PGCert 2022

Looking askance, new lenses, fresh perspectives: how to disentangle a student from their tendency to be trying to simply ‘get the job done’ as final year hand in approaches

“Entwistle and Entwistle (1991) describe how final-year students start out with good intentions, are intrinsically motivated and attempt to adopt deep approaches to their studies. However, as examination time approaches they become increasingly extrinsically motivated and adopt surface, rote-learning approaches.” (Encouraging Student Motivation – Sherria L. Hoskins and Stephen E. Newstead)

As I am mostly working with students at the very end of their final year, one of the challenges I have faced is in finding ways for them to recognise the value of the task ahead of them. Originally, the filmmaking aspect of the submission was added to the submission requirements in response to the pandemic lockdown situation as a way of allowing all students a way of presenting work or processes that may have become impossible to finish completely while also creating evidence of the performative aspect of their final work. What I found in early tutorial sessions where I explored the students’ concepts with them in small groups, was that by looking at the concept at this late stage through a new set of criteria (photography and lighting, and particularly sound design) opened new ways of interpreting the original concept, which by this stage may have started to feel a little stale for the student.

In my lecture on Sound Design for this module I introduce students to the concept of what I call ‘audio synonyms’. I usually open this process of enquiry by introducing what the job of a Foley Artist is and how what we hear in film is often nothing to do with what we are seeing. Using the example of ‘rain’ in TV and cinema, and how the sound of rain is commonly captured by frying bacon in a recording studio, the crackly sound it makes being close enough to the sound of rain that an audience does not question this when they see rain and hear bacon. This is both specific, but also amusing knowledge, to someone new to this concept. I ask the students to tell me what their concept sounds like. This is quite an abstract question, which I feel also helps move the student’s thinking away from their original process concept creation. I then ask them to consider their answer and to brainstorm what this sound they have identified also sounds like, and then what this new sound also sounds like, and so on. The repetition of this process creates a useful list later for when they are coming up with the sound design for their final output. I usually open this process of enquiry by introducing what the job of a Foley Artist is and how what we hear in film is often nothing to do with what we are seeing. Using the example of ‘rain’ in TV and cinema, and how the sound of rain is, most commonly, captured through frying bacon. This is both specific, but also amusing knowledge to someone new to this concept.   

This new set of methodologies seems to reawaken a sense of excitement about their projects, through a task which had originally seemed like an onerous and unfamiliar ‘extra’ requirement. The naturally collaborative methodologies within filmmaking, and their relationships to each other, invite new perspectives which become energising for the student. I witness this through student feedback about how surprised they are to suddenly feel excited about making a film, something that they were originally feeling quite uncertain about.

While this did not have the same effect for all students, as some found the idea of work ahead of them too much to cope with and were therefore were difficult to encourage to engage with me about until they felt more confident, the experience illuminated what filmmaking as a process can potentially offer many creative disciplines as a means of reawakening the original zeal which characterised their orginal formation of the concept.

This concept is explored in detail by Sherria L. Hoskins and Stephen E. Newstead in the chapter ‘Encouraging Student Motivation’ in A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Heather Fry, Steve Ketteridge, Stephanie Marshall.

In my role as a content producer for London College of Fashion, I have discovered over the years what a privileged position it is to be aware of, and known to, so many different areas of my institution. Most colleagues I encounter tend to have a close network of colleagues with whom they work closely, and then maybe a wider net that covers a few other individuals. My role has naturally introduced me to almost all areas of the institution and has required the development of these relationships and a basic understanding of the position of each, to collaborate effectively. This unique positioning came to mind when discussing the position of the observer or researcher in the context of institutional research. If we are attempting to build objectivity into our positioning for our research, for reasons which are perfectly valid (e.g., resisting bias), we may be giving up a more nuanced understanding of what is a changing and multifaceted set of structures. What is the point of asking a question if, to an insider, the answer is obvious because of internal structural or personal challenges that an outsider might not be aware of?  

Much like how in the design of this course we are first introduced to the experiences of students (Moodle, etc), familiarity is a key component to developing a sort of intuition regarding the environment of activity. In developing a research question, if we are unaware of the various elements that form the makeup of an institution, our question may be formed in a manner that renders it immediately obsolete or unanswerable due to structural or staffing issues, for example, that would be already known to an ‘insider’. This accepts a few ‘givens’ however, that I know from my limited personal experience can be rare in such institutions. Most staff are siloed to some extent, and therefore have only a very local understanding of their institution. This itself is an issue that can contribute to the inability to immediately access sufficient contextual data for all kinds of issues.

