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

354 ❘
Teaching in the disciplines
SKILLS IN THE VISUAL ARTS
Technical skills
Technical skills for art and design are an important part of students’ learning (point 3
above). Skills are required in order to engage in practice. Without technical skills, students
are limited and frustrated in their attempts to express themselves. Furthermore, the health
and safety aspects of working with equipment have to be addressed: organising
demonstrations of technical equipment and alerting students to the associated health and
safety issues are the tutor’s responsibility, as is creating an ethos within a workshop of
shared responsibility for everyone to work in an appropriate and safe way.
However, an emphasis on skills, as we have seen in the approaches to learning
described earlier, is a limiting way to experience the learning environment. Too much
time spent on perfecting skills can be frustrating for tutors and students. Moreover, skill
is not the be-all and end-all of practice; not all employment opportunities depend on
being able to do the skilled components of a practice. There are a number of ways in
which skills acquisition can be eased:
• Buddying. In an open studio students can learn from more experienced students in a
buddy system. Students can either be paired up with a buddy from a year above or
groups can be created from all years of the course. The tutor has to initiate this but
once social bonds are in place students can support each other to check on skills, or
teach each other new skills such as computer programming.
• Group working. Having to achieve practical outcomes as a group can lead to more
understanding of processes due to having to plan explicitly, articulate and agree
the next steps forward. This is particularly important for art and design which
traditionally emphasise individual work, unlike media practice which tends to be
more team based.
• Deconstruction of artefacts. This can be undertaken either individually or as a group.
As an illustration, unpicking a jacket and noting or describing the methods discovered
in its construction can improve understanding of how its layers of linings, interlinings,
padding and stitching were physically constructed to maintain its shape.
• Using visual resources to explain processes. Handouts have been used traditionally but
step-by-step procedural diagrams can be replaced by digital photographs in
interactive PowerPoint for technical skills. This can be accessed by students in the
workshop and can be built up by the students themselves as they encounter technical
problems that require inventive solutions.
Personal and professional skills
Project-based work provides excellent opportunities to learn personal and professional
skills useful in a wide range of work opportunities beyond those of the physical practice