I was finally able to attend an in-person session, despite the challenges of landslips on the train line and a 2.5-hour commute rather than 55 mins!
notions of criticality
In preparation for this session I read Macfarlane, Teaching with Integrity and was immediately surprised by the comment that ‘the notion of criticality has rarely been systematically and rigorously applied to teaching practice in university education’, – the idea of criticality is an integral part of what we expect our students to demonstrate on the MA in Design Management and I was surprised to read that, in his opinion, this has not been brought to reflective academic practice systemically.
As someone whose undergraduate degree was in Politics and History (admittedly many moons ago) the notion of criticality is so embedded in my thinking it is more about who I am not what I do! I’m not sure I can think in any other way…
evaluating learning
Further, into the text Macfarlane discusses that ‘lecturer performance and student performance are not necessarily synonymous’. I found this a thought-provoking concept and I am unsure how you start to disentangle the two and note that Macfarlane doesn’t really expand upon this either.
Throughout most of 2022 I was fortunate enough to have a student from the MA DM course, work with me as an intern on a challenging consultancy project around redesigning work for a large global publishing group, I had mentored her through her thesis and was aware that her skill set and personal attributes could add value to the work. It was a great learning experience for both of us. For me, I could see the value of the studies she had undertaken in a ‘real world’ context, and also identify where the gaps may have been in her learning and understanding which could inform my curriculum design.
It enabled me to see where the student had internalised concepts and was easily integrating this into how we practiced and where there were gaps in understanding and/or application of knowledge. In this respect, I was looking at ‘student performance’ in a different context which was illuminating.
Therefore, when Macfarlane discusses SEQs and the need for a variety of tools to evaluate the quality of teaching this really resonated with me. I strongly feel that the real value from the MADM course evolves and emerges as students gain professional/practice experience post-graduation – clearly this will depend on which role, sector, and tasks they undertake.
Whilst LCC may do evaluations post-graduation, as a lecturer on the course I have never had sight of any of this feedback and/or understand how it feeds into curriculum design and iterating our teaching and student needs. This is further supported when Macfarlane comments that higher education is a complex service, moving away from it being a ‘consumer-based service and one that you can only evaluate the value and experience some years after graduation’.
‘We are not transmitting knowledge, we are supporting learning’ writes Gill Aitken, director of post-graduate education at Edinburgh University. This aligns with Macfarlane’s comments that we should ‘challenge students to re-examine their own knowledge base rather than simply transferring information uncritically’
Graham Barton and Judy Wilkins state that ‘one of the central assumptions of learning development is that learning is often more than the simple acquisition of new knowledge and skills, with the potential for transformations in perceptions, values and beliefs’. Whilst we do undertake assessment of learning in the short term via a range of methods such as assignments, I do feel that assessing whether a ‘transformation’ has taken place may require distance and space from the actual learning process. Which led me to think about where does the value sit in the course and learning for my students? I feel like I make assumptions about this without real insight…
The UK Framework for Programme Reviews (2022) sets out to give some definition around quality and value in response to the OfS focus on courses deemed ‘low quality’ and recognise the risk that ‘regulation and funding decisions based only on narrow graduate outcome measures will harm courses that support levelling up, improve social mobility and deliver student choice’
I would be interested in exploring this further with students who are alumni of the course, or exploring with my course leader how we assess value on our course, how we are measuring and understanding value.
My thoughts are unclear on this at the moment however in terms of input to curriculum design it feels important to understand where the ‘value’ sits for our students in our course. Moreover, it could assist me when I am interviewing prospective students, I don’t really have a clear view on how I can discuss this topic with them when asked that question. I can talk about student progression in a functional way i.e. job roles, which organisations they may be working in, but not really communicate where the real value has come in the course which I would hope is wider than job role or earnings.
https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/article/view/75/129