Ob2 Peer Observation Report Session To Be Observed: BA (Hons) Graphic & Media Design LCC — Size Of Student Group: 12 — Type Of Activity: Field Trip — Observer: Dan Freeman — Observee: Peter Chadwick
COMMENTS: I met Peter at 2pm outside the Pavilion Cafe at Victoria Park in Hackney. He was expecting 12 students for an offsite visit he’d put together that they’d signed up for. He hadn’t met the students before however it was for LCC’s Graphic Media Design BA where Peter is an AL.
After some light wrangling the students had arrived at the right place within good time. He introduced himself to the group and explained I was there as we are on the PGCert course together. Overall, he felt relaxed and approachable and appeared to make students feel comfortable despite the cold weather. That said, there was a strong wind that was definitely a talking point. However, Peter had already mentioned a weather dependant plan b in the email he’d sent with the day’s itinerary.
We then moved away from the Cafe to gather around and view the first stop on the tour. Peter handed out a well-designed summary of the day on an a4 page. Students were going on a 4-hour architectural sight-seeing trip around East London. He began to explain the point of the trip and why he found it interesting. The majority of the buildings on the tour could be directly or loosely categorised as ‘Brutalist’ so I was excited to see what was in store.
The first building was a residential high rise block I’d not noticed even though I’d lived nearby for some time. Peter accurately but succinctly gave a quick roundup of the background of the building and the types of buildings we would be looking at for the rest of the walk. This was a subject he was clearly passionate about and could talk about as good as any professional tour guide. He provided an interesting and informative context to why and how the buildings were created and was even able to include a James Bond anecdote! He also referred to the handout to point out how he’d used the buildings to inspire typography within his own practice which subtly gave context to the trip.
As we got closer to the building Peter pointed out its structure of grids and columns and subsequent squares and rectangles. He cleverly compared this to the way a designer would traditionally lay out information, again giving subject specific contexts for the students to think about. By this point students were already taking lots of photos from various angles and you could see they already found the trip and Peter’s points of view very interesting. I continued with Peter and his students to view 2 more satisfyingly Clockwork Orange-esque residential buildings before I left them at a brutalist style fire station.
I thoroughly enjoyed Peter’s unpretentious approach to sharing his extensive knowledge and educated opinions on what was a uniquely valuable learning experience. Encouraging students to call on their passions in other areas of culture to inspire their visual communication is something I think is really important. Similarly in identifying his specialism Peter was able to show how they too can use design to analyse the world in their own unique ways.
MY FEEDBACK: Being observed whilst I work, is a new experience for me. Not one I was comfortable with prior to the observation sessions taking place. It did however make me step back, consider, and reflect upon how I deliver sessions and instruct students. Am I offering the students space to make and explore, is what I am delivering clear to understand, how much talking am I doing and the general overall tone and atmosphere in a session. This last point, is something that I have always been interested in. I have several years of experience of leading design teams, founding and running a design agency and knowing how important it is for teams / cohorts to have inclusive safe working spaces to inhabit, own and work in. These spaces should not be exclusive to the campus, they can be remote spaces, online spaces or spaces that exists once you bring together a group of students to learn in wherever this might be. Within the context of this observation, the space was within an architectural walking trip in East London.
I am pleased to read the positive feedback supplied by Dan Freeman who observed me on this session. Dan observed ‘Encouraging students to call on their passions in other areas of culture to inspire their visual communication.’ I regularly encourage students to explore beyond their laptops, explore and develop their own interests and areas of practice, to use London or their surroundings as a valuable resource, to research and explore beyond the usual digital lines of enquiry. These points can take place within the learning journey of activities such as this beyond the formal classroom setting.
In one of the micro-teaching online sessions, entitled Thinking Learning – Vygotsky ZPD (8 Feb 23) spaces to learn in, scaffolding information and allowing the students space to problem solve whilst working together are all points that I noted. I regularly scaffold sessions with supplied information about a specific taught topic, what the students are required to do or what they are engaging in. Which Dan noted within my supplied hand out.
On reflection, I could have been more assertive and informative at the beginning of the session whilst the students waited to begin the activity. I can sometimes be a little quiet and self-conscious at the beginning of a teaching session when meeting a new cohort (which this was). This normally quickly goes once a teaching session begins.
Thank you for the clear, insightful, and useful feedback Dan.
