Teaching Reflections (PG Cert)

Contextual Background

Group course work is recognised as having value in developing students’ skills relevant to employment. These include team-working; collaboration and organisational and personal time management. (UCL, 2019). Assessing group projects is challenging (Forsell et al, 2021). Last year I experienced the challege of trying to assess individual contribution of students versus the group’s work as a whole for the first time.

Evaluation

‘Group think’ (UNSW, 2025), was evident among students. This played out in a strange way. Students presented divergent thinking, but they wanted to avoid jettisoning anyone’s idea. This was in the name of inclusivity. The final project thus risked incoherence. But it also reflected the fact that the assessment criteria were in tension with each other. For example, between process and result.

It was tricky to understand why some contributed more than others within the group. I felt aware of my potential biases as a teacher in assessing this. This included gender differences, and language skill. It also related to the ability for students to do work outside of the lesson in their spare time. But also some were ambivalent about the project from the beginning.

Moving forwards 

In future I would sask for more clarification from course leaders about assessment (e.g. assessing process, versus result). Also how much the activity of doing the group work aligns with the learning outcomes. e.g. Are we actually assessing the “soft skills” of working effectively in groups? “If so, explicitly include them in the assessment criteria and reward their development in the grading.” (UNSW, 2025).

I would also want to review the nature and complexity of the task/brief being set within the time frame. This is particularly important if there is an implicit expectation that students are needing to meet and work as a group outside of class. This can jeapordise inclusivity and fairness, for example if students are juggling their studies with a job. A resulting solution might be that group work could be a simpler task and a smaller element of the overall unit mark,

Provide more guidance for students on the reasons for group work. Provide opportunities to discuss the assessment criteria further too. I could use the guidance provided by UNSW as a model. This model also suggests that students create a sort of ‘contract’ at the start of the project. In my case study, students had created one based on shared values. But in future I could suggest it include agreement on division of labour and roles within the team.

Being aware of observed gender differences in behaviour within group work. Scholars have percieved a tendency towards ‘social loafing’ in men (Tosuntaş, 2020). At the same time, being mindful that this may be an ‘effect’ of another dynamics within the group as well. These might include group size, and investment in the project. Experimenting with smaller group sizes could be helpful. (Challenging when the class itself is very large).

Accept a certain amount of difficulty with these group project scenarios. That they reflect something of what Orr and Shreeve (2018) describe as the ‘stickiness’ of an arts curriculum. That the formative is as important as the summative in these feedback scenarios. Accepting this myself might help to also moderate student anxiety around the ambiguities involved in these kind of projects.

References

Forsell, J., Frykedal, K. F., Chiriac, E. H., Hui, S. K. F. (2021), ‘Teachers’ perceived challenges in group work assessment’, Cogent Education (2021), 8: 1886474. doi: 10.1080/2331186X.2021.1886474

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

UCL Arena Centre (2019). Assessing group work (2019). Available at:  https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/publications/2019/aug/assessing-group-work (Accessed: 14 March 2025]

University of New South Wales (2025). Assessing group work, Available at: https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/assessing-group-work (Accessed: 14 March 2025)

University of New South Wales (2025), Student Guide to working in Groups. Available at: https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/upload-files/student_working_in_groups.pdf (Accessed: 14 March 2025)

Tosuntaş, Ş. B. (2020). ‘Diffusion of responsibility in group work: Social loafing,’ Journal of Pedagogical Research, (2020). 4(3), pp. 344-358. doi: 10.33902/JPR.2020465073

Contextual Background 

The Archives and Special Collections Centre (ASCC), is part of Library Services at UAL. The management of Library Services has brought in a new KPI (‘Key Performance Indicator’) around our taught sessions: ‘Have the Learning Outcomes been met?’. There is discussion about how to approach answering this in reporting. But how we measure or answer this might effect how sessions are planned.

Evaluation

I with others in the library Academic Liaison Group have suggested that to begin with, we to survey teams on how Learning Outcomes are currently devised and measured. Results so far are varied.

Library/Archive staff often deliver a one-off sessions to a course to impart research skills and help them to navigate and find resources. In most situations we do not see what the students end up doing with this training. How they find, use and synthesise resources for their course work and final projects is assessed by their course tutors.

Therefore planning of our sessions is based on what appears to work, in dialogue with tutors’ requirements. We can include in our session plans time for written or verbal feedback on our delivery to assess if learning has been effective. But there is also a recognition that students get questionnaire ‘fatigue’. Or if verbal feedback, students may be shy, or yet unsure how to articulate in what they might use the skills and resources.

Moving forwards

In art and design, ‘research’ can take many forms. Expectations around what this should look like are varied (Orr and Shreeve, 2018).

In delivering ‘Research skills’ whilst there are some straightforward things to deliver that relate to other academic disciplines (e.g. learning how to reference, learning how to navigate an archive catalogue and request material to see), planning for effective learning of ‘research’ in a broader sense may be tricky.