This was an interesting question that we explored throughout this session, but one that began in a confusing manner to some of us. Having such considerations set out very early in this course without any basic context of what ‘research’ within a higher education institution might look like, left some of us, especially those who have no prior experience of this kind of thing, feeling unprepared to approach the questions without more context.

Some reading I have since done on the subject has helped me ‘situate’ not only the type of researcher that one is assumed to be by virtue of the role they perform for the institution, but more importantly, the type of thinker they are. Professional roles can be constricting, particularly within the arts context where many of us have an eclectic background incorporating technical, academic, and professional/practitioner experiences.

“…the defining characteristic of this model is the importance of the one-to-one relationship, generally between two teachers, which is designed to support Continued Professional Development (CPD).” Kennedy, 2005

Notes from the session:

In the session in which we looked at Peer Observation as a concept, two questions arose for me that I decided to explore on my own.

1. Is an “enjoyable experience” for students the aim?
2. What is the relevance of charisma and ego in the role of the lecturer?

In developing my lecture series for the BA Costume Design year three students, I was very anxious regarding my position in this context. I have found through talking with other lecturers and practitioners over the years that a sense of imposter syndrome is common no matter the level of experience. It a feeling that pushed me in formulating the lectures to focus on authenticity. I had been trying to build a PowerPoint presentation for my initial introductory lecture and the very process of putting this together had caused me great anxiety as each page created felt contrived and an inauthentic, simplified representation of what it was I was trying to communicate. I could feel the presentation becoming a wall behind which I was slowly hiding from my students. I stopped and I thought back to memories of what I felt were my most fruitful experiences as a student with a lecturer. As I considered this, I recognised that none of these experiences had involved any ‘visual guide’ as such. They were all relatively didactic experiences with the lecturer or professor engaging directly with the group. In one such case I had often felt confused after the lecture, but then after spending some time with the material that was considered at in the session and allowing the time to think, certain understandings began to develop naturally through my own activity in relation to the subject. Many in my cohort found this approach, which often felt free of context, too confusing and wanted to be told what to study, what to write about, and ultimately how to get a good grade. This gave me the confidence to rely upon my examples that I had chosen and my notes to talk around the subject, focussing on the areas that I wanted my students to think about.

“Arguably, a ‘good’ lecture is one that probes and questions propositional or professional knowledge. This approach to lecturing challenges students to re-examine their own knowledge base rather than simply transferring information uncritically from the lecturer to the student. However, making learing challenging in this way may result in students feeling less, rather than more confident and positive about ‘what they have learnt’ from the lecture.” Macfarlane 2004

In my short time with the students I teach, I am attempting to ‘unlock access’ to a knowledge or understanding that students already have. I talk to them about this in the sense that they are all fluent in reading film and television, since they have all grown up with some relationship to these conventions, whether aware of it or not. The hope is that this reconsidering of one’s own knowledge will lead to ‘eureka’ moments regarding the technological and theoretical language we are attempting to break down.

In considering the case studies we explored in the session, the question of ego in observation and reflection was evident. This is where I feel that ‘imposter syndrome’ can be a blessing, to keep a lecturer honest and authentic. In the case we looked at there were various issues to unpack, but one that rang out was the fragility of the ego in a situation that feels like being compared to one’s peers. This last issue has appeared before me in discussions about the design of online courses and pre-recorded content. Academics have struggled to engage in use of the technology necessary to create this content, sometimes hiding behind their technical difficulties when what is clear is that the experience of recording oneself is a much more intensely anxiety-inducing process than ‘performing live’ in front of a group of students. This reminds me of my first experiences of screening a film I had made; I had a great deal of experience of performing as an actor on stage at this point, which always carried with it a nervousness backstage before the ‘release’ of the act of performance before the live audience. The experience of the film screening never provided this release, and so the experience lacked the feeling of euphoria that would regularly follow a stage performance.       

In presenting to the group in our first seminar together, I offered some background to my practice and how it has influenced my thinking in regards to teaching and learning. In preparation for the session, I had done some reading, looking for something that chimed with my approach as a new teacher. A chapter from Film Pedagogy Cinema Journal; Spring 1997 stood out for a few reasons.

