Teaching Staff

This afternoon, I have had a very pleasant teaching experience.

Wimbledon’s Human Resources department decided to deliver, through the CLTAD, the Supervising Research Degrees in Art and Design course in a compressed mode. They arranged for Stuart Evans to deliver 5 intensive days but ‘forgot’ to involve the Research Centre in any teaching capacity. Stuart contacted me 2 weeks before the course was due to start to see if I could deliver a couple of short presentations. One of the presentations was scheduled for a Friday, which is where I work for the University of the Arts. I had to book a half-day annual leave in order to do this presentation (it was too late to change any days and I had engagement at both institutions for that week) as I thought it was important that our staff learned about Wimbledon School of Art research degree procedures. The little support the School had given me and the badly planned arrangements had already pre-disposed me against the sessions.

Also, in the past, all staff related sessions the Centre had run had been very problematic and contentious, used to complain or raise political issues. I had also seen the difficulties of teaching staff on some of the PGCert sessions. However, what I thought was going to be both tough and tiresome turned out to be very productive and enjoyable. This was the second session of the intensive course and Malcolm and I ran a presentation on admissions the day before so the ice had already been broken when I faced the 15 members of staff on my own.

I decided (as I had such little time to prepare and wanted to attend the tutor group session in the morning) to make a little exercise instead of just transmitting information. I learned this from my teaching observation and my profile 2 and was wondering if it would be successful with staff. I ran the session as follows:

- Introduction: the seven tasks of the supervisor in Facilitating Reflective Learning in Higher Education – Broakbank, A & McGill, I (1998) (also to link in with Linda Wheeler’s session, focusing on the reflective practitioner)
- The importance of monitoring to understand student’s ‘gear changes’
- Workshop task: Brainstorming: ‘Why monitor?’
- Workshop task: Brainstorming: ‘How can we monitor?’
- Wimbledon School of Art official monitoring procedures

Materials:
- Wimbledon School of Art Research Degrees Handbook 2004-05
- WSA Tutorial Record Form
- WSA Annual Report Form
- WSA Supervisory Team Meeting Report Form

Time: 45 minutes

Staff were very receptive and responsive, really participating in the 2 brainstorming tasks. I tried to encourage them as much as possible, making them feel confident that the suggestions they were giving, however flippant, were interesting and valuable (which they were).

I have real proof that the session worked. Stuart asked me if we could invite staff to attend research degree student presentations for them to see the level (as the majority are not supervising). When I send the email round, I had very positive take up, even though this is not strictly part of their course. Since the session, I persuaded one member of staff attending the course to supervise one of our students. I knew he did not feel confident before, as he thought he did not have the level required and couldn’t understand the procedures. The supervisor’s course sessions help him to understand better the nature of research degrees, to gain confidence and to feel supported by the Centre. Other staff have already contacted me to get more involved with students. This positive response is something I have been seeking for the 3 years I worked at Wimbledon (staff saw research degrees as ‘added’ to their workload with no real benefit).