Contextual Background
I usually teach within a dedicated Painting Methods & Materials (M&M) Room (see Fig. 1), occasionally stepping out of that space to teach in a shared bookable seminar room (see Fig. 2) to house larger groups. I consistently run morning workshops, and find that students can be slow to actively engage in the session.
Evaluation
In M&M, there is an abundance of natural light, and the space has been curated in a way where tools, examples, layout, and design flow to allow for ease of teaching and working. Not only this, but care to include wellbeing items such as plants encourage a positive environment for student engagement (Marshalsey, 2023). The setback to this space is that due to the size; classes are capped (numbers dependent on process), as well as independent working off-limits during the workshop. Whilst these issues are mitigated by use of a shared bookable seminar space (DG21), this room functions mainly as a lecture room for other courses. Therefore, substantial tidying and setup is required, along with a less specialised and inviting space which lacks natural light.
For example, I run Y1 U4 Bookbinding in DG21 on Friday mornings and the rather dark and daunting nature of the room seems to impede interaction when I ask for student participation. Use of a non-specialised space cause for discomfort for staff and students, as well as the time of day playing a part in the sleepy and disengaged nature.
Moving Forwards
- Alternative timetabling
Although I do not have complete control over the scheduling of these workshops, to mitigate any lack of engagement from early morning sessions, I plan to discuss with year leaders to implement an equal range of morning and afternoon workshops (where applicable) to encourage those who are more active later in the day (Yeo et al., 2023). The issue being, is that I tend to run many full-day sessions e.g. Risograph Printing, Stretcher Making, which must begin in the morning to be completed in one day. I could consider splitting these over two separate teaching days, but from experience, workshops scheduled over multiple days have a significant drop off in attendance. Additionally, due to space and staffing constraints, this would be difficult to programme.
2. The social aspect of engagement
For students to achieve better learning gains, engagement is a necessary marker of comprehension during hands-on technical workshops. To better motivate my students, I have integrated an object-based activity with music at the start of my sessions to encourage chit-chat & excitement about the materials, equipment, and methods. I have already found this to play a huge impact on student confidence to answer my probing e.g. “can anyone tell me what they know about ‘X’ process already?”. When trialling this in M&M vs. DG21, I found students were more actively engaged in M&M. The more inviting, communal setup and smaller group size evidently plays a role here (Exeter et al., 2010).
3. Sense of place
As mentioned in ‘Sensory Affect, Learning Spaces, and Design Education’ “placelessness can foster negative feelings in both educators and students.” (Marshalsey, 2023, p. 120) She goes on to discuss that without forming an intimate attachment to a learning space, students (and staff) may experience “existential outsideness” (p. 121). This concept is apparent in use of multi-use spaces such as DG21; the room does not hold particular attachment from students/staff, unlike M&M. Therefore, does not foster an engaging learning environment. To combat this, the simplest route would be to stop teaching in DG21, however, increasing course sizes will likely not permit this. Instead, I could encourage residency-esque use of space through temporarily displaying (unobtrusive) artworks on walls, hosting peer-led crits and collaboration, and even bringing plants.
4. Design of learning environment
As aforementioned, environment plays an integral role to student learning experience. M&M has been moved 3 years running, and each year it is designed with collaborative input to ensure that it functions as a technical course-specific space for workshops, presentations and independent working. The opportunity to create the ideal learning space from a blank canvas (Marshalsey, 2023), means careful planning and preparation prior to the academic year, as well as development of the space as each term goes by. In doing so, the room has cultivated an “existential insideness” which students seem to resonate with (Marshalsey, 2023, p. 121). For example, going from a large open-plan space with no windows, to a smaller one with lots of natural light has greatly improved the way students engage in workshops, and when independently working. This obviously has reduced our class sizes, but the alignment with student ideals for learning/studio spaces is clear: plants, plenty of natural light, visual examples/inspiration, books, wood features etc. (Marshalsey, 2023, pp. 84-85).
References
Exeter, D.J. et al. (2010) ‘Student engagement in very large classes: The teachers’ perspective’, Studies in Higher Education, 35(7), pp. 761–775.
Marshalsey, L. (2023) Sensory affect, learning spaces and design education: Strategies for reflective teaching and student engagement in Higher Education. London: Routledge.
Yeo, S.C. et al. (2023) ‘Early Morning University classes are associated with impaired sleep and academic performance’, Nature Human Behaviour, 7(4), pp. 502–514.