Performing the Crit

Contextual Background 

UAL’s Assessment Criteria Framework formalises how we mark student work against five criteria. In Fine Art however, a prior mode of assessment remains in use informally: the critique, known as the ‘crit’. These are often timetabled at the end of exhibitions and work-in-progress shows and have evolved into a formative Fine Art ritual. A concern, however, is that the crit is essentially an unstructured ‘off-record’ exchange of feedback that students either take to heart or dismiss as irrelevant. 

Evaluation 

I am divided over the value of crits in Fine Art. Becoming more of an interrogation since the seventies (Houghton, 2014, 2016), traces of this ritual persist with many students finding the occasion stressful and fear-inducing (Flynn, 2022). On the other hand, by promoting a safe space, respect, and professional feedback from staff and students, the crit can be invigorating, as well as helping students develop some of the attributes recognised by UAL’s Creative Attributes Framework such as Communication and Resilience (UAL, 2022). 

On BA Fine Art: Computational Arts our current strategy is to minimise the use of crits and participate in cross Fine-Art course crits arranged to take place at shows. A challenge, however, is that often our students are inexperienced in crits compared to students from pathways where the crit is more engrained in the culture of the course. Performing at the crit is habitually considered a Fine Art skill in itself with an expectation that students learn to defend their ideas and knowledge in response to scrutiny from art critics. 

Moving forwards 

In the seventies, CalArts developed the crit into an “expanded crit” where a student had to “hold [their] own in the face of intense and lengthy interrogation … likened to a gladiatorial contest” (Houghton, 2014). It’s important to note that CalArts and NSCAD shared an academic structure that had no grades (ibid). The introduction of grades and written feedback at UAL arguably re-positions crits as student presentations. The crit has concerned scholars, calling us to critique the crit (Cleary Rodrigues, 2025), reimagine the crit (Jan, 2021), and rethink the crit (Flynn, 2022). Studies have shown students experience fear, stress, and defensiveness (Flynn, 2022). Flynn proposes a flipped model where students learn to assess ideas by doing the judging themselves (ibid). This approach may help my team reconsider the crit as an opportunity for students to learn how to critique art.

Furthermore, Flynn identifies that the tutor is often performing the role of an expert critic, making use of “history and theory to reinforce and substantiate their statements [and] suggest references”, with a sheer amount of information, in no particular order, posing a challenge for students (ibid).

To give students more guidance, I will start by explaining what a crit is, and explain that different tutors may enact different forms of crit ranging from silent crits to ones that require the student to first explain their work. To guide students to give feedback to each other I can use the analogy of a gift – sharing the notion that feedback is to be offered as a gift, presented as a gift (‘wrapped’ and delivered with care), and received as a gift with appreciation rather than defensiveness. Recently, a visiting artist commented that our students had provided feedback that he found constructive. This presents an opportunity to invite more artists to participate in flipped crits where the students develop their communication skills.

In summary, moving forward I will:

• Be attentive to, and share with my team, the context in which crits are performed, and the danger of reenacting outdated modes of interaction. 
• Inform students of what a crit is, and the history of the crit in Fine Art education. 
• Promote healthier, more respectful forms of feedback exchange. 
• Investigate a flipped crit model as proposed by Flynn.
• Invite artists to participate in reciprocal crits.

References 

UAL (2022) Creative attributes framework, UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/teaching-and-learning-exchange/careers-and-employability/creative-attributes-framework (Accessed: 22 March 2025). 

Silberberger, Jan. ‘Reimagining the Crit’. In Against and for Method: Revisiting Architectural Design as ResearchAgainst and for Method: Revisiting Architectural Design as Research, edited by Jan Silberberger, 224–34. gta Verlag, 2021. https://doi.org/10.54872/gta/4550-12.

Flynn, P., 2022. rethinking the Crit. In Rethinking the Crit (pp. 1-24). Routledge.

Houghton, Nicholas. ‘Fine Art Pedagogy after Modernism: A Case Study of Two Pioneering Art Schools’. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education 13, no. 1 (1 April 2014): 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1386/adch.13.1.7_1.

Houghton, N., 2016. Six into one: The contradictory art school curriculum and how it came about. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 35(1), pp.107-120.

Cleary Rodrigues, M. C. (2025). The crit: Making meaning with peers in fine art studio pedagogy. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14740222241311857

The skill of making art on computers: Computational Art skills at the intersection of academic and technical teaching

Contextual Background 

On BA Fine Art: Computational Arts, I’m planning on improving how academic and technical learning is interwoven into the curriculum. Contemporary Art Schools including UAL are often staffed with separate academic and technician teams devising their own teaching plans for students. As such, a student can be exposed to two different sets of scheduled activities within the curriculum, and technical learning is often not mandatory, so technical literacy can vary widely within a cohort as some students engage with technical workshops and others less so.

