Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: Student Presentations (Crits)
Size of student group: 11 students
Observer: Tim Stephens
Observee: Rob Brown
Note: This record is solely for exchanging developmental feedback between colleagues. Its reflective aspect informs PgCert and Fellowship assessment, but it is not an official evaluation of teaching and is not intended for other internal or legal applications such as probation or disciplinary action.
Part One
Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review:
What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?
This is my weekly design studio day with first year students as part of the bachelor of arts undergraduate spatial practices degree. An informal pin up review of the major design project.
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
Since January 2024 as design studio tutor.
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
LO1 – Demonstrate an awareness of the way in which contextual, technical, environmental research and analysis support the development of spatial design proposals. (AC Enquiry)
LO2- Apply iterative drawing, model-making or other forms of three-dimensional representation as methods of experimentation and creative risk-taking, in support of design proposals. (AC Process)
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)
1:50 plans and section of a proposed building design. At least one three dimensional model of the proposal
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
There are differing rates of progress, especially at this early stage in creating propositions.
Will there be an been idea put forward as a model to use as catalyst for design conversations or will the student have to continue during the day session itself?
How will students be informed of the observation/review?
Written and verbal confirmation before and during the day
What would you particularly like feedback on?
How effective is communication between myself and the student?
Are outputs clearly defined?
How will feedback be exchanged?
Part Two
Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions:
Arr. 11.00
Presentation 1
Tutee speaking through presentation.
Yes, thoughts from the floor…
St.1 explaining
Yes, anything else in terms of development, anything that can be developed here…
St 2 explains walls
I was thinking that…how amazing is this as an object; tactile qualities….wondering how to preserve…
[Discussion between students]
You’ve done it; courtyard..x..x..boom.
Wondering how to combine….
On a practical level, as we walk our person through..
You know, Dalston, women making flatbreads…performative
You’ve got that option here, with these wonderful windows…
[You move a pin onto the plan, and stand at front…
St. explains and feeds back…
Would it be possible to think of a different way, you sort of test…
In the courtyard..could it be more generous….at the moment, if you stretch your hands out…
[you explain some options for a courtyard….]
This is a perfect time to test; we’re at the development stage..this counts towards your development grade…
St 3.(Assistant?) Stands up and goes to the front [after your modelling of more direct feedback]
St 1 and 3 dialogue in front of the group…
[you sit down again, and make notes]
Spiral staircases normally space saving…[you mention about air circulation?]
Also, ever tried going up a s.s., v annoying at times…
This could be bold….[you explain ideas based on the clipboard drawing/notes]
You could still have…and add…
[You move to the front, rhs, of the wall display to discuss, and amend drawing, or suggest the cantilevered option….
If you put a person here…you have a little bit of structure here
St 3. Discusses based on yr notes in clipboard
Has anyone seen rounder construction before [?]
St. 4..Yes…
You pick up on the rammed earth, space utilised,
Maybe certain walls are …
Give you a reference here… Roger Boltshauser, Rauch House [You discuss]
Any further comments…?
St 3 discusses with St.1 [now with back to group..? This quieter dialogue leads to some disengagement, St’s in group on one side turn to each other to chat]
This, as it is, as a statement is fantastic…you see this multi-layered, striated…really like you to preserve that big move; elevation of that would be great, you see this pink and brown on the front elevation…
[You make more notes]
Ok, great, thank you, thanks for that, well done.
[St. applause]
Presentation 2
Great Larissa, do you want to say where you are at the moment…[you set timer on phone]
St 5 explains…
You clarify, was this building affected by bomb damage..?
[St. says…this building here..]
You add architects name..Amin Taha..
St continues…
Thanks Larissa that was great…I’m going to let other people start..
St. contributes…vernacular, rent, public/personal space
Yeah there’s quite..
St continues
Yeah there’s quite…strong, programme, concept..
