Planning and teaching for effective learning
Since last summer, I’ve been creating an archive of resources that students can access whenever needed. I began by developing a Padlet of photography resources. This compilation includes different types of resources, such as highlights from my presentations, YouTube tutorials, video tutorials I created, magazine articles, LinkedIn Learning courses, and more. I haven’t finished all the content I want to make, but I have started sharing it with some students before officially releasing it. So far, the feedback has been positive, and students have found it helpful.
In November of last year, during the CCM, the BA students provided feedback, stating that they found the software instruction handouts created by my college to be very useful for our sessions. If you want your learning resources to be used and appreciated, involving students in your resource-development process can significantly increase their impact (Aspery, 2023). After discussing this with her, we agreed to create handouts for all the workshops where they were applicable, not just for those in which we were teaching software skills. So, I started designing handouts to accompany the digital resources for the presentations (e.g. presentations and Padlets). These resources aim to be part of a support system that facilitates students in achieving learning outcomes without diminishing their creativity and independent learning. ‘[…] support systems and other frameworks that help students understand what they have to do in order to successfully complete a programme of work.’ (Davies, 2012).
For the latest workshop, I designed handouts for a ‘Zine in a Day’ workshop. In this session, I was going to show Year 1 students how to fold four different types of Zines. I know that not everyone learns the same way, so I wanted to address different learning styles. I created a series of step-by-step illustrations and written instructions for each fold. This supports both visual and text learners. I provided printed handouts to help facilitate learning. My goal was to allow faster students to proceed without getting bored if the session pace was slower, and the handouts would help them replicate the folds later. They also had to do another example of each of the folds at home as homework. I translated the illustrations into a keynote presentation to show the steps on a larger screen. I did a live demonstration of each zine for everyone to follow along. This variety in instruction mediums greatly aided the students. I checked in on everyone during the steps while my colleague assisted.
I didn’t use the Padlet this session. It would have benefited online-focused students, but I lacked time to create it. In future workshops, I’ll try to include all resource types.
This has been one of my most engaging sessions with that year group, thanks to the workshop’s hands-on nature and the multiple support systems in place. While I can’t recreate this system for every session, I will adapt and incorporate the tools I learned for future sessions.
References:
Aspery, L. (2023) ‘How to co-create learning resources with students’, Times Higher Education, 29 November. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-cocreate-learning-resources-students
Davies, A. (2012) ‘Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design: What’s the recurring problem?’, Networks, (18), pp. 1-12. University of Brighton. Available at: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/networks/issue-18-july-2012/learning-outcomes-and-assessment-criteria-in-art-and-design.-whats-the-recurring-problem