Evaluation 

On computational arts we have explored different ways to address this. Our lead technician, James Stringer created a booking system for students to reserve a place on cross-year workshops. These have been timetabled to not clash with academic teaching.

In the previous academic cycle 2023-24, we successfully integrated academic and technical teaching by allocating a member of the academic teaching team to co-deliver the technical workshop on Mondays. First, it encouraged the technician and lecturer to devise a more interwoven lesson plan for the week where technical skills were understood as connected to the themes of the unit and artistic references shared by the lecturer. Second, the approach improved attendance rates and student satisfaction. Due to a reduced staffing budget, we have not been able to implement this approach for the current 2024-25 cycle. 

Moving forwards 

In Fine Art Pedagogy after Modernism, Houghton (2014) explains how seperate technical teaching in Art schools originates from the pioneering pedagogy taught at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD). To ensure art students could still access technical resources regardless of the module “the pedagogy that was created was one where skills were available à la carte, ideas and process dominated …” (ibid, page 7). 

Fine Art courses routinely centre contextual studies and make the teaching of skills optional and open to all students, delivered by technicians. Arguably, this approach is not sufficient to reach the technical literacy increasingly required for creative professions. This resonates with UAL’s Creative Attributes Framework (UAL, 2022) that recommends the development of self-efficacy, resilience, and agility.  

I have tried to reintegrate skills-based teaching into the pedagogy of the course, an approach that resonates with the pedagogical views of the previous Programme Director (Chorpening, 2014) who observed a “shift away from the skills of making” on BA Fine Art courses.

My own teaching has been influenced by my experience in computing departments where acquiring technical skills is often mandatory. In Fine Art, I want to pursue an approach that dissolves the demarcation between ‘lecture’ and ‘workshop’ with hybrid activities that may begin with contextual slides and artistic references, followed by teaching skills needed for the type of practice that the lesson is covering. Our lecturers would be more inclined to integrate skills-based learning into their teaching, leaning on their own practices and expertise. The limitation of this approach, however, is that the technical team still operates an open access model as expected by the college, and as such, can often be out of sync with the academic team.

In summary, moving forward I will:

• Continue to advance a pedagogy that dissolves the separation between theory and skills-based teaching, encouraging where possible hybrid teaching activities.
• Work closely with the technical team to ensure that academic and technical teams align their teaching.
• Where possible, create joint-delivery workshops with both a technician and academic present, to encourage collaboration. 
• Be attentive to the wider context in which Fine Art education has responded to the need for skills-based teaching, and respond to attributes identified in the CAF report.

References 

Houghton, Nicholas. ‘Fine Art Pedagogy after Modernism: A Case Study of Two Pioneering Art Schools’. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education 13, no. 1 (1 April 2014): 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1386/adch.13.1.7_1.

UAL (2022) Creative attributes framework, UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/teaching-and-learning-exchange/careers-and-employability/creative-attributes-framework (Accessed: 22 March 2025). 

Chorpening, K., 2014. The problem with making in fine art: A case for the expanded teaching of drawing. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 13(1), pp.93-107.

Human Computation: Teaching Computational Arts without Computers

Contextual Background 

The BA in Fine Art: Computational Arts requires students to use computers, as the name implies. This can be daunting at the start of their studies and can unintentionally exacerbate inequalities within a cohort as students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds may not have their own computers and may be borrowing an old laptop that struggles to run some of the software, for example.

Evaluation

Since the course began in 2021, I have taken steps to mitigate this and to create a level-playing field that is accessible and inclusive. Unit 1, which is officially titled ‘Introduction to Fine Art and Computational Arts’ has been framed as ‘Human Computation’ – and invites students to not use computers for the first four weeks, by considering computation as a human and more-than-human practice, evidenced by processes found in nature and traditional crafts. The unit is comprised of lectures and workshops that are non-digital such as knitting.

The team and identified that the unit still fell short at meeting our students’ diverse needs as some international students struggling with English misunderstood the brief. In response, we ensured that language support and academic support was properly signposted and introduced at the start of the unit. This has helped improve pass rates and in the most recent cycle, no students failed unit 1.  

Moving forwards 

Our pedagogical approach to Unit 1 sets the tone of the course, eschewing the more computer and coding intensive approaches to digital arts courses such as at Carnegie Melon (Levin, 2021), and UAL’s Creative Computing Institute^[1].

A concern moving forward, is that accessibility and inclusivity on the course still hinges upon the provision of adequate computers to all students. Currently, we only have four available computers in our teaching space, limiting the number of students that we can support during technical workshops. We are currently in the process of purchasing more computers after campaigning for more resources. 

