Contextual Background
I teach on the MA Biodesign program at CSM, an interdisciplinary program, with students from design, art and scientific backgrounds. The course is diverse in terms of age, cultural backgrounds and experiences. Some students have learning difficulties and others struggle with language and communication. There are often tensions around collaboration and group work.
Evaluation
We use workshop based session so that all students can engage in some way. For example running sessions with elements of kinaesthetic activities such as prototyping or filmmaking. We also bring in people from diverse backgrounds and skills to run sessions to offer a range of perspectives. Last year we bought in experts from UAL to run a workshop with our then 1st year cohort around intercultural communication and collaboration. Students mentioned this approach worked well but may have come a bit late in the year. This year we ran a similar session with a new larger cohort, but it didn’t go down well causing further tensions around collaboration.
Moving forwards
ICT Workshop: I found an online session on building Intercultural Communication Skills for staff at UAL I wish to complete and will encourage my colleagues to as well in order to take on a students perspective of learning when English is not the working language for everyone (UAL, 2023).
Diverse references: In my teaching I have started to reference practitioners taking a more diverse approaches to design such as Deepa Butoliya’s Critical Jugaad framework examining making practices from the Global South (Butoliya, 2022).
Digital Tools: In my peer observations I have seen how online tools such as ‘Padlet’ and ‘Miro’ are used In teaching contexts. I have experimented with both as tools to keep students engaged, students already use ‘Miro’ quite a lot as a way to map and communicate ideas (Miro, 2024). ‘Padlet’ was less successful when I tried it, no one made the effort to log on (Padlet, 2024).
5 dysfunctions of a team: Our difficulties around collaboration and group work could be due to miscommunication, stress, different cultural experiences as well as larger cohorts where students don’t know each other. A colleague mentioned the book the five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lencioni as an approach to encourage better team work. The 5 dysfunctions are interesting and I have noticed these in many of my team working situations, from lack of trust and a misalignment of a common goal, but this approach is targeted more for a workplace context (Lencioni, 2007). I did a quick micro-teach explaining the five dysfunctions on the thinking teaching session last year, and will find an effective way to implement and adapt these in a future session with students.
Reflecting on how badly the intercultural communication and collaboration workshop went this year could show us that more awareness needs to be built into our teaching strategy and come from us, rather than externally. Perhaps a lot of miscommunication is due to a lack of studio culture. I will look at more opportunities and touch points where I can introduce ideas around collaboration more in my practise be it through workshop activities or sessions focused on peer learning and exchange.
References:
Butoliya, D. (2022) ‘Critical Jugaad Ontologies: Practices for just future’, DIID, 01. Available at: doi:10.30682/diid7622d.
Lencioni, P.M. (2007) The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Miro (2024) Miro. Available at: https://miro.com/ (Accessed: 15 February 2024).
Padlet (2024) Padlet. Available at: https://padlet.com (Accessed: 15 February 2024).
UAL (2023) ‘Intercultural and Communication Training (ICT) for staff and students‘. Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/45349/intercultural-and-communication-training-ict#visualcommsstudent (Accessed: 15 February 2024).