During the first session, all three cohorts were put together, that meant that over 100 people would be in the same space. I was able to assist with some classroom setup, which I also used to research the best possible locations to sit (as due to my dysgraphia and other learning difficulties I work from my laptop all the time and need access to power sockets) unfortunately none were available for attendees as all leads were locked around the presentation desk.
My group consisted of the following people:
- John – T&L Staff for PGCert
- Richard – CTS Fine Art @ Wimbledon
- Simon – AL Spatial Design @ Chelsea
- Manrutt – Lecturer Fashion Styling & Production @ LCF
- Tascha – Wood Workshop @ CSM
- One more gentleman whose name I do not remember (sorry!)
However I have found dreadful the behaviour of the full room of academics, they did not pay attention to the lecturer who had to flashlights and whistle to get crowds attention, what is worse they left the classroom in total disarray and filled with rubbish. Personally, if that is the way how some of my colleagues act as students I am concerned about the way they teach and care for students, obviously it was not all of them, but still, such behaviour should not occur, we are too old for this.
Despite difficulties in taking notes and other things we have had a very interesting exchange of views and opinions due to our varied backgrounds and tried our best to argue for our world view. I was doing my best to back my stance with real-world examples that I will attempt to present and refer to below. Those references may not be “academic”, but I personally believe that we should reach out always for best practices and “common sense” rather than just books or theories.
Examples used:
Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba, one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the world, but he is also a former academic. In his 2018 visit to Davos, he presented several very interesting points in the way how he runs his company and how he believes people should learn and teach. I will quote only some fragments, but the whole hour-long interview is attached below.
The first view he presented was based on age. That in your 20s you should follow a good leader, and learn proper attitude, that gives you skills to do something for yourself where you are in your thirties. However, when you reach the 40s you should focus on what you are good at, and not risk it. When you are in your 50s you should focus on training a new generation, and afterwards in 60s focus only on the family (Ma, 2018). I find this approach very healthy and allowing for a certain flexibility. But it also puts a pressure on me as a teacher to ensure that I am a “good boss/leader” for my students and that I can help them in moving forward with their lives and not waste their time at HE, as teaching is not just a job for me but rather my mission.
He points out that there is a tendency in the West on focusing on survivor bias (‘Survivorship bias’, 2020) stories, those who made it, rather than learning from those who have failed. We all will encounter hardships, struggles, issues and pitfalls, learning from those who did not make it, prepares us for them and allows us to be ready and know what to do when they come (Ma, 2018). After all, if you follow only successful people, you follow their footsteps and can get only as far as they did, but if you step off the path, who knows what awaits you? Everyone would like to be the next this or that, him, her or them, but what if everybody were just themselves?
As academics like myself often struggle with imposter syndrome, it is impressive to learn that Ma believes in surrounding himself in people who are smarter and better than he is at any of the fields necessary to make his business work. He does believe that thanks to those people and their skills and experience it is easier to run company, as they do believe in a long-term vision, and can be creative and pro-active, instead of just focusing on day-to-day 9-5 tasks and going home without the passion. However many of those people are individuals and managing them is a challenge in its own, as every day is fighting for survival (Ma, 2018). This part is very strongly related to our course where we focus on the promise of the show with the games industry, a possibility of building a network of connections, of showing your skills and being offered opportunities. However on the way every day, every class, every submission is a constant fight for the quality, for the support, for the well-being of each and every one of our students
Next point made by Ma relates to the work of Dall’Alba I have discussed in my previous blog post. The teacher should always have a desire for their students to do better, to become better, to succeed in life, otherwise, they are terrible teachers (Ma, 2018). However to achieve that, not only teacher should expect that other people can, and often times are better than them, but they should have a constant desire to learn more and share that love of learning with others. (Ma, 2018).
Ma points out that for past 200 years our education system has been knowledge-based and that we have to change, as, with the constant progress of technology, machines will be better than us in next 30 years or so. So for our children to have a fighting chance we should teach them something unique and different (Ma, 2018):
- Value
- Believing
- Independent thinking
- Teamwork
- Care for others
And this can be achieved by a greater focus on:
- Sports
- Music and painting, or arts in general
Ensuring that we are different than a machine, that we are more human than machine. After all, we already have not only Artificial Intelligence that beats the best human players at traditional games like Chess (BBC News, 2017) or a game of Go (Vocativ, 2017) but even as complex Real-Time Strategies like Starcraft 2 (Statt, 2019) with hundreds of variables. We also already have AI that creates games, either by mixing and matching (Greene, 2018) or building from scratch: 2D (Dormehl, 2018) and 3D (Bedford, 2018b). Or even creates sceneries with a high amount of details (Takahashi, 2019) or even whole pieces of art (Bedford, 2018a).
Ma is also a strong believer that man-made environmental disasters are a reflection of our heart, values presented with Knowledge-Based education system. The system obsessed with getting more, knowing more and always looking outwards for more, instead of inside. And the Big Data, our habits, our desires, who we are makes machines know us better than we do (Ma, 2018).