I plan to create a video-resource that we can share with applicants before the programme commences to explain the recommended kit and support available. This idea is based on feedback received from the Observations exercise of a video I made.

Having been a student myself at UAL through this PGCert, I have seen firsthand how the first weeks of studying involved becoming familiar with UAL’s multiple IT systems. This requires the use of computers to engage with, which may inevitably cause computer-related anxiety that we try to alleviate. To mitigate this I plan to put Unit 1’s resources, lecture slides and reading list on a website that we can share with students prior to commencing. This would enable the content of unit 1 to be accessible without the need to first familiarise students to Moodle and troubleshoot login issues. Educators in similar digital arts courses have had success in using open-access platforms and websites through which they share their academic teaching material. Notable examples include Jeff Thompson^[2], Alison Parrish^[3], Everest Pipkin^[4] and Joel Gethin-Lewis from UAL CCI.^[5]

In summary, moving forward I will:

• Create a welcoming video that prepares students for unit 1.
• Work on the equipment bid to ensure that we have more computers available at the start of term.
• Place our unit 1 teaching materials on a website that doesn’t require a UAL login to access, to ensure newcomers have a chance to see the teaching materials in advance of starting. 
• Signpost new students to language support and academic support, and schedule briefings from representatives of those teams.
• Be attentive to the support needs of students in the first weeks regarding accessing UAL’s IT systems. 

References 

Levin, G. and Brain, T., 2021. Code as creative medium: a handbook for computational art and design. MIT Press.

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^[1] https://www.arts.ac.uk/creative-computing-institute

^[2] https://www.jeffreythompson.org/cv.html

^[3] https://www.decontextualize.com

^[4] https://everest-pipkin.com

^[5] https://jgl.github.io

Marv Recinto, writing for Art Review (2023), argues that artists and art institutions “seem content to merely ‘address’, ‘engage with’ or ‘respond to’ the climate crisis”, putting out exhibitions that promise to raise awareness. One example is a past exhibition at the Hayward gallery in London titled Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis which showcased the work of artists such as Andrea Bowers who is an artist as well as climate activist.^[1] Recinto, although aware of Bower’s activism, argues the artwork does not fulfil the show catalogue’s claim that art plays a role in the climate crisis. The problem it seems, is that shows of this type, often call viewers to address the climate crisis, yet the works themselves merely call for action, and not evidence action in their production or concept. Furthermore, Recinto suggests that the institutions themselves could demonstrate actions they are taking. 

This article resonated with my concerns and challenges when implementing within Fine Art pedagogy, UALs new Social Purpose Plan (UAL, 2023)  and Climate Action Plan (UAL, 2021). As courses at Camberwell College get revalidated, the directive to implement these plans have trickled down and made their way into the new course handbooks, currently in progress and commencing in 2025/26. I have no objection to Fine Art addressing the climate emergency and actioning UAL’s overall strategy. My concern, however, is how these issues and declarations of intent become performative. Take for example this passage for a newly revalidated unit:

“you will be introduced to the idea that all art is ecological because it has the capacity to transform us and our relationship to the world.  All art is ecological because it includes its environment in its form.”

It is clear that the Social Purpose Plan has influenced authors to attempt to address issues head on by stipulating that all art implicitly enacts climate justice goals. To me, this is the sort of institutional practice that Recinto is critiquing; art colleges uncritically promising an ‘addressing’ and ‘engaging with’ the climate crisis through its student’s work. Furthermore, I find this passage in the handbook problematic as it reduces complex planetary issues into a trivial matter of how to consider how artworks interact with the immediate space around it, clearly to reassure students that a learning outcome regarding climate justice can be met even by not addressing it explicitly.

I believe there are pedagogical ideas worth exploring further regarding the climate crisis. As a BA course, the onus could potentially be shared by actively engaging with groups that do promising work to drawn down carbon, build resilience, support biodiversity and so on. An example of this in practice is how we worked with Wolves Lanes Centre to introduce students to emerging ecological practices such as the growing of edible cacti. The students in return ran an event and shared their creative responses with the local community. 

Next steps in applying the learning:

• revise the language used in the handbook, with consideration as to how it would affect pedagogy on the course.
• Identify areas that we as a course team can do to demonstrate our own commitments and action regarding the climate emergency.
• identify opportunities for students to collaborate with external organisations.
• find artistic references that go beyond ‘raising awareness’.

References

Recinto, Mark. 2023. Eco exhibitions won’t save us (no date). https://artreview.com/ecocritical-art-hayward-dear-earth-climate-crisis-exhibition/.

UAL (2021). Climate Action Plan. [online] UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/climate-action-plan.

UAL (2023). Social Purpose. [online] UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/social-purpose.

