Record of Observation – Review of Teaching Practice
Session reviewed: Lecture/Symposium/Workshop: ‘Technology For Change’
Size: of student group: 40-14
Observer: Georgina Goodman
Observee: Emma Hamshare
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 self-organised four day long pilot symposium that sat outside of any unit and took place during activities week titled ‘Technology for Change’. As part of a global partnership event with Prof Troy Nachtigall who came over from Amsterdam to take part. It was designed for with my students (Year2 BA Fashion Design Development) upcoming unit Fashion Production Future Techniques in mind. I anticipated that student numbers would be highest for the Lecture on the Monday and would decrease throughout the week.
- 47 signed up for the Lecture
- 30 attended my Monday afternoon session on Playful Soft Systems directly after the lecture.
- 28 attended Troy’s session on ‘loopholes’ on the Tuesday Morning.
- Around 15 attended tutorials with us on Tuesday afternoon & another 5 with me on Wednesday.
- And 14 entered the project on the padlet with the only group of 3 students winning the prize.
- Three main parts, Lecture, workshops & tutorials, presentations & online showcase
Lecture speakers
- Emma Hamshare
- Troy Natchtigall,
- Laura Salisbury
- Alexa Pollman.
- A Workshop / Hackathon at LCF 2 days
- Playful soft systems on Monday Afternoon
- Loopholes by Troy Natchtigall on Tuesday Morning
- Tutorials with Emma & Troy on the Tuesday afternoon.
- Create links between fashion and other industries to create potential new business models.
- In the second part students are given the brief on problem solving using Fashion design thinking. And the ‘loopholes’ cards are used as prompts.
- Loopholes, presents students with cards detailing business ‘disruptors’ that they can apply to their design ideas.
- Student Presentations online showcase – BB collaborate room recording and Padlet. This is how the students present and can upload existing work that they feel fits the brief, as well as work created during the hackathon. This can be used as a teaching resource going forwards.
Similar projects –
LCF hackathon https://www.arts.ac.uk/whats-on/lcf-hackathon
The Grand Challenge – https://www.rca.ac.uk/study/schools/school-design/grand-challenge/
Imperial college / Rca – https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/190308/ways-that-imperial-fusing-science-fashion/
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
Students signed up via an Eventbrite and the event was open to the whole of UAL.
I had only worked with one or two of the students who had been on FDD previously and met a few as part of some AL marking work I did afterwards on the MA course Innovative Fashion Production. It was a majority of these students who attended the workshops afterwards as I had spoken to their course leader ahead of time and she had been able to add it in to their timetable.
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
LO’s
- To gain insight into how professional practitioners use new technologies in their professional practice.
- Collaboration and knowledge exchange between participants, enhancing problem-solving.
- Examine new possible systems that leverage fashion thinking and technology to address environmental and social issues.
- Examine ethical entrepreneurialism to drive social and environmental change.
- Consider the application of new technologies to current in action fashion projects for positive change.
Objectives
- Innovation Fusion: Combining creative insights from “Loopholes” with “Playful Soft Systems” to create unique solutions for complex challenges.
- Interdisciplinary Synergy: Promote collaboration and knowledge exchange between participants, enhancing problem-solving.
- Online Resource Library: Create a shared digital repository to showcase students innovative collaborative projects.
- Mentorship & Support: Offer high level guidance to participants in realising project potential.
- Positive Impact: Encourage ethical entrepreneurialism to drive social and environmental change.
- Widen students career options by encouraging them to use their fashion design skills in collaboration with other industries of their choosing.
- Entrepreneurial Skills: Equip participants with skills to turn ideas into impactful ventures addressing contemporary problems. This format is similar to the Mayor’s hackathon so this could be a good way for students to become accustomed to the format and go on to win funding for start-ups.
- Updating students’ knowledge on e-textiles, soft systems and disruptive fashion business models to feed into their projects.
- Improve quality of students work bringing it into line with international standards.
- Enabling use of playful investigative. fashion design approach to consider serious pressing contemporary problems.
- Introducing students to fellow designers in Eindhoven via the online presentations.
- Similar format to the mayors Design Hackathon so good practice for students at LCF who might lack skills to pitch new concepts and business ideas.
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?
Students create 2 A3 boards to show their ideas, one is the system / supply chain diagram and the other any potential design outcome. They can also submit work from current projects as long as it fits the brief of using a technology for the power of positive change.
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
These were mainly logistical, booking rooms, finding an online bb collab room that could be open to all UAL, marketing the event, working with the events team and getting our presentations to work on the screens all took far too much energy that should have been spent on the content. LCF also isn’t set up well for guest lecturers.
Knowledge gap between material and information provided and student’s practices.
Difference of teaching style from here to in the Netherlands. Troy mainly works with researchers
How will students be informed of the observation/review?
I am not sure they will be informed, as this will be watching a recording that has already happened. I can email the attendees if needed.
What would you particularly like feedback on?
My talk on my professional practice in the first 20 mins of the lecture.
The Q&A section at the end of the lecture.
