

Evaluation

Many students seemed confused as the task blended many different elements. On reflection, I realised the lesson dynamic was one of information selection and transfer: the knowledge in the presentation lacked a clear angle and used very academic language. The task was not well scaffolded, the outcome not fully clear and there was limited opportunity for meaning-making activities. A better scenario would allow space for students to “participate in their own information-to-knowledge transformative processes” (Morrison, 2014). 

Moving Forward

Together with the course team we drew on the negative experiences of the first session and made the following changes when planning the second session:

1. To help them empathise with the audiences, we created a workshop series which was based on Gen Z as the student cohort expressed they feel a sense of belonging with that generation.
   
2. We limited the amount of case studies in our presentation to four and we took them from Social Media to make it easily relatable.
   
3. We asked them to work collaboratively in small groups and explore their own subcultural tribes they identify with which validated their social/contextual knowledge and connected it to the lesson topic. Robin Canniford explores the concept of tribal consumption, emphasizing the “linking value” that emerges when individuals seek social connections through shared consumption experiences fostering a sense of belonging and shared identity. (Canniford 2011).
   
4. We asked them to work in small groups and set the time limit for the task to 30 minutes and share their draft findings via a pre-set up Padlet board. Padlet’s flexibility of pace, place, and mode allowed them to “[take] more responsibility for their own learning” (Gordon, 2014).

The second session was more enjoyable and meaningful for the students. I will continue to make future sessions more student-led by favouring group activities and creating opportunities to engage with the material in more relatable ways.

References

Gordon, N. (2014) Flexible Pedagogies: technology-enhanced learning. Advance HE. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/flexible-pedagogies-technology-enhanced-learning (Accessed: 1 April 2025)

Morrison, C. D. (2014) ‘From “Sage on the Stage” to “Guide on the Side”: A Good Start.’ International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/vol8/iss1/4 (Accessed: 1 April  2025)

Orr, S. and Shreeve, A. (2018). Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. London: Routledge.

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001) Critical Reflection in Nursing and the Helping Professions: A User’s Guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

BRIEF: To deliver a 20 minutes Microteaching Session / the audience could be staff, students or unspecified.

In my practice as a brand designer I work with purpose-driven brands which aim to bring back traditional methods of production. In my teaching practice I am passionate about creating a learning environment which enables students to approach design by ‘thinking-through-making’ (D. A. Schön, 1992). The two objectives when choosing my object and planning the microteaching session in general have been A) that I would like to incorporate traditional craft which enables to  a deeper understanding of its medium and production mechanisms and B) that the object allows a meditative and reflective act of making while having a clear outcome in mind  to ultimately gain some ‘insider knowledge’ about the object. ‘We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because ‘we’ are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming.’ (Ingold, 2013). After dwelling in different ideas which ranged from darning to vegetable dying, my full-circle reflection took me to block printing which combines my own subject area and passion: printing and graphic design. Block printing is the process of printing patterns mostly using hand-carved wooden blocks. It is a slow way of printing, but it is capable of yielding highly artistic results, some of which are unobtainable by any other printing method.

In order to condense the labourious block printing process into a 20-minute microteaching session with limited resources I created a simplified version of the traditional methods by using hand-produced rubber stamps containing very simple geometric shapes (instead of wood carved blocks) and ink pads (instead of traditional inking tray, a roller and and wet ink).

I drafted a detailed session which started off with a brief two minute lecture outlining the history of the printing method and showing some examples of patterns for inspiration. I then randomly allocated 2-3 rubber stamps to each peer and handed out simple white A4 sheets of paper asking my fellow colleagues to experiment with their shapes creating a set of draft patterns, encouraging them to not overthink the task and rather work ‘quick and dirty’ for three minutes. After the warm-up task I asked all participants to choose one of their trial patterns to block print a pattern on to a piece of plain unbleached calico fabric. I allocated 15 minutes to this task asking them to reflect on their thoughts and feelings while executing a monotonous task.