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^[1]  http://www.andrewkreps.com/artists/andrea-bowers

Record of Observation or Review of Teaching Practice         

 

Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed:

Size of student group: 18

Observer: Taylor Rapley

Observee: Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

 

Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action.

Part One

Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review:

What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?

This is Assessment feedback for BA Fine Computational Arts, year 3, Unit 9 element1. The submission criteria for element 1 is to exhibit new work(s) at an external gallery (Southwark Park Galleries) and then hand in:

• 300 word artist statement
• Documentation of the work and another work generated during the unit

How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?

Although I am Course Leader, my teaching time is fully devoted to year 3 towards the practice and presentation elements of their units. Six of the students were my students during the first year of their studies, when I was the only member of staff on the BA.

What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?

I’ve attached the assessment Brief document. Please note that the brief and learning outcomes span both element 1 and element 2. Element 2 is the dissertation, so the learning outcomes lean more towards that.

What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?

After this, they will commence unit 10 element 1 – their degree show. 

Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?

My feedback comes from a place of really caring about the students, so I’m balancing providing practical advice with aligning to the marking criteria.  

How will students be informed of the observation/review?

Not applicable, I don’t think.

What would you particularly like feedback on?

Any feedback is welcome.

How will feedback be exchanged?

On this form?

Part Two

Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions:

Marking:

Positive:

• Personalised and thoughtful feedback for each student. The care for your students and their work is very apparent and I am sure dynamic and responsive feedback is appreciated by students.
• Honest feedback and critique are provided but always with positive and clear directions for improvement, even when a maximum grade has been achieved.
• I really appreciated that you gave areas for improvement not just for the artwork (and artistic statements) but also reflected on the student’s engagement with their process and gave clear direction in how they can improve in areas that affect their artwork such as engagement with tutorials and the support available to them.

Feedback/potential areas of improvement

• Although, the Learning Outcomes (LO’s) are based towards their dissertation, I think it would be useful for marking and for students to know the primary learning outcomes that they should focus on for each element or where they overlap. I gather that all would be relevant for element 2 but are there some solely focused on the E1 (physical work and supporting statements/images). I also wonder how much each element is weighted (% for E1 and % for E2) and your process of marking the overall unit and how a student’s grade in E1 would impact the entire unit.

• It would be interesting to know if you have any personal frameworks or criteria for each learning outcome too, and/or how they may vary across elements.
  • As outputs are varied, I understand having a dynamic approach is essential but are there any common/essential requirements or expectations that coincide with each LO. Maybe this could also assist in ensuring all required learning outcomes for the element have been mentioned in the marking to give students comprehensive validation on each aspect that what went well and also would highlight the clear areas for improvement, especially as some of the learning outcomes such as process and communication could be widely interpreted and as students are entering their final show the more clarity they receive the better.

• Have you spoken to or do you think it might be useful to speak to students to gain feedback on how useful marking was to them, and/or do you track their improvements from unit to unit? I gather this would happen during tutorials.

Part Three

Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged:

• Taylor’s observations have been very helpful, especially in conjunction with having seen and reviewed Taylor’s approach to marking, which responds to each LO clearly. 
• Taylor’s question is here is great “are there any common/essential requirements or expectations that coincide with each LO?”
• On units that have two elements such as Unit 9 and Unit 10, pairing practical work with a written thesis or essay, I think it would be very helpful for me to gain further clarification on this from the Programme Director and other course leaders in Fine Art. If the LOs are to be fulfilled by both elements together, does that mean for example, that ‘communication’ isn’t critically important to evidence on the practical element, given that the student develops this outcome by writing a thesis?   
• Taylor makes a good suggestion that the needs of the student should be considered:
• “maybe this could also assist in ensuring all required learning outcomes for the element have been mentioned in the marking to give students comprehensive validation on each aspect …” 
• Once I have consulted the Fine Art on this, I will be able to tailor my feedback on Unit 9 Element 1 to respond to the LOs that are weighted towards the practice. As Taylor does, I could create a template response that helps markers (including myself) identify the aspects of the student work that evidences the corresponding LO.   

Record of Observation or Review of Teaching Practice   

Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed:  

• 2 Marking feedback guides (E1 + E2) with 1 marking template (To be used with the E2 marking guide) 

• 3 examples of students work (1 for E1, 2 for E2) 

• Final Marking feedback for each of the students. 

• The unit brief. 

Size of student group:  64 

Observer: Matthew Plummer Fernández   

Observee: Taylor Rapley 

Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action. 

Part One 

Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review: 

What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum? 

Provided the brief and corresponding marking guides for the Leadership and Team Dynamics unit. 

• As we expand as a course, we need to maintain efficiency and parity across marking especially if markers are brought in beyond the core Team/course Faculty. 

