A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

The visual arts
❘
349
submitted in the portfolio or final presentation of the work. Dates, deadlines, tutorials,
and information about any formative or progress crits should also be included.
Student approaches to learning
While the project is a most common form of engagement with learning for students in
visual arts, students do not all approach project work identically. In a study of fashion
textiles students it was found that Marton and Saljö’s description of two approaches to
learning, a deep or surface approach (1984) (see Chapter 2 for more on approaches to
learning), needed modification in order to map on to student approaches to design-based
project work (Drew et al., 2002). The study identified four categories of variation in
approach:
• a product-focused strategy with the intention of demonstrating technical competence,
where the emphasis is a concern with remembering processes and techniques
• a product-focused strategy with the intention of developing the product through
experimenting and practising to ensure competence
• a process-focused strategy with the intention of developing the design process
through experimenting and engaging with others in order to explore the design
process rather than just perfecting the product
• a concept-focused strategy with the intention of developing the student’s own
response and ideas in relation to the project, ultimately a search for intrinsic personal
meaning.
Mapped on to Marton and Saljö’s categories, these categories could be said to show
a surface approach at one end of the scale and a deep approach at the other. However,
there are also the categories of approach between the extremes, that seem to relate
specifically to the kind of learning undertaken in practical and creative subjects, and that
indicate a concern with learning being about practice and process. A similar structural
approach to learning has been found in engineering students (Case and Marshall,
2004).
Approaches and concepts are not fixed traits of students and it is the role of tutors
to try and expand students’ awareness of ways to undertake their project work. Factors
that can affect all students negatively include time pressures, not understanding
assessment requirements, lacking confidence, and not understanding the reasons why
they are failing. Any of these can damage a student’s ability to take a deep approach to
a project.
Practical changes to the curriculum to support students undertaking a deeper approach
include opportunities for students to explore, visually and verbally, what it means to
undertake research, what is important, how to do it and what ‘good’ research looks like.
Making the brief as explicit as possible, including the marking criteria, setting interim
deadlines, and following the guidelines suggested below for crits may all help.