[You invite St. 3-assistant to contribute…she moves to front to explain her thoughts…speaking to Larissa]
Yeah that’s a great idea, community bring tools,…great idea
St.6 really like the paint wall…having objects
Yeah…you have…[ways to push your concept..]
You have X (another reference) and Amin T…
You could take the removal much further….You could look at what Amin is doing here…analyse it;
You could cut it up, get way more radical…
First thing, conceptual identity..
Then there’s stuff that’s happening..
Original floor plan then stuff on top…like yr doing with elevations, you could do the same thing with the plan…can you explain more about what you’re doing…
St 5 explains…
You at front….on drawings…[explain at head height, anything above would be dotted…turned to group..]
St 3 assistant joins you at the front…
[you explain, walls, spaces..]
It raises larger questions…where the building used in its original position and where can it be …play games…e.g. make a staircase in the original place..for us, you need to get the original….and then place on top…
Construction-wise this is interesting, almost suggesting modules, pre-fabricated…
[You go to sit down]
Quite exciting, quite a lot of stuff…
[You take notes]
St 3 assistant comes to front
What Rob says….[elaborates]
Did you say it could be a shop..?
St 6 you remember Monsters Inc…? [goes on the explain …]
As long as you mention Monsters Inc. in your portfolio..[joking, people laugh]
How are you going to do all of this…take the comments forward practically…?
St 5 explains…
[You take notes…]
I think they’re good tactics, use the model for …try to make the model to fit the vision…if its scaffold poles…
Your drawing, drawing, drawing, put all these ideas in one go…
I really like the life in these drawings…all these people doing all these things…so we can see, say…when we return…after the break….the model that holds the thing about to come, as Peter Zumthor says…
[Sts joking about rails and doors on rails…]
Brilliant, thank you for your patience and contributions. Shall we do one more as we have one more up….then we can take a break…..
Student Presentation 3
Ok, Esme, can you take us through….
[St 7 explains]
Thoughts from the floor…anyone in the back row…thoughts…from the back of the bus..
St 4. Says a few things..
Yes, can you explain about that…?
[Some students chat and you look at them]
Has anyone ever been to a swop shop..?
St. 8Yeah, free stuff…
St. 9 You can’t just take something, you have to bring something…[explains]
St 6 In my home town…
Usually people are very honest…
Can we think about the architecture of the swop shop…?
Part of that primary research is like visit the place…
St 6 I went to see my friends, at LCF…[explains what they are doing in their assignment]
Sure, but be sure to include that, that’s a visit, you’ve taken time out of yr day, photographs…it makes up primary research
St 5. Explains…a few ideas…story, journey..
Yeah…that was an interesting point, conceptually when Esme, did that [holding up the card to the paper]
St 5 agrees and resonates..
Is there an opportunity to maintain that really strong conceptual move, to explain the relationship between..….can you make that version work…you can still play some games with the practicality of the concept, you can cut the card and it still maintains a relationship with that….
What happened when that is pulled apart is it contained a very neat…does it disintegrate a little bit…
Maybe is that onto a model…
Maybe delicate strands
[you pause and sit down, move chair slightly to rhs right]
The St 3 Assistant asks a question…
St 6 explains…
St 3 continues…
If you want to go down the materiality route…the timber…is it blackened, grooves, what’s Esme’s timber application. A timber frame inside and clad in all sorts of ways…like two mountains you’ve pulled away from each other…make it look heavy but outside like concrete panels…or the nice concrete whatever it is these days…remember those crystals…crystals on inside rock on outside, you know from the gift shop…
You know outside doesn’t look like much, inside glittery and amazing…what does the concept feel like, down in materiality…
St explains about visual repairing…playful and organic.. obvs. hidden gems thing..[positively relates to what you are describing]
Like brick… corbeling, heard of that…? move bricks slightly…gives a hint that beyond the wall, there’s a game or two…
Any other thoughts from the floor…you’ve done pretty well, any final comments…
St 3 assistant [explains]
It’s such a powerful thing…
I’d love to see your own Shasiko repairs
St [explains] with models I can add fabric..
