This blog is about the other micro-teaches in my group.

There were four of us in our group for the morning object-based learning (OBL) micro-teaches, they were all quite different and really interesting. This blog discusses my thought related to the other micro-teaches in my session.

The Coke Can

The first OBL micro-teach was around a can of Coke. This was really interesting as the object is very identifiable, and we all have our own opinions of the drink and the company. The questions that were asked were really interesting. Here is an example of a couple of the questions.

• What are your thought and feelings of the object?
• What memories does this stimulate for me?

I found that the first few questions I brainstormed the answers, giving short one-word feelings and thoughts, and further into the session my answers became longer when remembering things from my past.

The session was really thought-provoking, and we were given plenty of time to think about the answers, maybe too much time? As we didn’t get to discuss our answers in the group. It would have been really interesting to listen to the responses from the other participants.

Screen Printing Frame.

This micro-teach used a screen printing frame as a starting point for a discussion around screen printing. It was a really interesting session, with a really good discussion. The idea is that they will start to use this activity at the start of the year with 1st-year students.

It’s a really interesting tool for gauging the student’s understanding and thoughts on the subject, It’s a really good way of doing a temperature check on where the students are at.

The discussion, was pretty open-ended and diverted a bit, and needed to be wrangled back to the lesson objectives. It was a really good well thought session.

Symbolisms

The next micro-teach was on symbolism, it dealt with death and suicide. We were read a chapter from the novel Farewell Waltz by Milan Kundra, and we discussed how we felt about having a pill that we could take that would end our lives. It was a really interesting idea and the questions were quite hard/serious. We were asked to make a representation of life and death. In the feedback to the session, we discussed trigger warnings. Whether or not we should have had a warning about suicide and death. It was fine in the situation we were in, but if this is done to a larger group, I think that a trigger warning would be appropriate as it’s such an emotive subject.

I really liked that the discussion in this section made me think about a difficult subject matter.

All the micro-teaches I was part of were really interesting and they all had positive attributes that I will take away for my own teaching. Not least the following

• Don’t be afraid of silence, if you want the students to come up with their own answers, it’s important to give them time to formulate their ideas without filling the space with mine!!
• You can really gauge where the students are in there development, when asking the right questions. It doesn’t have to be done in a direct way, knowing the level your student are at, at the beginning is really important to make sure that they will get the most out of the session.
• Making sure that the material you are covering wont, offend, or upset any of your students.
• Try to ask questions that stretch the participants.

References

Boysen, G.A. (2017). Evidence-based answers to questions about trigger warnings for clinically-based distress: A review for teachers. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 3(2), pp.163–177.

‌EdSurge. (2020). How to Keep Class Sessions from Running Short (Or Going Too Long) – EdSurge News. [online] Available at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-01-20-how-to-keep-class-sessions-from-running-short-or-going-too-long.

Kundera, M. and Asher, A. (2020). Farewell waltz. [online] London: Faber & Faber. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50605.Farewell_Waltz [Accessed 22 Mar. 2022].

‌‌ Lelkes, J. (2019). How inclusive is object-based learning? Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, [online] 4(1), pp.76–82. Available at: https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/article/view/110 [Accessed 22 Mar. 2022].