Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: Group Tutorials
Size of student group: 6 second years
Observer: Linda Aloysius
Observee: Derek Lawlor
What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?
Tutorials with Year 2 Weave students as part of ReWeave and Re:roll Sation Lab 2.0
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
I have been working with Year 2 since September 2023 – I have taught on Year 1 Projects and Year 2 Pathway Rotations
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
For this project students will be exploring their own approaches to sustainability as responsible designers. Students will be introduced to different approaches to sustainable practise as well as increasing their brand awareness and experience of designing for a client.
Students will be exploring methods of making experimental yarns from waste which they may weave with and creating woven textile swatches for fashion clothing and/or accessories.
Students will be using commercial waste materials as your own and deadstock yarns
which are available in the Weave workshop.
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?
This is the first tutorials of the project to discuss research and talk about the project in general.
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
Ensuring that all students feel they can be conversational and share their ideas. I will encourage students to offer feedback to their peers, so it is not just they tutor.
How will students be informed of the observation/review?
-We can explain to them at the beginning of the sessions
What would you particularly like feedback on?
-General feedback – observation of tutorials, interaction and knowledge exchange
How will feedback be exchanged?
Discussion of Lesson Plan (recorded) and key points noted in the ‘Suggestions’ area.
Part Two
Thank you, Derek, for sharing your Lesson Plan with me and for discussing your ideas and thoughts in relation to this. It was great to hear about how you approach the session with your students and your sensitivity towards them is to your credit.
Suggestions:
There are a couple of key points that arose from our discussion, which may be useful going forward:
- We discussed the possibility of you sending a (group) email to your students, prior to the session, to tell them that you are looking forward to working with them again and to reinforce their perception / understanding of ‘research’ to help them to prepare for the session ahead. Outlining very clearly – to the extent of breaking this down into different points or different sections – what ‘research’ entails, in this particular context, and what you expect them to bring with them to the session, should help them to arrive engaged and – ideally – impassioned and eager for more learning and knowledge exchange.
- Emphasising to your students that the session is about team work and them helping one another, as they would be expected to in an industry setting, may help them to offer feedback to one another and encourage more verbally confident students to help less verbally confident students in speaking up; in other words, re-framing the session not so much as a series of one-to-one tutorials with peers joining in, and where the emphasis is on what research has been brought into class for discussion, but more as a co-taught, team session in which the central task is to help everyone to feel able to offer verbal feedback and the ‘content’ of the research for discussion is not the main focus as such. As you and I discussed this idea, the further ideas of using objects to help shy students to feel more confident about speaking and also asking students to physically move around – possibly at the start of the session – also arose. I subsequently wondered whether playing some music at the start of the session, as they move around, might also help to change the pace and tone of their day, given that you see them at the end of a long day, so that they are more engaged from the outset. You could emphasise team work and re-framing the session as a team task in the email that you send out to them prior to the session and again at the start of the task and you could also offer verbal rewards – praise, thanks, compliments – to students whenever they show willingness to work as a team and help one another, so that the idea of co-teaching, team work and equality are continually emphasized throughout their learning experience with you.
Part Three
Thank you Linda for your observations and comments;
Going forward I think it is a good idea to reach out to students prior to tutorials. As this is their first research tutorial in the the project it would be beneficial for students to know what is expected to bring to the tutorial. There could be more emphasis on research and ideas to discuss even if they haven’t managed to build enough research to show in the tutorial.
Students have been briefed by their pathway leader prior to the tutorial but I think it is important for them to know what is expected when they come to their first tutorial of a project. I could explain more about what the research should consist of and what I would like them to present.I would like this to be an opportunity to create further ideas/references to explore.
Often students are coming to a tutorial after a workshop, I think it would be good to start the tutorials with an activity to allow them to feel more engaged. This could be a brainstorming session connect to the project but not forward focused on a particular student allowing them to feel comfortable within the group tutorial setting.