• I have provided marking guides for both Element 1 (E1) and Element 2 (E2) these are used to guide the feedback process and help reason the grades of the learning outcomes. These would typically be presented during an initial meeting and then a parity meeting would be held between all markers to ensure our understanding is equal and on parity and if not, have a dialogue to understand how we can be and reach an agreement. 

• The marking guides contain prewritten feedback phrases that need some input and editing based upon on the students work. 

• The difference between E1 and E2 guides is that E1 shows the clear expectations from the brief, while E2 uses a checklist style template of the expectations from the brief to be used alongside the marking guide, to help provide evidence and secure the final grade and assist the final feedback edits based upon the marking guide. 

• I hope to gain your insight into using these tools when giving feedback and if you prefer using the corresponding template with the marking guide. While giving insight into positives and negatives of using such a system. 

• 1 team portfolio (That received an A +) is provided from this year to be used with E1 marking guide and  

• 2 student submissions for E2 have been provided one received and A the other a C. 

How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity? 

• Since September 2024, submission 1 (E1 in December), submission 2 (E2 in January) 

What are the intended or expected learning outcomes? 

• I hope to gain your insight into using these tools when giving feedback and if you prefer using the corresponding template with the marking guide (and the value of using it). While giving insight into positives and negatives of using such a system. 

• What information would a new marker need to know to begin marking and how would they like to receive that information (in terms of format). 

• Any other general thoughts on the marking process provided. 

What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)? 

N/A 

Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern? 

• Will this take away from feedback from the students or will it add structure, parity and clear steps for improvement. 

How will students be informed of the observation/review? 

• N/A 

What would you particularly like feedback on? 

• To gain your insight into using these tools when giving feedback and if you prefer using the corresponding template with the marking guide. While giving insight into positives and negatives of using such a system. 

• And what more information would a new marker need to know to begin marking and how would they like to receive that information (in terms of format). 

• Any other general thoughts on this marking process. 

How will feedback be exchanged? 

• Through the review of practice form sent via email, happy to have a follow up call to discuss further as I know both Matthew and I are reviewing marking procedures. 

Part Two 

Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions: 

Taylor, thank you for sharing various documents to fully understand your marking process. Here are some of my thoughts and observations: 

The marking templates are a great system for markers to follow and ensure parity across marking. The templates are very good at linking the feedback to the learning objectives. They also work well with UAL’s assessment criteria and use the same language; ‘excellent/ very good / good/ satisfactory’ and so on. 

The approach would certainly help with marking on large cohorts and provide guidance for markers that would overwise be overwhelmed and pressed for time.  

My question would be how rigid are these templates? Do personal tutors that mark work of the students they supervise get a chance to add tone that would be familiar to the students? Or are you aiming to provide a more official course-level response and tone that is the same across all marking?  

One thing that I feel is perhaps lacking in your feedback are small details that acknowledge the student’s work (beyond mentioning evidence that matches the assessment criteria), for example, mentioning the name of the project, team name, student name, or a particular highlight that stood out such as a unique source of inspiration, or a thoughtful observation.  

In the case of Haowen Chen, for example, your feedback says, “Particularly excellent use of Servant Leadership Theory”, but perhaps it would appear more personalised just by saying “Your contribution to the Social Media Agency Group makes excellent use of Servant Leadership Theory”. 

Another observation is that by writing feedback for each learning outcome separately, you may get some repetition as there are inevitably overlaps in the material that contributes to each grade, or an overlap in what the assessment criteria covers (I personally find a lot of overlap across demonstrating ‘enquiry’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘process’). 

In the case of Haowen Chen, for example, both learning outcome feedback sections mention ‘Excellent use of Gibbs Reflective mode’. Perhaps the second mention required rephrasing or focusing on an element that expands on the first mention.  

Ironically, this student is using the Gibbs method to evaluate and analyse how they failed to act and resolve a conflict. This to me reveals how the template approach may fail to catch details and offer constructive feedback that is more individualised or useful. Although the student has cited two frameworks to achieve an A, the student struggled to provide good leadership and avoided the conflict. This may not affect the student’s mark, but the feedback is an opportunity to add something like ‘although you struggled to intervene in the team’s conflict, your reflection demonstrates self-evaluation and an analysis of the issue [optional add-ons: through excellent use of the Gibbs framework’ / ‘For next time, consider…’].  

I appreciate that with larger cohorts and more marking to do, it is hard to notice details and expand much on the template. I guess a balance can be made depending on marking workload. The feedback is used primarily to explain the grades and a template performs this very well, but I think there’s joy for students in receiving feedback that makes them feel known by the team.  

Hope that helps, Taylor! I enjoyed studying your course assignment, marking, and student work, thanks for sharing and good luck with the course. 

