Microteaching idea 14th March

This post is retrospective from 14th March

I’m prepping my micro-teaching session for Monday. I’m trying to find ice-breakers that are creative and will relate to my session but haven’t found anything yet that I feel confident enough in running for the first time. With the session only being 20mins long, I don’t want to have an activity that I’ve never used before and therefore can’t estimate how long it will take.

Referring to my teaching practice – In general I’m finding that students are happier with their screens off during group-sessions. It can be daunting trying to encourage them to be visible. For my technical teaching online sessions, this isn’t too much of a problem but I would really like it if I could get more rapport going so that students can contribute if they would like to and feel more ownership. I’ve had some success with asking specific students to show pieces of work that they are currently working on. This has prompted some great conversations and also has meant valuable feedback for the student on how their work is perceived by their peers.

The issue with making this an effective strategy for every lecture is that the group sessions are advertised across several pathways to students I’m not familiar with so I don’t know their work well enough to tie in with the particular technique I’m profiling. Also students are frequently watching the recordings of sessions in their own time. This is due to clashes with other time-tabled lectures etc.

I’ve been asked by BA Sculpture students this week to set up a forum for them to be able to chat about their work, to get more of a community going in lockdown. Also they would like to have more group-contact going into the summer, especially 1st and 2nd yr students. I’m thinking about the best way to encourage them to own this space, to enthuse them to get involved whilst being led by their requirements. I’ve suggested Gather Town as a potential platform: https://gather.town/ Its possible to embed films, PowerPoints and lots of other resources into this. Its versatile, Its fun, and its free currently.

I’m going to suggest that they each bring along an image of something they are working on and perhaps an example of a piece of art that really doesn’t appeal to them to prompt a discussion around taste and choices of subject matter in their own practice.

Whilst hunting for ice-breaker activities, I’ve seen a good site which suggests doing an origami design with your eyes closed. I am thinking to have origami as my micro-teaching focus object, specifically a design of a boat. Origami is already pretty tough going – its difficult to establish how to fold a piece of paper in half without then going into more complex folds. It would be a bit risky as I’ve no idea how to run this online or exactly how to relate it to what I had in mind – also I don’t know how long it will take.

I was thinking of asking people to make an origami boat because its initially very simple but with a twist: you have to virtually wreck your model for the last stage, by turning it inside out and it feels all kinds of wrong. By pushing a material to do an apparently contrary thing, participants are confronted by not trusting themselves to do it correctly because it does feel like you’re breaking the boat, and they don’t trust the facilitator, they think they’re being given the instruction incorrectly. You are asked to ‘squash-fold’ the paper and that goes against the grain when the rest of the design is so much about precision and conventional folding. I’ve delivered this to people who can get quite angry, you can hear the irritation in their voices!

Everyone ends up in the same place – its how you get there that counts as that’s where the learning is and I want to tie this in with Mumford and Honey. With origami, to begin with, there’s not much room for manoeuvre. My thought is to discuss learning styles whilst going through a real-time demonstration, asking people if they are aware of their own style. I would also ask them to think about when they last learned something and how they learned it and hopefully to get a discussion going. Most people have made paper aeroplanes or ‘chatter-boxes’ at some point so that could be a good starter question.

I’ll look for some strong images to show in a Power Point to support the session which will also hopefully address the different learnign styles.

I’ve looked at several interpretations of Mumford and Honey and quite like this summary:

Mumford and Honey – Strengths of each Style

Activist:

  • Flexible and open-minded. Happy to have a go.
  • Happy to be exposed to new situations.
  • Optimistic about anything new and therefore unlikely to resist change.

Reflector:

  • Thorough and methodical.
  • Good at listening to others and assimilating information.
  • Rarely jump to conclusions.

Theorist:

  • Logical ‘vertical’ thinkers.
  • Rational and objective.
  • Good at asking probing questions.
  • Disciplined approach.

Pragmatist:

  • Keen to test things out in practice.
  • Practical, down to earth, realistic.
  • Businesslike – get straight to the point.
  • Technique oriented.

(Honey, P. & Mumford, A., 1992).

Weaknesses of each Style

Activist:

  • Tendency to take the immediately obvious action without thinking.
  • Often take unnecessary risks.
  • Tendency to do too much themselves and hog the limelight.
  • Rush into action without sufficient preparation.
  • Get bored with implementation or consolidation.

Reflector:

  • Tendency to hold back from direct participation.
  • Slow to make up their minds and reach a decision.
  • Tendency to be too cautious and not take enough risks.
  • Not assertive – they aren’t particularly forthcoming.

Theorist:

  • Restricted in lateral thinking.
  • Low tolerance for uncertainty, disorder and ambiguity.
  • Intolerant of anything subjective or intuitive.
  • Full of ‘shoulds, oughts and musts’.

Pragmatist:

  • Keen to test things out in practice.
  • Practical, down to earth, realistic.
  • Businesslike – get straight to the point.
  • Technique oriented.

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