You are being observed...

Into term 2, and it's all about observing and reflecting, with my first observation on Tuesday 26th January up the 'pool (Black, not Liver).

I'd gone out onto something of a limb for this, my first 'officially' observed lesson. Instead of my usual morning and afternoon 'family groups' of about a dozen, it was the beginning of 'Business Week'. (Which runs for three weeks: Don't ask!)

This is a collaborative group project involving the entire Graphics, Photography, Fine Art and Wildlife Illustration second year cohorts. Over 70 students in all. All waiting for me to brief them in a slightly-too-warm-to-be-comfortable lecture theatre.

Butterflies? You bet!

Still, I'd prepared the backside off it during the previous week and I felt pretty sure once I got going, things would be OK. Which proved to be the case.

The basic gist of the exercise was to get students used to the idea of a making a rational 'business case' for their flighty, whacky ideas. A lesson in the hard realities of the commercial world if you like.

I tried to make the resources a varied as I could, so there were videos of well known commercials to illustrate key points; a bit of humour in a viral video for Marmite featuring a projectile vomiting baby (you had to be there); an unavoidable but hopefully not too boring Powerpoint presentation; some handouts; and, in a nod to modernity, extra reference and resources posted onto Moodle.

I felt it went quite well and Margaret, who was observing, concurred. The one 'weak link' was at the end (if that's not a contradiction):

Rather than drawing what was essentially an old fashioned lecture to a definite finish, I wrapped things up with an 'any questions'... and then remembered something I'd left out, and started up again!

That compounded another mistake I made a minute or two earlier in having one of the other tutors present pass out some of the handouts I'd referred to.

The net effect was confusion. They didn't know whether they should be listening me, reading the handouts or thinking of questions to ask and the buzz of conversation and distraction soon became quite loud.

Any other time, I would probably have drawn proceedings to a close, but as the 'restate your aims and objectives' box still had to be ticked, I ended up ploughing on and having to raise my voice to quite a level before I could once again get everyone 'eyes front!'. A lesson learned, as they say.

Discussing things afterwards, it rally brought home the need for different teaching styles and methods of delivery for different contexts. What Margaret referred to as finding the right 'voice' for the occasion.

Going back to the 'teaching as performance' analogy, it's almost like the lecture theatre is just that - a theatre - where gestures have to be expansive, voices projecting and where there needs to be a definite 'curtain' at the end.

A smaller group in the classroom, on the other hand, is a bit like acting for the camera, allowing smaller gestures, facial expressions and subtleties of meaning to be communicated iby the more intimate 'close up' shot.

you see: I'm just a frustrated old 'Luvvie' really.