This video from Davos 2015 can help in better understanding some of Jack Ma background and views:
A similar yet slightly different approach is presented by Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy. He does believe that the rigid structure of academia – repeated teaching, homework, assessment, acknowledging gaps in one’s knowledge and then moving on rather than filling them (and thus mastering the concept) causes people to believe in a fixed mindset and incapability of learning a new subject (Khan, 2016). The concept of mastery, repetition and learning until something is learnt in full and only then moved on to the more advanced stage – as it is in karate or music (Khan, 2016).
However, education is not set up for mastery, but rather a continuous progression, as people are grouped by aged and moved according to curriculum week by week. Even if examination identifies lacks knowledge (any score below 100%) it is not being focused on and improved, but rather left behind and moved on to more advanced subjects that are building on those lacks. This will finally be shown by crumbling students confidence, disengaging them and making them believe that they cannot learn the subject. (Khan, 2016)
He uses a metaphor of education being like house construction, which reminded me of Shearing Layers concept from Stewards Brand’s book “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built”. Khan says that if we use a contractor to build a house and give him a fixed deadline, that every 2 weeks inspection will come in to decide to progress or not with construction. After the first 2 weeks, foundations are not finished but they get 80% and pass, then the first floor, second, but by the time we get to the third the structure collapses. Obviously, we could blame the contractor and inspection, argue that maybe we employed the wrong person or maybe that inspections were not sufficient, but what really happened is that issues and gaps have been identified but where left behind rather than acted on, ensuring a variable outcome, failure. Failure not on the contractors nor inspectors end, but of the whole process, as the process in itself, is broken (Khan, 2016).
Khan recommends turning the system up-side-down, to keep as a variable when and how long students take on the material and the only fixed element should be the outcome – student mastering the subject. Students should be taught how to have grid, perseverance, agency over their learning and focus on mastery, rather than building on incomplete knowledge (Khan, 2016).
With advancements of modern-day techniques such an approach is no longer impractical:
- Students should have access to explanations on their own time and pace (on-demand videos, annotated class materials)
- Students should be provided with adaptive exercises for practice and feedback
Similarly to Ma, Khan points out that we are moving out from the Industrial Age into the Information Revolution, and that will bring consequences to the fibre of society. A small creative/ownership class build on wider bureaucracy and much bigger manual labour is no longer functional as automation and computerisation are taking over the last two. But what if we inverse the pyramid, what if by mastery of concepts we unlock everyone’s potential to be creative and have input into our society? (Khan, 2016)
This approach is something I have tried to utilise on my course this year. I have added a variety of weekly activities (Workshop on Moodle) to check students progress and engagement and as soon as it dropped acted on it and tackled it together with my course leader. We both came with different types of activities that engaged students differently and helped us to assist disengaged students who wanted to stay on course but struggled and did not want to admit to it earlier on.
Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that visibility matters, as it provides “existence proof” if somebody got somewhere, it means I could be there even if I do not know how, despite my background and ethnicity. And “that can have a tremendously invigorating force on your ambition” (deGrassse Tyson, 2020).
He also pointed out that he thinks that idea of exact role model is overrated, due to its impossibility. Giving himself as an example, there was no dark-skinned person who left the Bronx and became Astrophysicist, so if he would require such a model to succeed he would not. However there were other people, of different skin tones, that got out of the Bronx, who succeeded in life, who were scientists and used several characters to create his own A La carte Role Model. As he points out it is not about the person but overlaps in the type of challenges and hurdles and approaches to them (deGrassse Tyson, 2020).
One of his final remarks was also in terms of the structure of current education system which he summarised as follows: “You spent years teaching your kids how to walk and talk, first few years, and the rest of their lives to shut up and sit down, let them free-range” (deGrassse Tyson, 2020).
Facebook video is available here (deGrasse Tyson, 2020).
The last person I have mentioned was Sir Ken Robinson and his great Ted Talks. He focuses on them not only on the benefits to the economy of reducing kids drop-out rates from schools (that in the US can reach 60-80%) but also disengaged students who are left behind in the system of education. (Sir Robinson, 2013)
He believes that there are three principles on which human life flourishes:
- We are naturally different and diverse
- Curiosity is our engine of achievement
- Our life is inherently creative and we make it as we go
However, they are contradicted by the culture of education.
- Educational policies are focused on conformity to narrow spectrum of pre-selected criteria, not diversity
- Teaching is not just delivery, but a creative profession that requires a broad approach
- The dominant culture of education is not teaching or learning but standardised testing and compliance
He believes similarly to Ma, that Math and Sciences are not sufficient and “A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, to physical education.” as “Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents, not just a small range of them” (Sir Robinson, 2013). Also he believes similarly to Ma, that teaches should mentor, stimulate, provoke and engage to help students to become more and achieve great things. That education is about learning, and without it, there is no education. Teacher role to be fulfilled requires the facilitation of learning which clearly refers to Heideggers quote I used in the previous post that “Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn.” ( Heidegger, 1968, p. 15).
