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When I mentioned to my mentor that I was taking the PGCert course, I said that I was doing it to be more rational with my teaching, to access a tried-and-tested toolbox of teaching techniques. I told her I felt insecure and dissatisfied with my teaching practice, that I wanted to shake off my imposter syndrome, and that I have effectively been "making it up as I've gone along".

Her reply whilst laughing was "Don't stop making it up". So I won't. I just want to get better at making it up as I go along.

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Our course has historically been secure: it involves teaching engineers about design, and designers about engineering, bridging a gap between technical thinking and creativity that has never existed stringly in academia in industry.

... or that was the case, 30 years ago, when the course was founded. Nowadays, this raison d'être is not as strong as it was. Why should we keep collaborating with the  Royal College of Art to run this course, when we have our own design school in Imperial College, and the RCA has its own science labs?

To find a satisfactory answer to this question, I would like to think strategically about our course, and place our pedagogy in the context of our current societal moment, its politics and technology.

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Most of my pedagogy is extremely conversation-based (i.e. tutorials). This does not scale well to our current class size of 47 students (max. 50). I would like to get better at group teaching, organising and running seminars, so that I can reach more students.

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Over my past three years of teaching, some things work great, and some things do not. I am enjoying the spirit of experimentation, but it is frustrating when I don't know why something that i've tried has failed, or succeeded. By learning some of the fundamentals of human behaviour and psychology, I hope to remedy this, to improve my feedback loops.

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Ours students are very sensitive to "gravitas" and thought leadership of their tutors. If they think your opinion is not valuable, it is very unlikely they will listen to you, even if you are the most accomplished researcher or practitioner. Where gravitas comes from such diverse (and strange) sources, this seems unfair at first, but I want to treat it as an opportunity: to become a great curator of design and engineering knowledge, be more critical, and develop my own thought leadership. I think this is essential for myself, and the survival of our course, which is in a very fast moving field, and needs to update its strategic direction / thought leadership to survive.

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In what ways do I want to develop my teaching practice further?

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In what ways do I want to develop my teaching practice further?

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Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) is a leading-edge, creative product development double Master's programme run jointly between the Royal...

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100% of student work in our course is project-based learning, the outputs of which go on public display, attracting press attention worldwide. Thus a major feedback mechanism for us is the final result of the students labour: the project in display. Sometimes you can see a direct piece of advice or teaching manifest itself strongly in the output, but oftentimes the learning journey is invisible when looking at the final output. However, the end of year exhibition creates a reflective space, where students do open up to tell their tutors about their learning journey, and what their major influences were.

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Students opinions, anonymously submitted via student reps, are great for real-time feedback on the course as a whole, but rarely for individual staff (such as myself)

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I find small conversations with students to be valuable in getting feedback on the overall nature of the course, but not factors specific to my teaching.

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The numerical scores are unhelpful, but the written comments are usually written very conscientiously, and are helpful. However, this is a very slow (termly) feedback loop!

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Feedback from colleagues when Shadowing senior staff

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Feedback from colleagues when Shadowing senior staff

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This worked well when I just started out on my teaching journey.

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How do I know that my teaching approaches are effective, and that students are learning?

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How do I know that my teaching approaches are effective, and that students are learning?

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Below, I will highlight some of the mechanisms that I have mentioned on the left, and explain others. [IN PURPLE]

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Some of the work that our students do in their 2 years with me and the IDE teaching team.

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A combination of real world innovations that IDE alumni have worked on, and products that started life in the IDE studio as a student project. Now including work by staff and tutors of IDE. www.ide.rca.ac.uk | See more ideas about Product design, Bicycle and Folding bicycle.

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Innovation Design Engineering (@rca_ide) * Instagram photos and videos

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816 Followers, 226 Following, 72 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Innovation Design Engineering (@rca_ide)

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Building upon the discussion of heroes and remixes above, my teaching practice is largely derived from those I teach with, and those that taught me.

Teaching methods I have learned:

The majority of my teaching practice is on small 1-to-1 and 1-to-4 tutorials, where I give regular, personalized feedback on the students projects. I initially learned how this works by extensive exposure to this teaching technique as a student myself, as well as 'shadowing' a senior tutor when I first joined the Imperial College teaching staff. The students hugely enjoy and benefit from being at the centre of attention like this (learned conversationally, and via feedback surveys) but this approach does not scale well to larger class sizes, and we spend a large amount of our resources on this teaching approach.

Teaching methods I am developing:

Another major touchpoint between myself and the students are at Gateways or 'critiques', where myself and a panel of academics review student work via presentations. Again, I have learned by observation to calibrate my responses. This has been a difficult process for me, as being overly critical is just not my teaching style. This is an interesting area where I tend to get direct feedback from students as to what works and what does not: in conversation afterwards, and in seeing the impact of my advice/critique on their projects. I believe I am still not critical enough, and I am developing techniques with which to improve here. Again, my feedback mechanism is via students, typically at the end of the year PGSOLE survey, which is not a very fast mechanism.