Planning for learning checks throughout the session, in terms of moments for discussion – ‘how might you use this method of research?’ Could help to assess whether the particular skills (e.g. using an archive) are understood. This is something we already do, but could do more of.

I also wonder whether for short induction sessions, learning checks such as formal or informal quizzes, after imparting information could be useful. We could plan to include these as part of the delivery.

We could try to engage tutors in post-session dialogue or check in with them at the end of the term, after student’s course work has been completed – however the capacity for staff to do this on top of other things would need to be explored. But having further dialogue with staff about the structure of the session and what is covered could be useful.

For times when students are using archives as part of their course brief, we could ask tutors if they would mind sharing the course feedback they get with us at the end of term. This might also tell us which aspects of the they found activity valuable or challenging. This might help inform us as to how we plan sessions in the future.

For our Academic Support Sessions where we give students a research task towards the end of the session, it might be useful to get students to contribute their discoveries via a padlet. It’s something we already do for other sessions but could be something we could come back to as evidence for the students employing the skills that we have imparted during the session, and might also be useful for the students to refer back to, after the session.

References

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

UAL Library Services Academic Liaison Group, Padlet for ‘Devising and measuring learning outcomes’ (2025). Available at: https://artslondon.padlet.org/mcassaro/devising-and-measuring-learning-outcomes-cbbtsf4x39cvosag (Accessed 16/03/2024)

Contextual Background: 

In our handling sessions we are introducing a large volume of students to selections of material from the archive, to show them the kind of resources we hold. We give them information about the collections, safe handling, and how they can book research appointments with us in the future. The sessions are quite short in which to transmit this information. A large number of students have English as a second language. Many are also neurodiverse. Many have never visited an archive before.

Evaluation:

We tend to try to select more visually engaging material than a high volume of written material, which students would struggle to read in the time. It varies but generally students seem to find it engaging to look at the material. Material is generally arranged on a group of central tables so that we can continue to keep an eye on it during the session, so students are arranged around it and rotate to look at it.

We provide written captions for material and printed leaflets that students can take away with a summary of the collections we hold, links to our catalogue, and our email address for how to book appointments. We also have QR codes for follow up information or to the section of our website. This seems to work well, but often I am not sure how much is understood by students who have English as a second language.

We have also produced online instruction videos when the students follow the links, on how to search our catalogues. These seem to all help students know how to book with us, but sometimes still need more clarification.

We introduce the instructions for how to handle material by talking and demonstrating physically. Challenges are particularly with instructions about *when* students should wear gloves, and when they should not. We sometimes also struggle to get students to follow our instructions about photography, depending on copyright restrictions.

Moving forwards:

We should continue to bring written captions for the material we have out on display, to help contextualise material and so students can use translation software to translate the captions if they need to. We can continue to talk through some of the material verbally and go round to speak to students individually as they are browsing to share more, or answer questions. These captions also derive from our catalogue descriptions, and we have been developing new cataloguing guidelines to ensure that the way we are describing material is inclusive.

In terms of imparting information on how to book appointments, we use a leaflet, and talk through it in person. We also have QR codes we share during the session for links to our ‘Visit Us’ page, to our workshop sessions on Academic Support online, and to more information on our collections via Libguides. One improvement to the leaflet might be to integrate the QR codes into it to facilitate accessibility. This helps to support providing material in multiple formats for different access needs. (UAL, 2023).

Regarding the verbal guidance and demonstration on handling archive material, one suggestion might be also to produce a poster/laminated guidance for handling guidelines and photography so the students can refer to it during the session.  (A physical poster rather than a Powerpoint because sometimes for handling sessions the room set up does not require a projector). Alternatively, we can continue as we do already by physically demonstrating good archive handling and repeating as necessary.

Regarding the physical arrangement, for different access needs such as if people need to sit down, we have chairs on standby for use and prop up larger items on display wedges so it could be visible from a lower angle if someone was in a wheelchair. The digitisation of some of our material by via Digital Collections also has helped us to share the material itself in different ways. However, copyright restrictions also prevent us doing this universally.

Regarding the content itself, we select things in dialogue with the tutors relating to what will be relevant to their session, and to focus on more visually interesting material for the impact in a short period of time. But doing more research into the material and finding new ways to make the material relatable by connecting to contemporary practices and culture could help make it more engaging for a young and diverse audience.

References (additional to word count) 

Oliver, M. (2004). ‘The Social Model in Action: if I had a hammer’ in Barnes, C. and Mercer, G. (ed.) Implementing the Social Model of Disability: Theory and Research Leeds: The Disability Press, pp. 18-31.

UAL Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit Disability Inclusion Toolkit (2023) Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/45680/disability-inclusion-toolkit (Accessed 14/03/2024)