Similarly to Khan, Sir Robertson points out that the most successful education programmes that are alternatives to the mainstream are the ones that provide individualised teaching and learning. (Sir Robertson, 2013) By recognising their student’s needs and capabilities they are able to engage them, spark their curiosity and build on their individuality and creativity, similarly to concepts of mastery presented by Khan. Similarly, he points out that the biggest asset academic institutions have is their staff, and investment in them and allowing them to run classes to get the job done brings the best results, as similarly to Dall’Alba I quoted on the previous post there is certain discretion in the relation between teachers and students that can bring the best out of everybody involved.
Sir Robertson believes that having a mechanistic conception of education is incorrect, that data and fine-turning are not going to work as the process is human, it thrives under certain conditions and suffers under others. Beneath the surface, there are seeds of possibility, but they would not grow until the right conditions arrive. This is why leadership in education should not be about command and control, but climate control to create a climate of possibility through:
- a different sense of possibility
- a different set of expectations
- a broader range of opportunities
As you hopefully can see, there is a great correlation with approaches of those successful men and how they see flaws and chances for education to benefit us on a global scale, as a human race. Art may not be the best value for money in terms of career, but it is opposite for investment. It reflects our deepest desires and fears, it communicates to us on much deeper normally untouched levels and it makes us more human. This is why I am proud to be part of the teaching team on the course with high (96%) student satisfaction (Discover Uni, 2020) at #2 Art and Design University in the World (Tseukouras, 2020), 2nd year in a row (Cooper, 2019).
References:
BBC News (2017) Deep Blue vs Kasparov: How a computer beat best chess player in the world – BBC News. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6sLCeBj0s (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Bedford, T. (2018a) ‘This AI sold its own painting for a whopping £337,000’, Alphr, 26 October. Available at: https://www.alphr.com/art/1010096/this-ai-sold-its-own-painting-for-a-whopping-337000 (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Bedford, T. (2018b) ‘Nvidia’s AI creates game demo entirely on its own’, Alphr, 3 December. Available at: https://www.alphr.com/artificial-intelligence/1010278/nvidia-s-ai-creates-game-demo-entirely-on-its-own (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Cooper, C. (2019) ‘UK leads the world for creative education as UAL is named in global top two’, UAL, 27 February. Available at:
https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/press-office/stories/uk-leads-the-world-for-creative-education-as-ual-is-named-in-global-top-two (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Discover Uni (2020) ‘BA (Hons) Games Design’, Discover Uni. Available at:
https://discoveruni.gov.uk/course-details/10007162/LCCBAGAMF01/FullTime/ (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Dormehl, L. (2018) ‘An A.I. is designing retro video games — and they’re surprisingly good’, Digital Trends, 19 September. Available at: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/ai-generates-new-games-after-classics/ (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Greene, T. (2018) ‘This AI mashes up existing games to create new ones’, The Next Web, 10 September. Available at: https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/09/10/this-ai-mashes-up-existing-games-to-create-new-ones/ (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Heidegger, M. (1968). What is called thinking? (F. D. Wieck & J. G. Gray, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
Jack Ma in World Economic Forum (2018) Jack Ma: Love is Important In Business | Davos 2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zzVjonyHcQ (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Khan, S. in TED (2016) Let’s teach for mastery — not test scores | Sal Khan. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MTRxRO5SRA (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Neil deGrasse Tyson in Steve on Watch (2020) Are Role Models Overrated? Hear Why Neil deGrasse Tyson Says Yes! Available at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=144588640052085 (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Sir Robinson, K. in TED (2013) How to escape education’s death valley | Sir Ken Robinson. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Statt, N. (2019) ‘DeepMind’s StarCraft 2 AI is now better than 99.8 percent of all human players’, The Verge, 30 October. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/30/20939147/deepmind-google-alphastar-starcraft-2-research-grandmaster-level (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
‘Survivorship bias’ (2020) Wikipedia. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Takahashi, D. (2019) ‘Promethean AI automatically generates game scenes, like a bedroom, for human artists’, Venture Beat, 7 April. Available at: https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/07/promethean-ai-automatically-generates-game-scenes-like-a-bedroom-for-human-artists/ (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Tsekouras, A. (2020) ‘UAL ranked 2nd in world for art and design in QS World University Rankings 2020’, UAL, 03 March. Available at:
https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/press-office/stories/ual-ranked-2nd-in-the-world-for-art-and-design-in-QS-world-university-rankings-2020-by-subject (Accessed: 9 April 2020).
Vocativ (2017) Google’s AI Beats World’s Best ‘Go’ Player. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HCWBS6k8j0 (Accessed: 9 April 2020).