Darren Raven OEP Extended Post

Darren Raven - RAV13397471 Open Educational Practice AE2: Extended post 3rd May 2013 Whilst I see the benefits of many Open Educational Practices with regards to nontraditional, self directed education, continuing professional development and empowering the disenfranchised I do struggle to see direct application of many of them within the context I currently work.

I am course leader for a large full-time graphic design course at LCC, where we conduct the majority of the teaching and learning within the studio environment and college resource areas. Encouraging students to come into college and work together, to learn from each other and form communities of practice is challenging.

Working full time for an educational institution also gives me little impetus to generate materials for anything other than my full time role. As far as I’m aware, these materials belong to UAL as they’re ‘produced on their dime’ as it were. Creating work to freely distribute, using Creative Commons licenses seems counter to what I’m employed to do. Maybe if I was fractional or sessional or worked in a variety of institutions or had my own educationally focused organisation I might think differently. I am a professional educator, paid to teach, it is not my hobby or my vocation.

The course has always made extensive use of the Blackboard VLE system as a means of organisation, communication and as a repository for learning materials.

Aspects such as the discussion board have not proven popular. Students are encouraged to explore and much prefer to use external open social network platforms such as the various blog sites (Tumblr, Blogger etc), they form Facebook project groups and find ways to utilise Twitter, Flickr and Issuu.com to host and publicise their developing practice. This all very much been an enhancement, add on and a way to capture process and reflection. A result of rather than a direct focus.

When needed I make reference to many online software tutorials, such as the professionally compiled sessions on Lynda.com or well-intentioned and skilled amateurs on YouTube during group tutorials. Students make good use of these resources as well as learning through peers. Anything else is window dressing and largely ignored if it gets too tricksy.

Whilst I appreciate that this is a little off brief and probably doesn’t meet the OEP unit learning outcomes I am more interested in investigating the concept of ‘open’ in terms of exploring the established systems within the course and institution I work.

By looking at the things we do and playing with them, taking them apart and handing them over to the students as part of their design learning new ways of working and learning can be discovered and provoked.

One thing that could be loosely considered to be an Open Educational Resource (OER), due to it being published on the internet and accessible by anyone who would be interested is the UAL Marking Criteria: http://www.arts.ac.uk/assessment/markingcriteria/ I have always been interested in assessment schemes and processes as they obviously play a major part within the learner’s experience on a course and, to an extent, drive learning and teaching activities. Bigg’s concept of constructive alignment underpins my practice as a course leader. Personally I don’t like grades,

their purpose shifts too easily from being a measure to a reward and much prefer focus on criteria and feedback.

From my experience, the most common view and attitude amongst students, is that assessment is a system that is applied to them and their work, a method of external judgment, measurement and reward or punishment of their achievement. Very much something that is done to them when they’ve finished something and handed it in.

Recently, with fellow LCC tutors Joshua Trees and Yvan Martinez we have been exploring alternative practices within international graphic design education which we plan to produce as a book that would help share and open up this often hidden practice to a wider audience http://www.booksfromthefuture.info/books/thoughtexperiments-in-graphic-design-education/ For own input into this proposed publication we referred to ideas and approaches from the Metadesigners Open Network http://metadesigners.org and designed a major project called Thought Experiments.

This project delivered to 40+ x Year 02 BA Graphic & Media Design students explores, hopefully, creating a more student-centred and open assessment system that drives learning. One that hopefully frees the students from the traditional didactic paradigm to a more inductive model that challenges students assumptions on their role within their own learning.

As part of this project students were asked to form groups entitled ‘Think Tanks’ with 4 or 5 participants whose work they admire, respect or find interesting. Once formed they were asked to review and analyse the UAL Marking Criteria and pick as many of them out of the 8 that they saw as interesting, challenging, difficult for them to grasp or relevant to their Think Tank in anyway they could explain.

Each Think Tank was then asked to rewrite the UAL grading language for their chosen criteria for the ‘A’ grade and design their own shared process for assessing each other’s work. They were encouraged to be as creative and playful as possible.

They were assured that their final grade for this project would be based on how thorough they did this. We were careful to play within the UAL Assessment policy, making it more open rather than using it as a means to close process down.

For the first of three stages to this project, following a studio workshop where they were introduced to simple generative systems for producing visual graphic experiments with found materials (such as randomly cropping, combining and collaging images and text from magazines) they were tasked to consider their Think Tank’s assessment criteria and create an individual process system to produce a large amount of visual experiments.

They were then asked to test their system, make prototypes and bring them in for a session where their Think Tank would assess the work.

During this session we asked them to do this and produce a PDF presentation file that could be delivered in 5minutes detailing their evaluation of the work and their assessment process.

Each Think Tank presented to the rest of the students where discussion on the whole process of assessment, terminology of criteria, worth of words and subjective versus objective review was opened. The PDF’s were collected, collated and uploaded to

Issuu.com for sharing and further review: http://issuu.com/darrenraven/docs/think_tanks_systems There are two more stages to this ongoing project where they are asked to refine and adapt both their assessment and working process.

The idea is that by opening up the assessment in this manner it becomes more of a instigator of process rather than a measure and judgment tool.

As well as this project forming a chapter in the proposed Thought Experiments book students will be asked to find a way to publish their outcomes and work online for other students to learn from and spread the idea of taking ownership of assessment process.

Biggs, J.B. (2003). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Open University Press.

Black, P.J. & Wiliam, D. (1998). ‘Assessment and Classroom Learning’. Assessment in Education.

Orr, S. (2005). ‘Justify 66 to me!’ In C. Rust (Ed.), Improving Student Learning through Assessment: Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium. Oxford Brookes University.

