Month: November 2015

NUS Liberation, Equality and Diversity

I was interested to read that 90% of disabled people /students have a hidden disability. During my college days a disability like dyslexia wasn’t acknowledged, so it was refreshing to see on the PG Cert introduction day that disability leaflets and help was available should it be needed. As a visiting lecturer I’m not involved in planning or structuring a course so it was interesting to read that equality, diversity and liberation should be embedded into a universities curriculum. However these are big words and I’m left wondering if it’s a tick the box exercise or can real change be made? What is Liberation after all? I was none less interested to read about Dr Charles setting up a course with diversity at its core and can see this is a positive way forward.

I’m pleased that diversity and sustainability are key topics on our PG Cert course, by reading and learning about these key topics we can help to bring them into the teaching practise, this is the sort of staff development, which  is recommended on page 14 of the report. Its hard no to disagree with the statement “ A curriculum which addresses issues of liberation, equality, and diversity and includes all students as equal participants is a vital part of improving the quality of learning and teaching in higher education.”

Commonplace Website

I wasn’t aware that UAL had a survival guide and I loved the diversity of subjects covered from the lonely hearts “ Long distance relationships, tips to make it work,” to “Making London cheap as chips” (with a pic of Lidl, as you might say ….priceless advise!) The 20 facts about UAL are an eye-opener….”Grayson Perry receiving a 2^nd year CSM dress each year!”

Amazing really that this site exists with all these top tips and lists of advise, particularly helpful with UAL’s student profile being 50% international. I imagine as well as reputation of the six art colleges, its coming to live in London which is a huge attraction so to have lots of great advise, all on one easy to navigate website much be hugely helpful for UK and International students. It was good that the site has tips on overcoming language barrier for international students. It was also pleasing to see that topics like being a shy student were placed at the top of the site, along with quite personal advise on “Beating Stress, Feeling Apprehensive about university”. In fact the whole site is jammed packed with personal advice and I liked that the stories were personalised with name and  photos. The overall design of the site has to be applauded, it’s welcoming and full of great advise and I would definitely recommend it to students as pretty much everything is covered!

Questions

Question one, I found hard to answer, as I’m not involved in induction, and the other two questions are quite big questions. Question two, What makes students feel included and excluded in my teaching? I would say I try and be open, honest and positive when discussing their work, offering advise and showing examples to encourage, inspire and make them reflect on the brief or lecture given. One of the downsides of part time teaching and giving lectures is the lack of oomph which some students display, passively watching and not interacting, it seems from watching other tutors that there is often little or no reaction given and getting students to be vocal can be tricky!

Question Three, Bringing students own life experiences into the learning of a course? …this often works best when a brief is set which involves a personal choice. For example I recently taught moving image designers on a brief “to make a 2 minute film on any subject” with the learning outcome to show creativity, organisation, planning and production. This led to interesting personal films, from a Bangladesh student talking about prejudice, a friends family member who had dementia and a film about the students father making a wedding ring, all these subjects enabled the students to draw on their own life experiences.

Sustainability is such a really important topic and if tutors think “ this is nothing to do with me and my subject area”. …Then they need to think again as Sustainability relates to just about everything.Unless you’re a climate denier its hard not to want to be concerned for the future. So how can we do are bit for Sustainability education?

The obvious thing is as Tutors we can help by introducing it into the curriculum, lectures, PDP, both within university and with work experience. As a part time teacher who lectures at various colleges it hard to influence or change a college or universities core ethos but it certainly something which I can try and bring into my film and moving graphic projects I teach on. Rather than talk about my teaching , I’ve looked at LCC  and general educational sustainability values.

The LCC is an excellent example of a university, which is striving to improve their sustainability. Two tutors have been behind “conscientious communicators”, which is a cross-disciplinary community at LCC established to develop practice-based research around environmental and social creativity. They have run a highly successful Green week at the university.
http://www.arts.ac.uk/research/researching-at-ual/research-infrastructure/research-groups-networks-and-collaborations/conscientious-communicators/

The Green week held Feb 2015 at LCC, was a packed week of events.

