We all have different ways of processing the world around us, and for some (especially creative thinkers and practitioners), looking is a mode of learning and communicating. In the classroom this activity can be manifested through OBL (Object Based Learning), and this was something we had to engage with in our 20 minute micro teaching session. When we were asked to create a lesson plan around an object I immediately thought of music. In some ways I was trying to make the object I used in my class as accessible to as many people as possible, because it’s hard to know what students have access to in their immediate surroundings and I didn’t want the students to have to worry about needing to search for the object required for the class. There can be a very real lack of tangibility to the OBL sessions if students don’t have the objects they are asked to bring to the lesson, so using a sound which can be accessed via the internet can resolve this problem. But a huge part of my motivation was led by my passion for and belief that music is a universal language, and I wanted to use it to build an activity that was predicated on the specificity of the chosen song being contextualized by the student’s own perspectives and experience of it. I realised that my teaching pedagogy of self led learning could be explored in this lesson, encouraging students to develop their ability to use self knowledge, enquiry and lived experience as a tool to learn and express themselves.
From a critical and theoretical perspective, OBL can have a positive impact on the experience of learning. The use of objects in a lesson can ignite imaginative and critical thinking. It encourages a constructivist approach to learning, building a picture of how the past experiences/knowledge of an individual might relate to their present, and in this case, the object they’re looking at. These skills are crucial and useful in art design settings because they encourage both critical and creative thinking, allowing students to develop their practice as artists. OBL can enable students to contextualise their interests and practice, making space for interdisciplinary discussions about materials, processes and histories.
In an article by Yifan He, called ‘The Disillusionment of Art Education During the Pandemic’, He asks ‘what is left, when art teaching has dissolved all of it ‘physical aspects’? This statement belies the negative impact coronavirus is having on the experience of students, who aren’t able to engage with the physical matter and aspects of making work, something which up until this point has been a significant part of art school. He’s comment begs the question…how do we make teaching in digital contexts exciting and relevant to the experiences students are facing during the epidemic?
In this regard I think that OBL can be incredibly useful in the current climate of learning on digital platforms. It can encourage group discussion, which is important for students who are making work in isolation and away from the communal activity of the studio. They can also develop and understand the role emotional awareness has when looking at objects, and when making art. Philosopher Stephen David Ross’ idea that “there are forms of knowledge that plumb the depths of the human condition and the world – forms, like art, which can tolerate ambiguity and indeterminateness in nature and truth…” is relevant when considering how OBL can encourage students to explore personal and emotional responses they have to objects, during a time when the digital learning experience can sometimes perpetuate the nightmare of passive and detached learning environments.
Often, the most engagement students will have with OBL will be in the form of a crit. Looking at and offering comments/feedback on a fellow student’s work, is the most common form of OBL in art/design contexts within the learning institution, but there is an opportunity for this to be pushed further. I have therefore designed a sound workshop where the students will guide their own learning experience by sharing a sound with the class that is relevant to them/their artistic practice, after which, discussion groups will form to share thoughts/opinions about the sound. Enabling students to contribute to the content of the lesson means that the floor is open for students to learn about the diverse array of perspectives, cultures, experiences, philosophies and knowledge bases embodied by the demographics and positionality of those within the classroom, enriching the learning experience of those present, whilst simultaneously creating an inclusive learning space. In 2015, The Higher Education Academy’s ‘Embedding Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum’ (EEDC) project presented five discipline specific practitioner guides, with the hope of firmly positioning equality and diversity as the cornerstone of learning institutions. The premise of these guides is to reposition the pedagogies currently at play within institutions that don’t address the importance of inclusive teaching and learning practices. “Inclusive pedagogies, as David et al. (2010) explain, involves creating individual and inclusive spaces, developing student-centred strategies, connecting with students’ lives and being culturally aware.” OBL can be used as a tool to achieve this, giving students the ability to use their positionality to contribute to class content, sharing objects that are meaningful to them, whilst developing a sense of agency and validity within the classroom.
There are however restrictions to the effectiveness of OBL if we consider the issues surrounding digital exclusion. Writing for Shades of Noir on COVID and digital exclusion, Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark states “there are many groups of people who remain at high risk of being excluded from access and use of digital technologies.” Asking students to use online digital resources in the case of my sound workshop means that they have to have enough data and a good internet connection to load pages that share video/sound content, but from my experience of teaching, technical issues like not being able to download or load a page with source material are common. These problems disrupt sessions and can prevent students from looking at the necessary content but they can also make people feel excluded from the wider experience of their cohort who are able to engage with the required material. With regards to instances such as these, using everyday common objects that students might have around them to guide a teaching session provide an important alternative, and my earlier thoughts on the accessibility of the internet need to consider how to make allowances for students who may encounter internet access/digital exclusion issues.
After planning my micro teaching session I was also slightly concerned about the amount of time the students had to discuss the sound amongst themselves/with me, as I was conscious that hearing something for the first time can require frequent listens in order to appreciate or understand what is being heard. These fears were realised in the feedback I received from the students in their evaluation of the session. One person said that when they listen to music genres they aren’t familiar with/don’t listen to, it can take them a little time to adjust to what they’re hearing, and this therefore had an impact on how they engaged with the activity. I was worried about this being an issue and I tried to combat this by providing lyrics so that students could follow the lyrical aspect of the sound as it was being spoken, and I thought it would help them to understand what was being said as MIKE speaks in a dialect, uses slang and mumbles slightly when he raps. However, this comment helped me understand that this wasn’t enough for some students to be able to fully take in everything that was happening in the song, so I think that going forward it’s important that I design activities around sound where there is enough time for people to engage with it in a way where they feel that they can fully absorb what they’re hearing, in order to process and reflect on how it makes them feel in relation to the activity I’ve asked them to complete.
I also received feedback that the session felt a bit rushed, and I think this was due to the division of time set for each activity. This comment echo’s the earlier observation about struggling to engage with the sound within the time given, so it’s important that I find ways of managing the sessions so that I’m not asking the students to do more than is viable. I’m conscious that if students feel like they don’t have enough time to complete a task they rush through it and this changes their ability to enjoy the activity, and as Gadamer discussed, I want to create spaces that encourage play and exploration as a mode of learning, and that’s only possible of people are given the space and time to do so.
I am, however, encouraged by the responses both verbal and written, that relayed how enjoyable it was to listen to a sound in a learning context. Some of the students’ personal interest in music and hip hop as a genre of music allowed them to enjoy the task and this was important to me because one of the reasons I chose this object was because I’m interested in decolonising the learning space students work in. Hearing students say,
“I used to make music, used to be a rapper
Love lyrics, love discovering new music”
allowed me to see how using a piece of music from a young black man created a space for discussion around under represented and alternative practices. Sharing the work of a young African American rapper who uses language in a way that isn’t rooted in colonial history was a way for me to introduce new subject matter, and concepts about geographic and personal histories in a way that was explorative and participatory.
Overall, using OBL in the classroom creates opportunities for building a sense of community via the activity of sharing thoughts and ideas, which is crucial when considering how to deal with the social aspects of learning on digital platforms. OBL can help students understand that when engaging with the activity of looking, the process of questioning is in and of itself an action of learning and development that isn’t based on needing to provide concrete or ‘correct’ answers. It is about exploration and self expression via the simple act of looking, and it can create dialogues that encourage students to think about how this process can influence their research (enquiry and knowledge) processes.