Naomi and I work in the same building, on the same floor, but she teaches MA Fashion Artefact and I teach on the BA Bags and Accessories degree so there no cross over between our students or our teaching. It was interesting going into the MA studio to see what they do and if it was any different to what we do on the BA. Listening to the one on one tutorials, it seems the MA students are more focused and, obviously, their projects are more detailed than the BA students. Otherwise, the formative feedback sessions were very similar, tutors giving students ideas, questioning choices and helping direct them to the next stages. There are also two tutors on the MA course who seem to know all their students projects which is great as each tutor will offer different advice. It would be great if there was that variety of input for the BA students but I guess with budgets etc it’s not feasible. Actually saying that, the second years have had this from me and the new course leader, which has led to students to complain about conflicting advice. Can you win? We have now been trying to reinforce into our students that you can take on our advice or leave it, it’s their choice. It is for the students to take control of their projects and reason through ideas and questions and make their own judgments. In the second year we also only have industry projects, so usually industry partners come into the uni to see the students for a mid point crit. Industry partners usually only have half a day so it’s not easy to give in depth feedback and sometimes students get disappointed when they don’t hear, “Well you should put this in the design” or something similar. Again I think this goes back to students owning their ideas and designs and challenging us as tutors, rather than just thinking we have all the answers.
Anyway, going back to observing Naomi, I did learn a few things that I will take on board – such as writing down notes (feedback sheets) for the students in certain sessions. Again, I will repeat, it was also great to see how similar our feedback sessions were. We don’t get trained to be tutors and we just do what we think is right so by seeing tutors do similar techniques it affirms my teaching skills.