Below is the information I filled out for John ahead of the observation:
What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?
The student has booked a week of printing on the Delta Wasp 2040 Clay Printer. The work they produce will be part of their coursework, but as student usage of technical facilities is often self led we help them produce the artefacts they need without knowledge of how exactly it fits in with their course’s Learning Objectives. The student may tell us how the work fits in but mostly we are facilitating the production of objects and the acquiring of the technical skill of printer operation and working with clay. Our objectives are to get the student to understand the medium, operate the printer with confidence and be able to use their skills and knowledge to effectively plan out their project and work the process into their deadlines. Falling in love with ceramics would be an added benefit!
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
I have met this student on a few occasions when she has popped in to the workshop to ask questions about booking the printer, and give a brief overview of the project. I am aware that she wants to produce a few large vases but beyond that I will mostly get to know her and the project throughout this coming week of printing. I know from her profile info on Moodle that she is a third year BA Graphic Branding and Identity student.
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
For this day of teaching, I want to get the student comfortable with operating the printer. We will be spending the morning and the afternoon preparing the clay and loading the cannister with the clay we have mixed, before I demonstrate how to print with the machine using a small test model. By the end of the day, or possible tomorrow morning depending on how much time we have left after mixing the clay, I would like the student to feel confident enough to operate the printer and respond to any problems that arise while printing. I will be telling her information about drying times, finishing and trimming processes she can do, and kiln firing times, and hope that she can use this information to ensure the pots look how she wants them to.
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?
The student will use the clay she has mixed to print a series of large clay pots. We will fire these pots for her after they have dried and she will then be able to glaze them.
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
Working with clay can be difficult and experimental – we are essentially asking a machine to squeeze mud through a tube and hoping that it creates a beautiful pot! Students can sometimes get frustrated when things don’t work out, and the initial setup of the machine can take a few prints to get right. While the controls of the machine are simple, the material requires quick response times so getting students to understand the operation mechanics can sometimes feel overwhelming to them on day 1. By day 2 and 3 they are usually confident enough that they do not need supervision. Meeting the student so far has not brought up any specific areas of concern but if she was to let me know of any access requirements she has that I was not made aware of prior to today then I may have to adapt how I teach.
How will students be informed of the observation/review?
The students has already been emailed and asked if it is okay for me to be observed, and has agreed.
What would you particularly like feedback on?
There is a lot of information to convey about printing – one of the biggest challenges I find is trying to teach slowly, revealing each step at a time in a way that makes sense. This can be difficult if the student is excited and interrupting asking questions about end results, their particular pots, glazes etc while I am trying to first just convey the basics of printing a test print. It can be easy to get sidetracked with questions and delve into answering about the more complicated parts of the process before we’ve even covered how to press the play and pause buttons. I guess I would like your opinion on wether or not I am explaining things simply enough and not overloading the student with information, or making the process seem difficult and scary by also explaining how things can sometimes go wrong. Any other feedback is also appreciated, for instance am I too colloquial or too cold? Do you think the student would benefit from more theoretical information about printing before starting the process? Should I be finding our more about her course, and how this fits in with her LOs before we start? Did you think the student was understanding me or just nodding from politeness? Did I make the process seem fun and engaging?
How will feedback be exchanged?
If you would like I would be down to hear some verbal feedback after the observation – ideally by the end of the afternoon the student will be able to use the printer herself so we may have some time before the end of the day. If not then filling in the response section of this form and emailing it back to me will be fine.
Below is John’s feedback on my taught session:
#myintro
Your notes for this class were so meticulous, so carefully narrated around both the wider context of the student, and the details with which you will create this teaching encounter. The level of reflection and analysis you are bringing into the teaching space with this pre-class thinking is immense, and it also highlights one of the key skills of the workshop teacher – working with, and teaching, complexity.
# bodilypedagogy
The most striking aspect of this initially is the bodily pedagogy, teaching the student how to gather the clay and throw it into the tube. As the session unfolds you employ, and teach, a range of practices some are highly physical and dexterous, while others are analytic and precise. What is interesting is how you make the teaching space whereby the student feels unselfconscious in this practice, a really valuable teaching skill you have developed.
#materialevaluation
The second most visible feature is how you train the student to notice and evaluate materials and technologies. You draw attention to the weight of the clay, to making and rolling the balls of clay (later on in the process you explain the property of the clay and shape it can tend to form). There is tactile knowledge being shared – this is significant too, because your 3D printer is available for use by students across the college who may work mainly on screen. You are opening up a world of learning for these students and you do it with an eye for the students own pace and rate of learning this skill. There is a lot of focus and engagement by Jana and you create with her the pace of the encounter – it is quite a different kind of teaching to classroom-based teaching, both more explicit and tacit negotiation of where the learning is at.