In ‘Theory to Practice: Integrating Cinema Theory and Film Production’, Frank P. Tomasulo explores the rift between practitioners and academics in film. He uses a quote from Lev Kuleshov early in the article, someone I have referenced early in my introductory teachings on editing. “Teaching filmmaking without being cognizant of fundamental cinematic theories demeans film craft to the mere level of an amateur workshop. And the opposite: studying film history and theory without a corresponding experience in the elemental aspects of filmmaking leaves theoretical research without a solid basis, forcing students to plunge into abstraction.” This highlighted for me the delicate balance within arts education between practice and theory.

Kuleshov is widely regarded as the ‘father of film theory’, yet his work as an experimental filmmaker is what I first introduce to the students, namely his experiment now known as ‘The Kuleshov Effect’, where the same image of a man’s face is juxtaposed with alternative imagery, each one creating a new response from the audience.

Frank Tomasulo also refers to an anecdotal experience of the filmmaker Hal Roach responding to a question from a student about whether they use any ‘Film Theory’ language in their practice. “Roach asked the student to describe some of the theories… When Roach heard about the Freudian notion of substitution, part of the dream work, he said, “Well, we didn’t call it ‘substitution.’ We called it ‘the old switcheroo.’”

This resonates with me as in my work with students and technicians when teaching filmmaking practice, one of the obstacles to overcome throughout the process is the matter of language. Both technical and academic language can create a barrier for learners, as they may feel that without fluency in this language they will not be up to the task. I always feel the key process at this point in the learning experience is one of demystification. Most of my students would be unfamiliar, at the start, with both theoretical and technical film languages, but have their own fluency in the reading of film as an object. This is what I look to ‘unlock’ first in my introductory sessions with my students.

In reflecting upon this and on the presentations of the other members of my tutor group, a few general themes emerged in relation to the position of the teacher in the Arts:

Demystification

• The language of a discipline can make the world of the professional seem a distant thing to a student. I have consistently learned that much of what I have aspired to in life has been only a few short steps away, despite feeling like an impossible place to reach because of a new language that must be learned.

Pastoral Care and Assessment

• In my non-marking roles, like many technicians, I have seen very different relationships and therefore very different student personalities presented to marking and non-marking staff. In a non-marking role the chance of developing a much less formal relationship with the student allows for an area that seems to be given little or no recognition or importance. How can we knowhow a student is really doing if they are guarded because they do not wish to admit they are struggling in front of the person who will ultimately give them their grade.

Practice / Theory for the practitioner/lecturer

• Given more weight above; are we neglecting the importance of the ‘expert’ in the room when focussing on the mode of teaching rather than the exposure to the nature of the professional? A balance needs to be struck in these cases.   

Technical innovation

• A moving framework of access/context points. Does change in technology change our view of attainment or discovery? And of teaching itself?

The experience of the day of Microteaching sessions was an intensive experience for anyone who stayed for the entire day. Many different methods were employed in a wide variety of teaching contexts. This was both inspiring and a little exhausting. I learned a great deal about what the space of object-based learning looked like. My previous experiences of this mode of learning had been in a professional context of filming for the MA Fashion Curation department on a day of workshops they arranged over the summer of 2021. The context of these sessions was very clear as the students were all engaged in with the view of designing an exhibition in response to an object. I feel that this experience contextual relevance hindered my exploration of my own session, as I tried to be too direct in what I was trying to elicit from the room, rather than exploring the teaching method itself. However, the collection of experiences that my cohort offered during the day has given me a much broader and deeper appreciation of what s possible and what sorts of engagements we can tailor. Below are some highlights I have gathered from my notes:    

“Now!” – This was a presentation of a film as the object (something that in retrospect may have been more fruitful for me in choosing my session, as it is something that I employ regularly in my teaching). The film was a protest film that used archival/news footage and music as a montage about civil rights and civil unrest in the United States. The conversations that emerged from this were very interesting and covered various areas from the technical to the political, however, the element that really struck me in this session was that we were invited to stand to watch the film. This simple change of perspective offered a new sense of how we watch, the separation we experience from a subject in the position of the audience. Standing felt like taking an action to view, which in the context of the film created new sensibilities in the audience.  

Smartphone – replacing everything, costing everything. This session looked at the hidden costs of smartphone ownership through two lenses. Firstly, we were asked to consider the things that the smartphone had replaced in our lives. This gave rise to an illuminating list of processes and behaviours we have replaced through our relationship to this technology. The second part of the session explored the hidden costs of the manufacturing of such devices.

