PEER TO PEER LEARNING AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT – Alexia Singh

Unit reorganisation and embedding tutorials for professional development

Alexia Singh from BA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography has been developing a unit for the first years that embeds a professional practice element within it; this element had previously sat outside the unit but this year was brought into the unit with a non-assessed outcome where students could exhibit their work in an exhibition at the Copeland Gallery, Peckham. The research explored the effectiveness of this and the structured approach to tutorials that was put in place for this part of the unit. For the detailed presentation of data and findings follow the link here.

The research question was: Explore learning from a non-assessed project by embedding a professional practice element within a unit, with a structured, interactive tutorial approach designed to build peer to peer learning confidence as well as support community building and inclusivity.

The project showed that the tutorials had been highly successful in engaging students in peer to peer learning, building confidence and developing professional work and exhibition experience, while building a good sense of community and inclusivity. Data provided points of reflection for staff and students to understand what did and didn’t work and a very high CSS result reinforced its overall success.

Next steps are designed to simplify the assessment stages, embed the industry practice further as well as scaffold more work creation and process learning throughout the unit.