My PowerPoint called ‘playful soft systems’
Any ways to improve particularly looking at bringing professional practice into teaching.
Format feedback would be good but I couldn’t use the LCF Slide templates for most of this though as I needed to adapt the presentation from my portfolio with video’s embedded.
How will feedback be exchanged?
In writing or online in a tutorial or both.
Part Two
Observer Feedback with suggestions and questions:
Observer: Georgina Goodman
As this was a review/observation on a wide body of curated work; seminar and work shop I have broken down the feedback for different sections:
Seminar: Technology For Change 5th February UAL
I watched all the seminar with great fascination as Emma had organised and curated this event I was keen to experience how the event was constructed and tried to immerse myself as if I had been at the seminar in person.
This is an amazing achievement to have organised such an important and inspiring seminar, and bring together such a interesting group of educators and practitioners.
Emma Presentation: Emma is a very engaging and enthusiastic presenter – I feel that the style or delivery is very inclusive and allows the audience to feel immersed into this word of complex thought and technical information. This information is broken down with a very ‘easy’ flow and calm manner. There is a great deal of information shared in a very short space of time, and although this is not a subject that I am familiar with, entirely, I was able to stay engaged using moving image and powerful visual content. I always prefer more visual content in a presentation, and minimal written content, as I find this to be a distraction from the verbal information. Perhaps the written information was necessary for this presentation, but perhaps this could be reduced at the beginning. It may be important to consider that visual information allows learners with diverse needs to be fully involved and included.
This was perfectly demonstrated by the film content showing the tactile woven thread that created sound when moved through in space. The way that Emma uses moving image in her presentations is very effective and allows a deeper understanding to the audience, creating connection and intrigue. It is this intrigue and playful approach to her use of language and presentation style, that invites the audience to engage in the complexities of the information, rather than be excluded from understanding. This is very important, as the audience were there to be inspired and to pose questions as to the potential of transformational change within fashion, using technology.
Emma introduced each speaker with the same ease and enthusiasm, and this allowed for a cohesive experience as a viewer. This cohesive element between each speaker placed me back in clear space, and prepared for the next segment of information. These interludes were unintrusive and informative. It felt like this was a flow of information from one person to the next.
The seminar was finalised with a Question section, and Emma chaired this with a very collaborative manner, allowing each member of the panel to share time and answer questions. I would like to have been able to hear the questions during this session, and for there to have been a discussion amongst the speakers. As such an interesting group, this could have been a rich exchange of ideas and lively discussion. It felt like a missed opportunity following such a fascinating seminar.
Workshop: Hackathon
This workshop is such an inspiring idea – to set a project with clear aims in a set short time frame is a very bold experiment. I think the idea to challenge students either as individuals or in collaboration a task of solving a problem is fantastic. This sense of time urgency to complete a project resulted in some dynamic ideas and diverse outcomes. Emma and her teaching collaborator Troy Nachtigall worked in tandem to inspire these students to think about how to change fashion in a deeper way. Most especially highlighting how sharing ideas and thinking about how technology can be implemented for the power of good. This line from the brief should appear in all fashion briefs: Let’s delve into fashion’s potential as a powerful tool for societal change, in addressing issues like climate injustice, disinformation, structural racism, and economic inequality.
This project should really be introduced to all LCF students, as a fun/thought provoking workshop activity to encourage cross school collaboration and immersive experience.
Part Three
Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged:
I thank Georgina for the observations and valuable feedback!
In future I can certainly make my presentations more visual and include less text. The text was included on my slides this time as they came from my portfolio so a little context is needed to explain the images and sometimes, I cannot see the ‘notes’ section of a PowerPoint while giving it so the text is often more for me that for those watching. However, in a lecture where I am there to explain the work, instead of the portfolio where I am not, I definitely can alter the presentation further for a different audience. I edited the slides with this in mind but I think a further departure from the portfolio slides to make them more visual for the big screen would certainly be a good idea! I also tried using paper notes that I read from for the first time, I think next time I would change these to be bullet points so that they help me to not to forget things but don’t overly.
It is good to know that the questions themselves from student’s could not be heard in the lecture recording. The responses from us can be heard though. It’s the first time I have acted as the chair of that kind of discussion in the large lecture theatre, and I have seen others repeat the questions asked into the microphones after they were asked so as to record them. I actually employed two arts-temps to run around the audience with the microphones to capture the audience questions. But I think people just shouted out their question quickly and as we heard it, we forgot that the recording wouldn’t capture it, so I next time I need to request the mic to be brought to the audience member before they asked their question and embrace the silence while this happens!
A discussion amongst the speakers is a great idea, I think I was mindful of giving each person enough time to speak as well as enough time for questions. I think I could give each speaker 20-25 minutes instead of half an hour each. Which could leave at least 10minutes for discussion and 10minutes for questions and keep the lecture to 2hours max.
It is great to know that the content and spirit of the event resonated successfully and that Georgina feels it should be repeated as this is the aim! Also great to know that my style and delivery feels inclusive and engaging, as it has been worked on over my 12 years in teaching.