Savin-Baden, M. (2003). Facilitating Problem-Based Learning. Open University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge University Press

1) RESEARCH + DEVELOPMENT + EXPERIMENTATION Collecting information. Research in a range of processes, materials, professionals etc. Analyse and organise the information.

Provide evidence of use of different materials and processes.

2) TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE + COMMUNICATION & PRESENTATION The idea and message must be unified with the medium, process and outcome.

Explain why/how they are unified and have evidence of your process to the final outcome and choices.

3) SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE + PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Personal reflection and analysis of yourself and your project. Show and comment on your development, learning and improvement. Support this with evidence and organisation of your work.

RESEARCH + DEVELOPMENT + EXPERIMENTATION • collecting • experimenting • inspiration • process

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE + COMMUNICATION & PRESENTATION • presentation • unity • medium • message

SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE + PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT • reflection • learning • improvement • analyse

Research Extensive primary and secondary research using a variety of sources.

Must relate to subject and project proposal.

Experimentation Experimentng with a range of techniques and processes whilst taking risks. Show evidence of personal decision making based on opinions of peers and tutors.

PPD

There is evidence to convey personal reflection that improves on strengths and weaknesses, leading to further planning of outcomes and in depth analysis.

Research

Leif Podajsky is an artist and creative director whose abstract and illusive style has influenced all of our working styes.

Similar to Hannah Hoch, his collage style focusses on human facial features.

Experimentation

PPD

A6 Crop in the centre of the magazine.

Restricted with working only with two elements from the magazine.

Angela, Hele and Greg’s think tank

Angela’s System: Using the triangular stencils, apply to an A4 page and cut around the shape.

Think about...

Layout White space Angela’s Marking criteria: Experimentation and Communication + Presentation

Hele’s view - There were extensive variations on the subject matter, including size and lay out.

- Some form of questioning has taken place, but I am not sure to what extent.

- A unique style has been formed and played aroud with.

- I am not entirely sure of the audience, or if she needs one.

-Grade: B+ Gregs view - There is a depth within the experimentation as there is a variety of methods that have been used.

- The methods have developed into a more defined system and I think this shows that some questioning has been been done.

- No clear audience has been defined yet -Grade: BMy own view -Following the criteria, I wanted to experiment with different shapes and sizes and cropping what is not neccesary.

-I feel that I could have experimented a bit more, as one of our points was ‘to go crazy’.

-Grade: B-

Overall Grade

B

Greg’s system I have experimented with a series of collages, exploring the relation betweem text and image.

The system is to find a random peice of text and create and image based on the sentence.

Marking criteria; Experimentation & Technical Competence Hele’s view -Greg was fairly experimental amd shows a variation in his creations, I am not sure to what extent he has questioned his work, but this may come later in the development stage.

-Greg is very technically competant. The work is well executed and shows attention to detail.

-Overall there seems to be a strong starting point but little to support this in terms of development.

-Grade: CAngela’s view -He has executed the system well. However some more variations would have been nice to see.

-What I like about the collages is the humour that he has added into the pieces.

-Grade: CMy own view I dont think this work reflects the direction that I want to go with my project. I need to decide on a more detailed system.

C-

Hele’s system

Hele’s system I have experimented with colour.

My system was to find objects in my house and arrange them into red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. I then arranged these objects onto an A2 format.

I looked into general colour theory and then more specifically, colour in branding and clothing. I used this information to analyse and consider why certain house hold objects may be certain colours, for example green means healing and plaster packet was green, blue can symbolise medicine and savlon was blue.

Marking criteria; Experimentation & Subject knowledge Angelas view -Hele’s research was very thorough, as she looked into colour theories and background knowlegde of clour brands.

-She personalised her work, which is part of our criteria.

-Grade B+ Gregs view - Hele has done very relelvent research and it has provoked interesting options for her to work on.

- the variety of research is in depth and very edited.

- there has been a large amount of experimentation but i feel that each object could be more specific to the colours meaning.

-Grade B+ My view I enjoyed the outcome of this peice of work, however I am aware that it could be taken to new levels and further research could be developed in discovering new criteria.

-Grade B-

Overall Grade

B+

RESEARCH + ANALYSIS + SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE •

•

•

EXPERIMENTATION

Carry out primary and/or • Demonstrate risk taking: secondary research. different materials/ Illustrate in-depth and mediums / new ideas relevant research. explored.

Understanding and • Evidence of process and applying research. direction (experiments with purpose).

• Clear indication of problem solving.

TECHNICAL COMPETENCE

COMMUNICATION + PRESENTATION

PERSONAL + PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• • •

• Clear unified message and purpose.

• Distinguish personal style.

• Evidence of reflection, evaluation, planning and learning.

• Clear thought process.

• Ability to recognise criticism and improve.

Portfolio worthy.

Ideas executed well.

Developing technical / craft skills to a high standard.

YES

NEARLY

NO

2

1

0



NAME:

ACHIEVED?

TOTAL

GRADE

 

3

C+

  

6

A

24 (78%)

B

RESEARCH + ANALYSIS + SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE • Carry out primary and/or secondary research.

• Illustrate in-depth and relevant research.

• Understanding and applying research.



EXPERIMENTATION • Demonstrate risk taking: different materials/ mediums / new ideas explored.

• Evidence of process and direction (experiments with purpose).

• Clear indication of problem solving.

TOTAL (out of 28)

% 100 - 96 95 - 91 90 - 86 85 - 81 80 - 76 75 - 71 70 - 66 65 - 61 60 - 56 55 - 51 50 - 46 45 - 41 40 and under

GRADE A+ A AB+ B BC+ C CD+ D DE

Experimentation Present your series of experiments. Find an impartial judge who is unaware of your project and experiment. Ask the judge to try and identify what you are try to experiment with through no description of the project. A successful series of experiments will be identified easily by a judge.