The 2017-18 PGCert cohort has completed, apply here to join the 2108-19 cohort!
Our PGCert finale day was a delight on many levels. We started the day off with pastries and coffee (always a good way!) and party poppers. Prof Debbie Holley shared how an increasingly mobile student population benefit from short videos in teaching practice. In BU, we are in the excellent position as Panopto and Brightspace are brilliant tools for helping us take this forward. Our outgoing Vice President of Education, Alex Hancox then presented findings from SimOn.
We were thrilled to have an ‘away-day’ experience located next door at the Arts University Bournemouth. We were honoured to be hosted by Kirsten Hardie, Associate Professor and National Teaching Fellow, who is an expert at the use of object based learning:
"Objects can be particularly stimulated in relation to learning processes when handled and studied closely. objects can act to ground abstract experiences, can enable recall of knowledge and can arouse curiosity (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999, p.21) "
The day was spent at the Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP), a specialist research resource at the Arts University Bournemouth, which started with the collection by Kirsten and her students of packaging. The MoDip museum is now a superb resource. Once we were gloved up we were able to handle several of the museum objects, which can be viewed on the MoDiP website.
Using the specially curated objects we had two workshops to discuss how objects might be utilised in our own teaching practice and created tool kits for our individual teaching practices. For example, objects can be used as ice breakers to develop social interactions in new groups; objects provoke conversation on their place and production such as issues of design, sustainablity, ethics, and can be used as disruptive pieces for critical thought. I was particularly surprised at the integration of a collection of toilet brushes! As in many other arts-based archives, we abandoned pens for pencils for note taking to reduce any potential ink marks on the objects.
Further ideas on object based learning are in a publication by Kirsten called “Wow: The power of objects in object-based learning and teaching” which was part of an Innovative Pedagogies series produced by the Higher Education Academy. A new publication is “Engaging the senses: object based learning in Higher Education” by Chatterjee and Hannan.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999) The educational role of museum (2
nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.