They have worked to increasing links between the LCC and the wider community to promote sustainability and environmental issues, I attended recently an outstanding talk from one of the founders of the Greenpeace who screened extracts from his documentary film, it was a thought provoking and a challenging evening which the packed audience of students hopefully left better informed and a bit more aware of environmental issues.

The two tutors running “conscientious communicators”, have a three year mission to make a difference. This link is their objectives:

http://workflow.arts.ac.uk/artefact/file/download.php?file=176758&view=30034

I decided the most useful thing was to try and learn more about sustainability so I read most of Future Fit Framework: An introductory guide to teaching and learning for sustainability. It was a fascinating and helpful guide and it sets out that: Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a vision of education that seeks to balance human and economic well-being with cultural traditions and respect for the earth’s natural resources. It makes helpful suggestions for tutors to develop the students knowledgeable and values and skills so that ESD can improve the quality of life and the quality of life of generations to come. It’s a positive message that most tutors within HE I’m sure would back. As tutors if we can help ingrain these values into students we can make a difference when they start work and also encourage students to be vocal amongst their peer group and work colleagues.

Page 9 quote” In a nutshell “ sustainability education prepares people to cope with manage and shape social, economic and ecological conditions shaped by change, uncertainty, risk and complexity. It’s clear therefore for ESD to succeed, as tutors we need to support and back ESD and make it part of an arts and designer students life and become embedded within the culture of a university like at the LCC. It seems obvious to me that we need to involve and educate students to create a better & more sustainable world. Universities have a strong and ethnical responsibility to commit to educating the students to take a positive role in ensuring society looks to lower carbon, waste, become resource efficient and possibly more localised economics.

All this of course has to fit within the bigger picture, “in Europe we face the challenges of the fall out of the economic and social consequences of the global financial crisis, climate change, declining water and energy resources, threats to food security and health risks.” The challenge clearly for art and design colleges is as tutors how can we make it relevant? How do we define ESD to our students? There is no easy booklet to refer to, no great library of resources, set lessons or obvious guest lecturers which makes it both challenging & rewarding if we can play our part in trying to make students think about ESD and want to be active.

An important and motivating factor for Student’s is that their employability will be more attractive as employers look for graduates with skills to address sustainability and to tackle developing into a low carbon economy. Its also clear that Universities who are huge business’s within their own right are marketing themselves as green universities as they recognise that this is an attractive proposition to students and for research funding. Students are going to want to attend a university where sustainability is the core of the ethos of the education.Today’s graduates face upwards of 50+ yrs of employment where unless there are major changes they will suffer the consequences of deadly rise of global temperatures, water and energy wars, credit fuelled financial crisis, encroaching peak of oil production and a growing refugee crisis’s. By making ESD at the core of their education we can arm them with the tools to make a difference.

P17 to quote “ The global challenges faced today cannot be solved in isolation and to ensure a sustainable future the sector must share good practice and collaborate within and across institutions work with staff and students, student unions and extended partners.

The report outlines what a sustainability graduate would aim to be and it falls in line with the UN’s decade of ESD which aims to “create citizens and leaders who have skills in critical & creative thinking, conflict management, problem solving, respectful of the Earths resources and biodiversity and committed to a peaceful and democratic society.”

As Tutor how can I make a difference?

Become better informed

Find like minded tutors

Find out what universities policy is, will they support me

Set projects, which build in ESD

Get students more involved, setting projects which well inspire and be thought provoking.

I need to be pro-active i.e. get involved with LCC Green Week, guest lectures, show films to inspire debate about global issues. I can also see the many obstacles in the way i.e. crowded curriculum, trying to force it into subject being taught, my limited knowledge – will the university help make me better informed if there is limited commitment from the university?

However I feel it’s a fundamentally important issues that all tutors need to get behind ESD.