Those Shasiko techniques… could translate into design…
[clap]
Ok people pinned up you can pin down, and put up another 4..thanks for this morning, really helpful design process…
1 hour.
There are a number of ways to organise feedback here, so I will take the most common angles perhaps. Method: The student crit. as a method; Students: Participation and engagement and lastly, Tutor role: talk, intervention, culture.
Method: The student crit. as a method
To state the obvious, there’s lots been written about the student crit. We have some readings in the folders on this and those references in the article would be the best pointers for following up and further reading. In architecture the design charette also has some of its own literature in architecture education specifically, especially as architecture education has moved towards deeper and more wide ranging participative, and consultative, lived, and sensory, experience methodologies. Each of those is a possible search term with ‘education’ and ‘architecture’ and ‘method’ for possible literature.
Your crit. You did a great job. The crit was well organised, well timed and managed. Each person had all their work pinned up, in a decent amount of space. You had half of a long room, but there was not much noise interference, so the group was very cohesive and able to concentrate. Each student presenter stood and spoke to their work, with enough time to explain the project and the approach they had taken.
Timing is often important and I didn’t see how much time was involved in the setting up, nor the instructions, so some of my comments may be inaccurate.
Unless you say otherwise, students will simply copy and mimic the ‘standard’ presentation format and not deviate much in terms of what they say, how they say it, how they interact with the group, and yourselves, and in how they answer questions, etc. Peer pressure, and being ‘exposed’, standing up and showing work, is an incredibly vulnerable position given most reports of the process by students e.g. Rhode Island School of Design.
We know about various initiatives, e.g. by RIBA (more or less successful), to diversify the architecture student intake, and you mentioned to me the contextual enrolment process (?), so within the crit itself we have to think about how the format may be made equitable; or how people may feel equally confident in presenting. Vygotsky’s (Social learning theorist) term of ‘scaffolding’ is one way to bridge the ZPD (Zone of proximal development) as that gap between known competence (incl. habit) and unknown new learning and personal-social extension.
So, this leads us to think about the ‘cultural’ elements of Crit presentation that could be broken down to allow more experimentation and or more active participation (see below); how confident are students in display, peer feedback, standing up, managing a small group, speaking, asking questions, demonstrating, showing, explaining, describing, summarising, listing, recounting process, naming key influences, etc. (You will be able to break this down into more meaningful components perhaps as relates to assessment). The we ask, how do we communicate these possibilities to students and allow them to build up the range of skills necessary to make a good presentation, within a time limit. We know these sub-sets of skills (sometimes called ‘Attributes’, soft skills, etc. often what “industry” ask of us, and architecture education is perhaps better than most disciplines in providing! We have the creative attributes framework at UAL, going through an update at present, as part of embedding C&E in the curriculum). Any of these can be delivered through Crit/Presentation prep sessions, practices sub skills in different contexts and being aware of how different students, by class, postcode, culture, respond to the task in different ways and what scaffolding they might need.
Students: Participation and engagement
Students in the ‘listening’ group, seemed attentive. There were one or two moments of chat and distraction, but on the whole, very attentive. Great result! Their respect for you and/or the process is clearly evident; that can mean that learning is taking place!
In the foreground were you, and St 3 (your assistant, or higher level student?). Although St.3’s role was effective, it was sometimes just a dialogue between her and the presenter, even sometimes with her back to the group. And sometimes with her voice not ‘projected’ to the group so they could hear and As you’re the organising tutor, her way of managing her role depends on your guidance, so perhaps that is something to address.
Exposure and reflection. There are lots of ‘varieties’ of studies in educational psychology on things like attention, concentration, memory, sharing, dialogue, disclosure and so on. Too much to go into here, but couple of things. The more time students have with the ‘stimulus material’ the more engagement there will be. The more time/contact students have to engage with the objects and work, the better their questions and responses. The more prompts students have for thinking the richer their responses. The more permission or modelling of disclosure the more likely people are to share their responses and experience and so on. The more time students are given after questions the more deeply reflective their responses, etc. Studies seem fairly clear about such things.