Part Three 

Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged: 

*waiting on Part 3 from Observee

Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: YouTube video of Unit 10 element 1 briefing 

Size of student group:

Observer: Carys Kennedy

Observee: Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

 

Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action.

Part One

Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review:

What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?

This is a recording briefing that introduces Unit 10 element 1, for year 3 BA Fine Art: Computational Arts. It is hosted and unlisted on YouTube, so that it can more easily be embedded on a Slack post, which is our main form of communication between tutors and students on the course. Using YouTube is advantageous for providing generated captions and different viewing speeds. It also displays well on mobile phones.

How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?

Although I am Course Leader, my teaching time is fully devoted to year 3 towards the practice and presentation elements of their units. Six of the students were my students during the first year of their studies, when I was the only member of staff on the BA.

For context, the unit briefing and preparations would also be done with the Year 3 Leader however they went on sick leave the week before the start of the unit, so this video has had no second author to help improve the quality of the briefing. It is why this observation is useful to me.

What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?

The learning outcomes for both element 1 and element 2 of unit 10 are as follows:

What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?

Commence unit 10 element 1.

Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?

Not communicating the learning outcomes. Cutting corners in putting together the presentation in order to produce it in time. Delivering it as a video recording.

How will students be informed of the observation/review?

Not applicable, I don’t think.

What would you particularly like feedback on?

Any feedback is welcome.

How will feedback be exchanged?

On this form?

Part Two

Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions:

Thank you Matthew for sharing the Unit 10 briefing video for your course.

One of the first things I noticed was your friendly, personable and supportive delivery throughout. You expressed warmth and enthusiasm for the students as they move into the ‘final boss’ of their course, and I am hopeful that this helped to generate excitement at a time when students may be feeling quite overwhelmed. You also seemed very approachable and I got the impression from the recording that you have a positive relationship with your student cohort.

The content of the briefing was clear and well-structured. This included sharing a week-by-week timetable, which clearly let students know key dates. You shared images of the Wilson Road lecture hall, which will hopefully give students plenty of time to consider how to use their space during the degree show. I spotted examples where you refer back to students’ prior learning (e.g. how Unit 9 was structured, use of the Miro board you have used before) which also added to the sense of the briefing and the structure of the unit being clear and well-organised.You also closed with clear homework and next steps. 

There was just one slide that I thought was a bit ambiguous, and it was the Element 1 breakdown slide. I interpreted this as 20 images (of which 5 are of the installation and 15 are supplementary) – but because the bullet points are all at the same level, it was slightly unclear. Hopefully I interpreted it right. There were also certain bits of the slides which weren’t visible because of the cutout video of you speaking. This could be easily mitigated against if the slide deck was shared with the students, which you may well have done.

Unless I missed it, the Learning Outcomes weren’t shared with the students at this stage. Are you able to share more about how the students are introduced to the Learning Outcomes?

I really enjoyed seeing the three examples of student work from last year; I am hopeful this will have inspired the student group. I did notice that the students you referred to all seemed to be male, and seemed to have Western names. I’m wondering if that’s reflective of your student cohort? 

You also mentioned in the recording that you did the YouTube recording because you had been unwell. I’m curious what the usual practice is for briefings: are they always recorded? I ask because producing a video like this is such inclusive practice. The briefing video gives students something to refer back to, and supports students who might have been unwell/absent at the time of the briefing. You also considered accessibility when choosing YouTube as a platform, because of some of the accessibility features (e.g. captions) and its integration with Slack. One thing students sometimes feedback is ‘mixed messages’ between different tutors in briefings, and having a single recording helps to ensure consistency.

Thanks again for sharing such a clear and supportive briefing – I enjoyed watching it!

Part Three

Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged:

Thank you, Carys for the feedback. Having reflected on the notes, there are some things I could do better for next time:

• The slide with the hand-in breakdown was lifted directly from the official assessment brief for Unit 10. Although I wanted to communicate to students the ‘official’ submission requirements, I appreciate that the formatting isn’t ideal, and that I should reformat it and clarify it further for the briefing. I will also inform the Program Director that the official assessment brief could be made clearer as the bulleting is ambiguous. 
• My presentation is recorded with OBS and my screen is overlaid on top of the slide deck. I realised later that this covered up some parts of my slides. In future, I’ll download the OBS plug-in that uses computer vision to cut-out the speaker (like a tiktok video). I had also shared the slides with students, so at least they had that if they missed anything! 
• The learning outcomes were an omission, however I also aim to be balanced and not overwhelm the students with too much information. I will follow up with another recording that delves into learning outcomes. In any case, there is repetition of information across unit 9 and unit 10, which I mention in my briefing.
• The examples of work will be more varied next year once we have more graduates. Unfortunately, we only have one cohort of 10 students to pick from, 4 of which were female but transferred late to the course. The gender balance this year is something I’m keen to resolve which is why I’ve asked Zaiba to co-run unit 10 element1 – director of ‘Hervisions’ which showcases female digital artists. This briefing was followed up with a presentation of her curatorial work. Of the three male artists I showed, one is British, one is Indian-American, and the other is Lithuanian. Again, for the sake of not overwhelming students, I was keen on saving examples for other seminars. 
• I appreciate the positive feedback about the accessibility provided by a Youtube video recording that students can rewatch when needed. I have been doing more recordings this year and find it works well for students that can’t make it in and miss out on understandings if just the slides are provided. I think I will continue to experiment with my briefings, and then encourage my team to do the same, passing on the lessons I’ve learnt from this observation. Thank you! 

