Earlier on in the Autumn Term I emailed Kira Salter, and managed to get some time with her in early December for a research interview. It fell after my Action had taken place, but nonetheless it was great to be able to connect with her.
I was struck by how she has embedded peer led approaches into the GCD ethos as Course Lead, and her confidence made me feel inspired to push forward further with this approach.
I discovered her office was literally around the corner from mine, it was incredibly useful to talk to someone in another course, something which happens rarely at CSM!
For now, I have extracted some key quotes from the Interview.
ON GUEST LECTURE PARTICIPATION
KS: “I think the lectures in terms of students coming forward and saying and speaking out or asking a question is like it’s a two fold problem. Partly it can be about being overwhelmed and exposed because it’s only people and you’re about to as
Has it already been asked before? Or and I’ve just missed it, and so there’s a confidence issue there as well.
I think it’s also like it can come down to that individualistic life. This is what I’m thinking about, so I’ll just keep it to myself rather than here are my thoughts and can I just share them with the group so that yeah, that collaborative thing I think has to be sewn into the fabric of, of course in so many ways.
So I think for me the emphasis comes from day one, that I think it’s the most poignant part of learning and being at a Uni is learning together, to go against this sort of hierarchical knowledge.
I think the more you’re empowered as a student to bring something to the course of your senses to the table, the better their student experience, the more value that they get, and that I think that goes with them into a professional context.
I think what we’ve done there is really cleverly connected conversations, discussions and having the confidence to air something within a lecture, so actually that’s about how we share knowledge and how we understand things and.
Enabling the classroom as space for contribution, and I think that’s there for some students, but not for all. So all of these little sorts of tweaks, to the furniture, or to the use of digital technologies is all about garnering participation and when students participate, then you know they’re engaged. “
ON THE COMMUNITY READING LIST PROJECT
NM. How do you use digital tools to promote Peer learning?
KS” I’ve been through certain phases, like the pandemic that forced us to get everything into a digital format. And I think as we came back to in person teaching, there were lots of bits that we had discovered actually worked really well that and that capturing something on a community scale, but the digital context really.
So we have a community reading list. For capturing something on a community scale, but in a digital context, we have a ‘Community Reading List’. Because when students go “Have you been to such an exhibition? Or have you read?” They’re good at actually sharing reference points with each other and then they kind of get lost? The Community Reading List is just to gather it.
Technology, but based upon the same premise, is like one of the richest things that we find in the project reviews or the crits.“
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF EMBEDDING A PEER LED APPROACH
NM: And do you find there’s ever any resistance to people sharing their references or to kind of this idea of this peer because some people have like, oh, people don’t really like sharing their references ?
KS “I think that collaborative and peer led approach has to be asserted from day one on the course. It’s something that I talk a lot about at open days, and when students first arrive here, in the introduction to Unit 1. It’s highly collaborative and it’s the sharing principles that get placed there, which does compound the more individualistic learning approach.“
ON TECHNOLOGY OVERKILL
KS “I’ve got kids similar to Uni age, when they were at school, they were all thrown into online learning, and they had to use a lot of digital formats, a lot of whiteboards and that sort of thing and they burnt out from it.
It seems to me like I think you know what I recognize now, first and 2nd year at moment this is a real deep appreciation for the fact that they’re all in and I think something was missing in their education.“
NM Can you overdo the tech?
KS “You can. You can. Have too many Padlets. That’s for sure. But when it’s used as a reflection thing, I think they’ve actually got to good habit of it and they’re getting more articulate about . Things that they found useful. So I think that’s really, but they’ve got it now in terms of like for their final hand in, we asked them to add in reflections and documentation on what they’ve gained from the lectures instance.They know that by us making them put something into the Padlet they’re actually documenting the stuff that needs to go to their final submission.”
NM How do you decide when not to use it?
KS “That’s that laissez faire approach to teaching, which is really important, comes from able to be the read the room and know how much of a prompt or how much you need to know structure to to garner participation versus actually “they’re getting this and they’re working together”