Scarfs and balaclavas – This session invited the group to explore three different garments, two scarfs and one balaclava. This was followed by a discussion about materials, uses, and cultural meanings. It was very interesting, when discussing our experiences in small groups, how many had been tempted to wear the garments, yet held back for fear of insulting anyone through improper execution of this in the context of cultural religious practice. This proved to be an effective way of raising and exploring this issue of discomfort and our relationship to such feelings, without this being the intention of the session.

Personal Objects – Storytelling: This was an interesting exploration of reading objects (donated by those in the room) to try to decipher who the object belonged to. This was slightly uncomfortable, since we knew we were discussing items that belong to people in the room, which made us feel sometimes that we were judging the type of person, etc., however, getting past this it introduced really inciteful ideas around the storytelling we do in relation to ownership, identity, and the objects we carry around with us.   

Sculpture – In this session we were asked to empty our bags and consider the contents. We were then asked to build a sculpture out of what we had. We then spent some time looking at what people had built. It was very interesting to look at something so personal and every day in a different context. I experienced the performance anxieties of producing that I suffer from in any immediate create context where I am out of my comfort zone but was ultimately less interested in the approach to the sculptural aspect (I ended up making a ‘pile of things’) than in the attention to what I keep in my bag. We discussed how we don’t tend to do this. I was surprised to note how functional and necessary everything was in my bag. It usually feels like something that is full of unnecessary things, a mess really. But it turns out I only carry around things that have a purpose!

In terms of my main experiences from sessions that I will take away and explore further in my own teaching context, the positioning of the viewer and the use of film as an object (not just in the obvious sense, but in the context of Object-Based Learning), is something I am going to use to reconsider the way I approach using film example in lectures.  

I had the idea for my object-based microteaching session very early on during the course. In choosing the object I was influenced by my experiences over ten years as a cinema projectionist, my Master’s thesis in Cultural Studies, and by interactions with students and lecturers in a film context. The latter exposed me to how the experiences in the projection booth and my subsequent studies had proposed to me an abstracted way of viewing the art form through the lens of the technologies of production and presentation, and their histories. The mirrored modes of production (now no longer so immediately physically obvious since the digital revolution within the discipline) are what drew me to the material as an abstract for my studies, but they also stripped away for the mystery that often clouds such disciplines through the specialist languages that surround them, both academic and technical. There is something familiar yet unfamiliar about a strip of celluloid. This is how I felt about it upon first encountering such objects in the early noughties; reminiscent of the days of 35mm family photographs, but carrying something other, something more.

I chose the random piece of celluloid, from various cuttings I have in my possession from this former life, with a confidence that the exploration of this object, both familiar and alien, would open questions that would unlock access to the simplicity of the interaction between sound and image.

I provided a magnifying glass and placed the strip of film in the corner of the room by a window, suggesting that by holding the object up to the light of the sky it would be easier to inspect, but gave no further direction, asking instead for the group to get into pairs after observing the object and to discuss what they could see. I gave them two minutes to do this. It was very exciting to see everyone engaging so fully in the task and interesting to hear the different aspects of the images within the strip that people were trying to decipher. Most of the conversations were around who the character in the image was, what type of film it might be, and whether this was from a film. I asked the groups to feed back to the room what they had found. I then asked the group to revisit the object a second time. I had intended to ask them to this time consider the function of the object, but instead, in the moment, feeling a bit nervous and unsure of whether we would naturally get to the subject of the soundtrack within the frame, I asked them to consider whether there was anything that they didn’t understand about the object. I regretted changing this immediately as it felt both horribly leading and vague. My original question is what I should have gone with, on reflection, but I lost confidence in the process. Once the group was back together after the second visit the discussion was less fluent and so I explained the change I had made and discussed what I had been trying to draw attention to (the soundtrack). This opened the discussion into more of a Q&A about the object, which I then realised should have been the desired destination from the start.

The feedback I received from the group was very constructive. People generally really enjoyed the opportunity for a second visit to the object, but the interaction would have benefitted from being able to explore it together afterwards, perhaps with a projected image of the object on a screen. It was also suggested that a purely haptic experience could have been incorporated. Generally, the process seemed to be something that would work well as an introduction to film and cinematic technologies, but I needed to be confident about this as a finishing point for the session and allow it to get there naturally through a Q&A at the end.