Contextual Background:
Currently the students are not marked on the technical aspects of their projects. This means we have very limited time (7 days of technical workshops in the 4 years of the degree) to teach technical skills and they are not as valued as assessed skills.
Evaluation:
Technical skills are not assessed and tutorials and briefings are often timetabled during these workshops, so we have issues with attendance of workshops and the quality of the garments produced by students. We have been building more dialogue with academics around the timetabling and the impact this has on vital workshops.
Currently we give informal, verbal feedback to students in workshops and when asked for help. This is also given to students when they are allocated technician sewing time, which is often too late in the process, as the garments are cut out and partially sewn. This can be frustrating as sometimes the order of construction is incorrect, or the pieces are cut incorrectly.
Moving forwards:
When considering assessment and the valuing of learning I read Developing Teaching and Learning in Higher Education by Gill Nicholls. Nicholls states “the implication of selecting learning outcomes from Biggs’ and Ramsden’s arguments is that the type of learning students will engage in depends on the level of meaning students place on the knowledge that they are expected to acquire’’(2007:64). This led me to consider how I can increase the understanding of the value and meaning of sewing skills. The team could increase the expectation of students through a unified voice and by requiring students to produce a technical folder to refer back to skills, which is handed to their tutor for consideration.
I feel it is important to relate and frame the skills as advantageous to their assessed work and create healthy competition, by framing workshops as providing relevant and vital skills directly correlating to their current assessed project. To improve engagement I will teach exercises which are sampled using the ‘Reset Show’ sponsored fabric, which requires very specific handling and methods due to the nature of the fabric. I will also teach fabric manipulation techniques in the final session, asking students to bring in inspirational imagery which we can link to different methods and encourage them to sample, explore and experiment. By emphasising that these samples can be used as development for their final garments, and used in assessed work such as sketchbook research and development, I hope to increase engagement with the workshops and encourage the students to understand the relevance and innate value of sewing skills.
I will also provide a checklist to give more obvious objectives and goals, work on introduction of skills and provide worksheets that show the context of various seams, finishes and techniques on actual garments, for students to keep.
Whilst attending Jade’s microteach, she highlighted the context of industry standards and expectations. This gave an air of expertise, professionalism and aspiration which I believe our students would respond well to and lead them to consider how these are life long skills they will use throughout their careers.
References:
Nicholls, G. (2007) Developing teaching and learning in higher education: New dimensions and directions. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.