Based on my own brainstorms into new teaching methods, I am attempting to develop a MOOC for our course (a miniature online course) that complements our interactive taught content and project-based learning. I havn't implemented this yet, and have not found any examples online or at the one pedagogic conference I have attended (E&PDE2017), to aid my planning or delivery.

Teaching methods I wish to develop:

I have begun experimenting with more interactive, scalable forms of teaching, such as seminars and workshops, where I deliver a mixture of short talks, bring in guests, and set live tasks and challenges within a single session. Again, this is something I have observed in my teaching peers, though I have little experience in planning and executing a session like this. The few that I have completed were extremely resource and time intensive, and very draining, with no direct student feedback mechanism.

Teaching methods that I am avoiding:

I am purposely avoiding lectures as a teaching format at Masters level, as I believe it is against the self-initiated nature of the course. I also believe that some of my worst teaching experiences as a student were boring lectures, or worse, exciting lectures where I would inexplicably fall asleep ... regardless of how dynamic or exciting the lecturer was. I think there is something fundamentally wrong with this 'cinematic' form of teaching, though I recognise it is sometimes a necessary evil.

Teaching methods that I believe are "hidden":

I conduct a lot of my teaching activities in the tutors office: organising the course, thinking of new teaching formats, curating new visitors and content to expose to the students. How I do this is strongly informed by my senior colleagues and my line manager: being encouraged to experiment, not to fear failure. My main potential feedback mechanism for developing this form of my practice is my colleagues, who I work with extensively. I mention that this is only potential at the moment, as I believe I need to ask them explicitly for feedback: there is no peer-feedback system for teaching staff to support each other.

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What is the role of a student in higher education?

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What is the role of a student in higher education?

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A student at the start of their learning journey should be hungry. And they should be presented with a wide variety of meals. Some meals they won't like, others will be delicious. During the course of their education, they may even be forced to eat some dishes, which is unpleasant for everyone!

At some point in the middle of their learning journey, I believe that students will transition from 'eating what they are given' to a completely different regime of education, where they get to carefully choose what they eat, and formulate ever more refined palates based on their experiences so far. Hopefully they are still hungry, but for more particular dishes. When this is the case, the course will help by supporting the students particular desires.

At last, upon graduation, I hope that students have in fact become chefs in their own right!

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Some of the heroes who have been key influencers whilst I have been a student, and continue to be whilst I am an educator.

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Lastly, a good educator is a guide and facilitator.*

I believe that it is not the role of the educator to stand at the front of the class and broadcast knowledge.

So far, I have most enjoyed my teaching when I am sitting in the class, facilitating knowledge exchange and self-learning. In some circumstances, I take a dominant role in setting the learning direction of the Masters students. In other cases, we learn and discover together. In both cases, the educator is creating a direction, which the students then follow under their own steam. As the course progresses, the students will learn to set their own courses.

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At the end of the day, this is all about identity.

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At the end of the day, this is all about identity.

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Similar to how I have been 'curating' my influences which have been fed into the remix of my teaching identity, I see the role of the educator as a curator, a community creator, and a shepherd.

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... and how does this relate to what I believe the role of a teacher is?

My teaching practice is the remix of everyone I have ever found to be inspiring. And many of those inspiring teachers are now my colleagues. Having graduated from the course I am now teaching on*, I find myself surrounded by people that I once looked to for inspiration as a student, and finding that there is plenty more to learn from them as a peer and educator.

An inspirational text on finding inspiration in your heroes is the book pictured to the left, where the author describes a process for taking the work of those who inspire you, and folding them into your own practice by copying (or 'stealing', in the author's words). By 'stealing' from multiple different people, one is meant to unconsciously remix their work and practice, which (with a healthy dose of one's own identity) eventually becomes your own.

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As I finish writing this assignment, I am brought to a realisation that so many factors that have led me to the PGCert course are related to identity. My own identity, the identity of the school of which I am part of, and the identity of the Masters course that I teach on.

In completing the PGCert, I hope to be taken on a journey that reaffirms and evolves my own pedagogic identity, as I learn skills to help me shape the identity of the course and students I am responsible for.

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The educator is a curator of content, someone who is immensely knowledgeable in their field, and able to sift through vast amounts of information and carefully select just the right items for the digestion of a particular audience.

A student could quite easily go online and find all the information they would need to pass even the most demanding of courses. In this scenario of freely accessible information, the most valuable contribution must be the curation of knowledge.

Additionally, I believe that it is helpful to define some of the items that an educational curator might ... curate:

topics of knowledge, to set an agenda.

inspirations, to inspire and excite.

interesting people to engage with students.

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Successful curation within a taught course will necessarily involve the creation of a community around the topic, in order to attract experts and practitioners. This has an important secondary function: the students are part of this community.

This is another aspect of education that transcends what is simply available online. A student at the university will want to feel a part of something greater.

The community can involve students, alumni, teachers, experts from academia and industry, and the public. The events and touchpoints that tie the community together rely on the organisation of shared events and physical spaces for these varied actors to interact.

These things do not happen on their own, and requires tending. In some cases, this is the responsibility of the educator.