You were great at one point asking students about whether those at the ‘back of the bus’ could ask a question or be engaged, this was a playful way of involving everyone without singling anyone out. Nicely done.
Tutor role: talk, intervention, culture
You provided the most wonderfully rich and interesting range of tutor talk. Definite strength.
Firstly, the voice was loud enough, clear, well paced and easy to understand.
You combined praise and encouragement (‘well done’s’, appreciation, picking out strengths, pointing out what you liked or was successful and explaining why), with other kinds of tutor talk.
You gave references and explained them ‘construction-wise this is interesting, as ‘Zumthor says…’.
You playfully positioned the person -point of view- on the drawings/plan, you ‘performed’ inhabiting the space (only this wide, arms outstretched),
You picked up the models (demonstrating engagement) you adapted the models (e.g. more cut out windows to allow light, take the paper form and cut it to overlay on top of the plan, drawing or marking possibilities on the plans).
You did some lovely speculative and imaginative scaffolding; I’d love to see…, Can we…Has anyone ever…etc.
You provoked connections with ordinary life-experience, ‘Has anyone ever been to a swop shop?’, ‘remember those crystals..from the gift shop?’
All in all I would say you were practicing a kind of mode of encouraging…of playfulness, getting students to commit to design decisions, intensify, enlarge upon or elaborate, push things further and be bolder in their experimentation (perhaps this ‘mode’ related specifically to the development phase you said that they were in, regards the project progress; at this stage) but this was clearly both coherent and effective. Excellent tutor practice!
Developments or suggestions
I’d say perhaps only 2 or 3 things.
- How to coach your St 3 (assistant) to be more confident and engage with the whole group?
- How to scaffold ways to encourage the group to be as confident with the materials they are seeing, as you are…to handle, make connections, ask questions or make comments?
[Inverse rule here, possibly? The more competence we demonstrate via the more expertise we model to students, the less confident they can become in their own knowledge. This impacts on power balance. To be honest, this is an issue I wrestle with often, how to balance imparting useful knowledge with facilitating the means of enquiry…e.g. asking good questions]
- How to deepen their engagement with each other’s projects and even animate the peer feedback discussions more, create debate? The Monsters Inc. reference was great! Shows that there’s a good ;level of trust and friendliness between students, but how many students did not talk at all (?) and can you manage healthy differences of opinion in a group crit?
A wonderful session to observe, thanks so much, you did a great job, very impressive and so interesting to observe!
Part Three
Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged:
Thank you for such a thorough series of observations and guidance. This is a most generous and useful set of points to go forward with.
As discussed in our verbal feedback session, there are some straightforward strategies that could be used to increase the engagement with my collaborating media tutor. We can ensure that our backs are not to the student audience, positioning chairs side on or deciding to redesigning the crit space entirely to increase feelings of equality. We could position models/made objects (something identified in the feedback as being under utilised at the moment) on a central table and make this the focus whilst intermittently referring to presentations on the wall. This would take focus away from the presenter, increasing feelings of collaboration and discussions can happen in the round. Some open dialogue with this tutor would be beneficial, highlighting best practices and reinforcing just how useful her contributions have been. It is important to say that all students would benefit from her considerable insight.
Inviting active debate between tutors and students would be helpful to encourage curiosity and deepen enquiries into subjects. This could start with provocations from myself, where I appear unsure of a definitive stance, inviting discussion around topics and allowing the group to co construct responses.
Strategies which scaffold students to become more self-directed learners and encourage good studio culture is important going forward. I’d like to introduce mini group exercises which increase peer interaction with no assessment/result to be marked. These could centre around, for example, asking better quality questions in crits or analysing made objects.