Since I started teaching at UAL, I have struggled with the education system separating ‘academic’ and ‘technical’ teaching. I think it doesn’t make sense to divide theory from practice. I come from a country where the education system is integrated. All teaching staff is referred to as ‘academic. ‘ The same person can teach both semiotics and how to make a bicycle. Therefore, I make my sessions a hybrid of what is considered technical and academic teaching. I like this approach because I don’t think it is good pedagogy to teach students how to create things without their context.
For the last few months, I’ve been trying to design what I’m defining as “minicourses” for students to learn Graphic Design skills. For example, an Editorial Design minicourse will start with an analogue layout and typography techniques workshop that can later be translated into digital software. The next step will be to create the publication on the computer and learn the printing characteristics once it is ready. Afterwards, finish the publication with a book binding session. This is a very short summary example of illustrating the Connected Curriculum (Fung and Carnell 2017) approach that I’m trying to do for the ‘technical’ teaching. Fung’s framework encourages students to make connections between different disciplinary perspectives. That I am trying to apply to these ‘minicourses’.
One of the challenges I have faced while trying to do these ‘minicourses’ is the time I’m given to teach students and the academic reluctance to the learning curve of the skill I’m trying to develop. Only a few of them have allowed me enough time with them, and I have understood the importance of not just giving them disconnected technical skills sessions. It is interesting how the perspective changes depending on who you are having the conversation with about building up knowledge for students. Technicians agree that the knowledge should be developed by building up from the starting point and that everything should be related. Academics who are more focused on research believe that technical skills should be separate sessions that don’t need a context to be taught, as you can learn them at any time. This creates a huge gap between teaching philosophies.
These ‘minicourses’ design is my response to the technical teaching not being part of the curriculum development. A curriculum is one of the many ways for knowledge to be organised, structured and made meaningful, for and by students. (Lam, 2022). So, what I am trying to do is embed in my teaching a curriculum development that organises technical knowledge and skills in a logical and structured way. I still have a lot of research to do and a long way to go, but it is a goal that I want to meet in a more or less near future.
References:
Carnell, B.S. and Fung, D. (eds) (2017) Developing the Higher Education Curriculum: Research-based Education in Practice. London: UCL Press. Available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10032889/1/Developing-the-Higher-Education-Curriculum.pdf
Lam, A.M.-H. (2022) ‘Shaping a curriculum framework: the fundamental principles’, Times Higher Education, 18 March. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/shaping-curriculum-framework-fundamental-principles