OB2 Tutor Observation Report
Session to be observed: Negotiated Projects
Size of student group: 1-2-1
Type of activity: Progression tutorial and assessment feedback tutorial
Observer: Liz Bunting Observee: Asuf Ishaq
Observations, suggestions and questions
In both tutorials you demonstrate knowing your students and their work well, making references and connections to prior projects, interests and grades; be that remembering Maria playing the guitar, or Sky improving her grade from a B to an A-. Their open body language, leaning forward, eye contact, and openness in discussing their work highlights feeling comfortable and engaged in the conversation. Through your exchanges you demonstrate care for them and their development, and your belief in their success. Your language and tone is affirmative, empathetic and supportive e.g. “I’m impressed!”, “this is a really interesting area”. All of this supports positive relationships, mattering and sense of belonging which are influential in student success.
Personal development tutorial (with Maria)
We meet Maria in the studio space in their usual spot, providing a familiar space. Your presence is calm and friendly and the tutorial began gently by asking about their film footage. Maria talked about wanting to reshoot and focus on ceramics and love. You asked curious questions, showing an interest in their work, before suggesting bringing in footage to provide a narrative. They go quiet, seemingly deep in thought, before sharing they had made a song. They got excited talking about the potential of animation with references to dance videos, and played the song. You commented on their confidence and asked if they wrote the lyrics. You suggested soundscape or narration. They talked about how they envisaged the visuals and footage.
You went onto offer several ideas of what could be interesting to explore conceptually and as a process e.g. soundscapes, stop motion animation and other ways to get a line drawing effect, dreamscape of memory, storyboarding. Maria nods as you talked, clearly thienking. When you mentioned exploring the relationships with music and moving image they spoke up again, clearly excited to talk about music. You suggested spoke words/poetry and they told you they’re feeling more inspired by music. They noted down your suggestion of film-makers and artists. Whilst offering suggestions/inspiration provides useful challenge and can expand visions, you could probably offer less direction to open up more space for students to work out their own path and meet their own challenges.
Assessment feedback tutorial (with Sky)
You asked how they have been, they respond not very well. You ask if they’re getting enough support and suggest looking at what the university can offer. At the end of the tutorial you encouraged this again. She asked “where?” and you helpfully brought up the Student Services page on the UAL website and ran through the areas of support available. To help with signposting students to services that will meet their specific needs, I find it’s helpful to ask “how can I support you in your learning?”. In case you haven’t seen it, there is guidance for staff on Canvas onhow Student Services can help support students: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/45474/student-services. For more urgent ‘at risk’ referrals, there is also concise guidance on Canvas on signposting and referrals here: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/cbab4fae-6658-48d4-8d76-c7143d3c638d.
You framed the tutorial as being about questions for feedback. They said they wanted to talk about how to improve which directs the rest of the conversation. Providing the student with this agency and voice supports a sense of ownership of in their learning, mitigating against the power imbalances inherent in Higher Education.
You noted that they improved their grade since their last assignment, how they were doing well with ideas and that improvement was about further enhancing that. As a suggestion, before offering your thoughts you could ask the student how they feel they have improved and where they still need to work on. Encouraging students to self-evaluate to recognise their own achievements and best attain their goals, supports the student in taking charge of their learning. This article by David Nicol and Debra Macfarlane-Dick on self-regulated learning may be of interest https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070600572090).
You brought up her work on your laptop to demonstrate your feedback on how to further enhance her practice; she leant in, clearly engaged. You highlighted aspects of her portfolio such as how she’s built narratives in her work through sketches. You encouraged reading more around subjects of interest and enquired what they were. They commented “dreams, things that are dreamlike and playful”. You added “naïve mindset”. She nodded. You suggested a few artists and also encouraged looking beyond art to adjacent areas such as psychology. She said “yeah okay, um…”. You went on to talk about finding their own voice, and referred to where they do this in her portfolio to helpfully demonstrate. You encouraged they had made really good progress, which led them to talk about their drawings and how they were developing them. You asked, “Tell me a bit more about this image”, which prompts them to lean forward and talk about different aspects.