David Graeber was an anthropologist, anarchist activist and author of influential books often critique Capitalism, bureaucracy, debt, and institutional power. As an anarchist academic, he also expressed criticism of universities and used them as case studies. His book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Graeber, 2019) expands on his essay (Graeber, 2013) which investigates the theory that a sizeable percentage of jobs are meaningless and add little value to society. In this book, a particular provocation caught my attention and made me reflect on my interactions with UAL’s myriad of administrators. His provocation is that in the late nineties, administrators and executives took over the management of universities and began to prioritise activities that had little to do with pedagogy. As a consequence, universities have increasingly hired administrators to deal with the ever-increasing admin to do. Graeber casually suggests that this is evident through senior management’s briefings on strategy, innovation, and student experience, and next to no mention of teaching.

This observation certainly resonates with my own experience at working at uni and there is, phrasing this in a Graeber way, increasing “bullshitification” in my role, such as being more attentive to student surveys, registers, and admissions data– not necessarily the very real phenomena that the data is meant to reflect, but a tending to the data itself, to meet targets of data collection and completion. As a counter argument, universities have had to adapt to changes in government funding and political choices that require universities to operate more like companies in a competitive yet homogenising marketplace, and data collection is mostly due to external auditing.

One concern is how administrative tasks essentially necessitate the input of students and how the student experience becomes tainted with emails, briefings, and reminders to participate in surveys, register attendance, and participate in activities that are initiated for the metrics they fulfil. 

Teaching at UAL is often not prioritised enough and my course has not had an increase in faculty fractions and hiring budgets despite being stretched. What effect will this have on teaching? Can teachers be freed up to teach more or is being more attentive to administration the source of more administration, in the same way that adding more lanes on a motorway just increases more traffic?

David Graeber’s over-arching message is ‘things don’t have to be this way’; he was a radical optimist. Perhaps as educators we need to reimagine the college as downscaling in administrative tasks towards an appreciation for the qualities of teaching that are not quantifiable.

Next steps in applying the learning:

• To critically reflect on how university management focuses on administration by choice and be attentive to how that minimises teaching time.

• Use Graeber’s taxonomy to recognise weaknesses and avoid the trap of being drawn into exercises that bear no discernible improvement to student experience, pedagogy, or good management practices. 

• Consider reaching out more to admin support to mitigate an increase in admin while being attentive as to how this may still sap valuable time. 

• Take on a ‘radical optimist’ mindset to promote a degrowth of administration and make manifest the teaching-oriented culture that is fulfilling for both staff and students.

Reference List

Graeber, D., 2013. On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: A work rant. Strike Magazine, 3(1), p.5.

Graeber, D., 2019. Bullshit jobs: The rise of pointless work, and what we can do about it.

Microteaching session – 5th Feb, with Anna, Ko, Hatie and Rachel as participants.

Object Based Learning

Object-based learning (OBL) is a mode of pedagogy which involves the active integration of objects in the learning environment, to inspire, inform, and excite learners (Chatterjee 2011, 2016).

My approach to OBL was to teach ‘object-detection’ – a type of Computer Vision algorithm that can detect objects in images – taking a meta approach to the brief by looking at ‘objects’ through the machinic gaze.

Microteaching Plan

Here is the link to the microteaching material that I presented. (*edit: now accessible)

The session was aimed at BA Fine Art: Computational Arts students who would have had some experience with coding, coding editors, and using APIs.

Timings:

4-5mins: intro to object-detection library called YOLO,

2 mins: Quick recap on Google Colab

3mins: Quick recap on Flickr API (to source images from to apply YOLO to)

10mins: Live coding session with active participation, looking at Google Colab together

5mins: Review of the results – discussing the objects detected by the algorithm (and what it failed to detect).