#learningbodiesandmeasures
You are skillful at letting the student find their own learning body, their own learning instruments in this process. You show where the wiring and tubes run from and where they run to, you are also teaching mechanics, how the wiring fits, the dials and taps required for the air pressure, highlighting the movement of the clay along the tube – you teach tactile and material measure before teaching the digital measure of the screen. It is really complex, performative, pointing and showing, sense-checking that you and the student are thinking at the same speed.
#preparation
Part of what you teach the student is ongoing preparation (like the extensive pre-notes you wrote for class) you clean the table to prepare for a laptop, you explain the measurements you will input on the machine at the beginning of the day
#pedagogyofspeedandflow
What makes the teaching you do so complex is the switch form something physical and material to something digital and virtual. You are clear in explaining how the interface works, showing the relationship between the physical objects in your hand and the different levels and shapes that appear on the screen. One of the things I noticed, and I imagine you did too, was when showing how the printer works the student asked to grab her pen and paper – all good. You suggested she could take photos too but she preferred pen and paper – I suspect so that she could take account of each step in the process. I wonder if at this point a change of pace might be useful – they have a lot to take in and there is no way around that but thinking a change of gear might be worth trying? In a way it is analogous to the concepts of speed and flow, and how you suggested there would be “quick reactivity at the beginning less activity later”.
#improvisation
The most excellent part was how you managed things not working out. In the pre-notes you asked if you made, “the process seem difficult and scary by also explaining how things can sometimes go wrong.” You handled all this so well, kept things moving, kept the task going, explain the context of the machine. We talk a lot about failure in art school (the endless Sam Beckett quote!) but genuinely recognising failure, making with it, and teaching with it demands real skill. When this happens you are managing the two different realities of the student: the reality, the deep feeling, of disappointment, perhaps even fear, depending on the stakes of the project; and the reality of the teaching moment you continue where you begin again working with the clay. You also use the opportunity to share and teach other things, about the other printers and cnc printing, and when Jana asks about the 3D models, and you explained about the handheld scanner, where it is used in games and animation. I wonder whether it might be worth having an impromptu conversational ‘lesson’ ready in your back pocket about the other machines when things go wrong – you did it really well. You did this teaching improv again when the software didn’t work
Summary
I made some suggestions in notes above Jules and regard to your questions “Do you think the student would benefit from more theoretical information about printing before starting the process?” Try it and see. On first instinct I would say yes but this also feels like an example of John Dewey’s ‘learning through experience’, that perhaps the process would feel more intimidating and more complicated. It you were going to provide something, I would make my own, a little illustrated storyboard of basic stuff – IKEA but actually makes sense.
“Should I be finding our more about her course, and how this fits in with her LOs before we start?” Always worth knowing a little, especially about LOs but not necessary.
“Did I make the process seem fun and engaging?” Absolutely. Quite technical and really fun. Like many technicians, your teaching is the management of complexity, of order and chaos, of many different kinds of information and measurement. A rich and multi-layered pedagogy. Further reading might be the Donald Schon The Reflective Practitioner, and a book by sociologist Douglas Harper, Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop. Difficult to get hold of but I think you would like it, one of the first doing photo-elicitation in a workshop, brilliant on tactile and tacit knowledges.
Below is my response to John’s feedback:
Overall I am pleased with John’s feedback – the obvious elephant in the room being the frustration I experienced due to the double calamity of both the pressure error on the printer and then the software issues on my computer! While John did get to observe parts of how I teach it feels a shame that I was not able to show the best side, although I am pleased with his notes on how I responded. A lot of clay printing can be experimenting and learning to work with failures, and one day of bad luck does not necessarily impact the whole week’s printing – evidenced by Jana’s brilliant subsequent grasp of the printer and her army of impressive vases. I think this is the most valuable and meaningful feedback there can be – seeing somebody with no prior experience in a medium able to understand it and produce an impressive body of work all within a week.
John is right that I was flexing my teaching while grasping Jana’s understanding – she was a quick student and I could see was understanding the process. With some students I will slow right down, and omit parts of information on the first day so as not to over-complicate things. I think my lack of asking her to make notes was based on my prior experience of knowing that students tend to be very quick with picking up how to interact with the display but it’s definitely right that it can seem overwhelming; perhaps I could move forwards to getting all of them to note things down in the future – this might make them feel more confident too knowing that they have their own writing to check back on, again further enabling them to feel that they have mastered the medium themselves.