Both tutorials were dialogic and you asked many questions, though I noticed the students spoke less than you did, especially Sky who mostly provided short responses. You mentioned that both students are quieter in nature and expressed an interest in strategies to support greater student voice. Below are a few ideas.
- Sometimes it’s useful to embrace silence. We might automatically want to fill silence, but silence can be really productive. Some people need quite a bit of time to process, gather their thoughts and form a response.
- I find it helpful to focus on listening and asking open questions / expansion on initial responses (vs offering direction), to support the exploration of ideas, thoughts and feelings together. You could incorporate more questions such as “tell me more about that” which sparked a fuller response from Sky.
- I’m personally drawn to the advice of Yusef Waghid in ‘Towards a Philosophy of Caring in Higher Education”, who talks about enacting rhythmic caring to help students become more confident in articulating their ideas. He explains this involves holding back our own judgment (at times) so that the student can speak their mind unconstrained by the teacher’s perspective and without worrying about the consequences of disagreement. He encourages first asking for students’ opinions/ideas, providing space for them to re-articulate and adjust, and then responding with your thoughts and suggestions once students have concluded their judgments.
For more ideas you may be interested in this book “Working 1-2-1 with students: supervising, coaching and personal tutoring” by Gina Wisker, which is available in UAL Libraries:
What do you think might work in your context to bring in the student voice more?
Reflection on the observer’s comments and ideas to follow up:
I found the observation notes by Liz very beneficial; this is one of the first times I have the opportunity to reflect on my teaching. I was pleased to read that I delivered engaging and constructive tutorials with individual students Maria and Sky and with care and attention. Generally, my intentions with tutorials are to provide much insight into students’ development, provide inspirational references, and go deeper into their ideas and art-making.
Art practice is a fluid process; sometimes, grasping what you are making can be challenging for young artists. My role is as a critical voice that reflects what their art practice is saying or not saying, students benefit from hearing how it is received by another artist.
Maria’s tutorial was to learn what they are thinking of making, they were excited about new ideas and less interested in their previous tutorial about making a film, exploring film footage and sound. I think I tried too hard to provide direction for their previous work and at the same time for their new ideas of making a song, although I was enthusiastic about their new ideas, I was still thinking about their previous work. I began to provide too many ideas and talked much more than Maria. Rather than discuss their moving image ideas, I should have stayed with their songwriting and singing. I could have mentioned briefly how they can merge moving images into your songwriting and storytelling if that is still interesting for them. I can be more focused on my feedback, and discuss what is in front of me, rather than what we discussed a month ago.
Sky’s tutorial was for their assessment feedback, they asked ‘how I can improve’, I hurried into providing advice, but I should have begun by asking what they think can be improved, and encouraged self-evaluation. I was pleased that the tutorial was encouraging and building trust, in this case Sky felt comfortable and engaged although replying in short responses.
I spoke more than Sky, I suppose I wanted to make them feel comfortable and I felt I needed to be reassuring, I need to ask more open questions and embrace quiet moments in a conversation. I asked Sky how they were doing, and they responded not very well, and on the lines, a bit down and not leaving the house. I straight away noticed they needed support and began providing support from student services, and a link on their website. I do regret not asking what I can do to support your learning. Liz provided very useful links to videos and information for staff and how to respond to this precise question and situation. I will certainly try to improve this.
I have discussed how art practice and process can be challenging for some students because the work can carry personal experiences and emotions. I as a teacher need to be empathetic and caring, working through their ideas and process. I found Liz’s feedback very useful, and further reading David Nicol and Debra Macfarlane-Dick on self-regulated learning, 1-2-1 tutorials by Gina Wisker and Yusef Waghid’s ‘Towards a Philosophy of Caring in Higher Education’ sounds very interesting. This observation has been an inspiring session and look forward to further reading. Thank you!