Micro to meso
During the microteach session, it had come to light that a member of our small group was a fellow technician, teaching within the sound arts specialism. My own background is within sound arts for performance, so it felt natural to organise a meeting with them to discuss teaching resources, academic co-delivery, and ongoing projects.
(Curiously, when researching all about UAL before my arrival several years ago, I had discovered this sound arts course existed. I was a bit miffed to subsequently learn that there is virtually no cross-course collaboration in sound)
Sadly, I did not video record this meeting, but the one-to-one meeting allowed me to get to know my fellow student/colleague better, finding good common ground in skills as well as teaching approaches. We shared our current projects, and discussed the difficulties of delivering online. I talked about a specific successful sound project I had taught, and I asked my fellow student for guidance as to their own successful projects, and why they felt they were successful. That naturally flowed on to sharing useful resources and small beginnings of realistic plans to collaborate in the future.
This is useful in considering ‘communities of practice’. As Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner suggest, ‘communities of practice’ can be found in several organisations, including in education, aiming to form a “broader learning system”, developing practice in key skills such as problem solving, seeking experience, mapping knowledge and identifying gaps (Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, 2015 Introduction to communities of practice) (available online here) (URL accessed 19/04/21)
Deadlines
I’m great at setting and managing deadlines of others, however, my own procrastination at times is self-destructive. A fellow student and Wimbledon colleague called me out of the blue to for a short discussion about time management. We both were open with each other about workload stress, and the processing and writing up of information, so much so that the much longed for Easter break had become mildly stressful. We decided to set ourselves in interim deadlines to send each other our case studies work in order to sustain energy and commitment.
I took part in all three of the Easter break organised writing sessions. Lindsay Jordan discussed the concept of ‘Morphic resonance’ (Sheldrake, R., 2009. Morphic resonance. Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press) which was a sensation I had experienced but couldn’t define. I had also experienced this while teaching, asking students to complete a making task synchronously and completing the task alongside them. This is something I intend to continue doing, as keeping a sense of community is a vital part of my practice.