Observations and feedback

I wanted to teach this in a live-coding style. This presented challenges that needed to be ironed out in advance. I had to pre-prepare most of the code which took a way the demystification and gentle pace of making something from scratch. Some of the feedback reflected this – as it suggested that the session could be initiated with a check-in at the start to assess coding literacy. I admired how the PgCert team uses Teams to do anonymous polls; this could work for future coding workshops to assess technical literacy at the start of the session.

The goal of my teaching was to interweave technical learning with critical thinking, without jumping between two styles of teaching (coding with a code editor and ‘lecturing’ with slides). I decided to bring some of the slide elements into colab- such as the session’s title and header image. This approach worth is exploring further. Observers pointed out that jumping between tabs can be hard to follow, so integrating the presentation could improve on this.

There were a lot of tools to introduce at the start and I had to also briefly mention Gemini, Google’s built-in assistant. This needed a more nuanced intro that problematised the use of AI but I was pressed for time. The session had been designed for students that would have been introduced to these tools in previous seminars.

Running the code in real-time introduces a sense of anticipation and risk. I encouraged participation by letting others decide what to search. The feedback I received helped evaluate this approach. The comments were positive and it was said that the tone was comforting. The liveness was appreciated as it disclosed vulnerability. The risk was mentioned – what if the system had returned images that were distressing? This is a very valuable observation. There are ways in which I can make the search exclude images as a precaution, however critiquing the algorithm’s shortcomings is part of the learning.

We tried the search terms ‘doorknobs’, ‘farm’, and ‘teacher’. Interestingly, YOLO isn’t trained to detect doorknobs. The farm example revealed how messy databases can be, as some examples tagged ‘farm’ had nothing to do with farms. Finally, the teacher example produced some of the oddest results – meme-like inspirational quotes paired with celebrities, one of which was Keanu Reaves. This was a great end to the session as it had everyone laughing. Humour wasn’t discussed so much in the feedback, but it is something I enjoy in my teaching to demonstrate that software is fallible.

References

Chatterjee, H. J. (2011). Object-based learning in higher education: The pedagogical power of museums. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/86

Chatterjee, H.J., Hannan, L. and Thomson, L., 2016. An introduction to object-based learning and multisensory engagement. In Engaging the senses: Object-based learning in higher education (pp. 1-18). Routledge.

This blogpost is a reflection on the UAL paper Embracing the silence, by Karen Harris (2022). This paper contemplates the question as to whether online teaching spaces could opportunistically provide a more quiet environment for students with an introverted learning preference. The paper proposes three provocations in response, written around the time of the Covid pandemic and published in 2022. This paper drew my attention as an educator who did a lot of online teaching during the pandemic and who is also more introverted than extroverted. Online teaching often suited our students, however I often assumed this was more to do with the fact that teaching computational arts is very much screen-based anyway. The leap from usage of computer-in-class, to computer-in-online-class wasn’t cumbersome and in some cases more appealing. The paper’s provocations have invited me to reflect on a different aspect of teaching on our course, which is how computational arts teaching may actually require a greater degree of silent concentration, as students are often having to look at software interfaces or code on their screens during class. To interrupt their workflow for the sake of enacting the classic call and response prompt for participation could indeed be counter-productive. So provocation 1: Might the pressure to actively participate actually be counter-productive? would seem to ring true for screen-based technical learning. Other types of activities would be more beneficial for active participation such as recreating John Baldessari’s ‘Post-Studio’ format that encouraged downing tools to discuss art and discourse.

The second provocation invites us to recalibrate the notion of ‘active participation’, and reconsider the false dichotomy of active vs passive learning. Here, the author proposes initiating silence, to provide a more welcoming environment for introverts, and space to think clearly and creatively. This is a provocative idea, and perhaps one that I unknowingly do in my own teaching practice, as someone who finds constant talking between myself and students uncomfortable. Our creative tools of choice often necessitate long periods of quiet focus, whether that is for coding or 3D modelling. In a way, the traditional notion of Fine Art ‘studio practice’ could be considered an exercise in creating a quiet, contemplative, and thus creative environment, where the students can hear their own thoughts.

The third provocation invites us to consider online classrooms as a silent and nurturing space. with benefit of hindsight, we can now say that in the long-term, online teaching can exacerbate introversion and isolation to the point where some students no longer feel comfortable attending in-person classes. A balance needs to be made to encourage more introverted students to participate in classroom environments that may feel daunting to develop important social skills and resilience. As educators attuned to pastoral care and wellbeing we arguably provide a safe environment for this. On the other hand, this provocation is making me consider reinstating some online teaching, as an additional form of classroom that may appeal to more introverted and/or neurodivergent students who may welcome the occasional learning environment that does not come with the additional social pressures.

References

Harris, K., 2022. Embracing the silence: introverted learning and the online classroom. Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 5(1), pp.101-104.