I appreciated the feedback overall as positive – we talked about embodied knowledge, craft, insider-knowledge, getting into a meditative mindset, being inspired to doing printing more at home. My peers expressed that liked that it was one singular task allowing them to fully immerse themself in the singluar task.The initial draft printing on paper seem to have been helpful, some wished to have used it differently. Eva expressed that she felt her print result has been in-line with her expectation as she likes to work fast and messy. Katriona on the other hand appreciated the visual expression of her print out of character as she was surprised that felt the unknown urge to work slowly and with caution.

I had the impression that the briefing and instructions of the task had been clear and didn’t cause any confusion. In hintsight I wonder if I could have stressed more that the testing of alternative patterns on the paper is for the purpose of setting their master design. In future I would like to give clearer instruction of how to print (i.e. appling the pattern very carefully aiming for a precise outcome) to deepened the learning instead of letting each participant figure out things themselves.

Schön, D.A. (1992) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge

Contextual background

Together with two colleagues we have been awarded an EDI Grant as an Associate Lecturer at BA Graphic Branding & Identity for two years in a row. While art and design education is becoming more diverse, there is still more to be done to effectively break the glass ceiling. There is a need to challenge the often taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin curricula in art and design, which can inadvertently perpetuate exclusionary practices (Richards  & Finnigan, 2015). 

Evaluation

With our grant we wanted to create a safe space to educate students about creative resilience within the design industry and motivate them embrace one’s own identity and share best practices on inclusive design. We designed a lecture and workshop series inviting diverse voices and perspectives from creative communities to give students insight into their practice and share the impact they made to ultimately inspire and break down barriers for students with disabilities themselves. 

In the first year we decided to focus on the under-presentation on women in the industry. Despite the fact that women currently account for around 60% of students enrolled in university arts and design courses, only 22% of the UK’s creative and design workforce is female (Design Council, 2018). With the project Women Up we intended to ask students to investigate the gender-specific misrepresentation of LCC alumni by going through the LCC archives as well as interviewing female LCC alumnis. Those interviews were meant to form a showcase of their creative talent through a range of informal show&tells as well as public facing exhibition.

Women Up was set up as a non-mandatory and extra-curricula activity which students could sign up to. There has been a great turn-up for the kick-off meeting which included an introduction to by an LCC archivist which brough up relevant footage to investigate. However as the term went on the students’ priorities shifted and from initially seventeen students only one turned up at our first show-and-tell and we didn’t have the workforce to exhibit our findings. 

Moving forward

When applying and planning for the grant the second year we made the following changes in the proposed project set-up to increase participation and engagement: We renamed the project to Alt+Shift and were aiming to discuss a wide range of EDI issues. We not only widened the subject areasm, but also built the EDI sessions into the curriculum. With those two elements we have witnessed a very positive change in the students’ engagement. We have successfully delivered all three panel discussions and one workshop as planned in our project proposal with an attendance ranging from 45–90 students from all three year groups of the BA. Our sessions seem to have striked the right balance between introducing them to new yet relevant EDI topics, and combining them with relevant course’s subject matter and pathways of the students into industry. It has been refreshing to students to have a platform for inspiring designers to come in, not to showcase their best work, but for honest and unfiltered ‘behind the curtains’ conversations about how they emotionally appreciated their journey with disabilities into the industries, which obsticales they encountered and how they managed to change it from within. We also recorded all session and turned them into podcast to make them more accessible and long-lasting (please click link to listen: https://shows.acast.com/altshift/episodes/altshift). During the Q&A sessions at the end of each of those four session the students expressed of a new sense of agency and empowerment to help shape the design world into a more diverse and inclusive space. 

References

Design Council (2018) Design Economy 2018: Executive Summary. Available at: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/fileadmin/uploads/dc/Documents/Design_Economy_2018_exec_summary.pdf (Accessed: 20 March 2025).​

Richards, A., & Finnigan, T. (2015). Embedding Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum: An Art and Design Practitioner’s Guide. Higher Education Academy.​

Figure 1. Huber, Antonia (2024)  alt+SHIFT Lecture Series, EDI Grant 2024, BA Graphic Branding and Identity, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.