If collaboration and interdisciplinarity are known to be valuable to innovation, employability, and intellectual capacity building, what are the key skills we need to maximise the successful integration of collaboration into the first-year experience?
This presentation will share recent research investigating existing methods of teaching collaboration to Year 1 art & design students on the First Year Experience (FYE) course at Glasgow School of Art (GSA):
The FYE is an interdisciplinary collaborative course undertaken by all year 1 students from the schools of architecture, fine art, design and innovation. It incorporates key cross-cutting themes relating to sustainability, climate and social justice explored through narrative making and creative outputs such as performance, publishing, broadcasting, film and exhibitions.
Through a survey of past course’s evaluative data and a questionnaire sent to staff and past students to reflect on their experiences, the research explores new ways to foster innovative approaches to teaching and learning collaboration in art and design. The research investigates learner’s and teacher’s experiences of GSA’s FYE inter-disciplinary collaborative course, which introduces students to research and practice through a variety of collaborations. The research reviews the evolution of the course and how it has been modified through iterative developments over its first 3 years in response to regular collated feedback.
The FYE is an iterative process of development that has faced challenges along the way. It is still a work in progress, but the research has been a timely opportunity to reflect on what it is doing well, and areas for improvement. It explores professional practice's appetite for collaboration, and the proven importance for Year 1 art and design students to be exposed to risk and innovation that can support their development in becoming engaged global citizens adaptable to our changing world.
By exploring feedback, both historic and from current students who have undertaken the collaborative course at GSA, this research has deduced that there is a keenness to collaborate across disciplines, but that at Year 1 level we need to scaffold and support these experiences. By providing clear frameworks and processes, and making safe spaces for experimentation and risk, we can empower our students to feel confident and able to participate in subsequent collaborative opportunities. There are perennial issues and pitfalls with working in a group that are hard to eliminate, but by working to incorporate key findings in future iterations of the FYE staff may mitigate many of these.
The presentation will draw on interviews with students and be illustrated by some of the processes employed to make work collaboratively on the course. It will outline findings that expand on key attributes for successful collaborative experiences, namely communication, organisation, cooperation and compromise. The presentation will conclude with a proposal of a best practice approach to learning and teaching collaboration through the First Year Experience at GSA.