Top tips from our Chief Examiners
Hoping to start the new academic year with a bang? Here are some top back to school tips from UAL Awarding Body Chief examiners to help you get the new school year off to a great start.
Energy
Start things off with a bang. Build in a few short, snappy, vibrant and exciting projects that get the students moving straight away. Get them producing some work to be proud of, working together and setting the pace and momentum for the year.
Professionalism
Set the level of professional expectation for the course early. Give initial projects a really strong vocational grounding to get the students dreaming of their perfect career. Get the students to start referring to themselves as an artist/designer/performer/professional from day one. We are preparing them for the world of work after all.
Research
Get started on research early. Build in wide-ranging research methods and methodologies from the start. Give them a rich and contemporary reading list to establish their contextual knowledge foundations: then get them off the internet and talking to one another, conduct interviews, surveying and going out into the community/world to gather information for themselves. Get them exploring and adventuring. An exciting trip or excursion in the first couple of weeks is always good to wet their appetites.
Analysis & evaluation
Your students WILL need up-skilling in this area. They need to know how to use personal, individualised, continuous reflection and evaluation to develop themselves and their work. This is a hard skill so give them examples of good practice, introduce them to wide-ranging techniques, set the expectation and then stick to it. Build it into every project to make it ‘just part of the process’.