Seymour Roworth-Stokes

Case study 1

Using a learning pack to support the independent acquisition of technical drawing skills

HND in Packaging Design, Surrey Institute of Art & Design (formerly West Surrey College of Art and Design)
Originator: Seymour Roworth-Stokes.
Reproduced with permission from Course Design for Resource Based Learning - Art & Design (1994)
Marion Wilks and Graham Gibbs (Eds)

Background

The course recruits principally from Foundation and BTEC National Diploma courses, but there is a significant number of mature students who have had appropriate work experience, though they may not have formal entry qualifications

The Packaging Design course at WSCAD is in its fourth year of operation and, like many other courses, has been subject to a reduction in teaching hours and accommodation. This is a studio-based course, and for the present students continue to have their own permanent work-space. The course team are aware that packaging students also need access to other workshop facilities, computer and library resources and drawing studios, and that, while they are occupying these, their own work-spaces remain empty. As with other new courses, the library's stock is still being built up and there are difficulties with access to reading materials.

The knowledge and skills which entrants to the course possess are quite broad and frequently at unequal levels owing to the diversity of provision allowed within foundation and diploma courses. Technical drawing skills, for instance, are not a prerequisite for entry. The course team spend the first part of the first term addressing any inequalities through a six-week programme of 'balancing studies'.

Technical drawing was traditionally delivered as a taught component to groups of 15 over three six-hour days. Numbers in the group were constrained by the size of the drawing studio. Teaching consisted of a series of demonstrations followed by practice exercises monitored by the tutor. With a cohort of 45 the total teaching time devoted to this unit was 54 hours. Since this programme is, for some students, a period of revision or consolidation rather than progression, the course team considered it extravagant to continue to devote a sizeable teaching resource to it.

A resource-based method of delivery was seen as a means of reducing both staff-student contact time and the need to use the drawing studio, the demand for which outstrips supply.

Context

The course team apply an RBL approach to the Measured Drawing Programme, which is an element within Technical Studies 1. Its purpose is to ensure that all students possess an understanding of technical drawing systems and the skills necessary to communicate their designs and their design thinking through standard methods of 3D representation. The programme is delivered to 45 first-year students on the Packaging Design course.

In general, students on the course learn through a combination of direct teaching and independent learning. The project is the chief vehicle for curriculum delivery, as ever, but there is less and less tutor time available to support individual students, so group briefings and progress reviews are now standard.

Aims

Resource-based learning was chosen as a delivery method because of its similarity to the project work with which students are already familiar from their preparatory feeder courses. The course team also took the opportunity to build in assessment of students' ability to manage their own time and motivate themselves. Fostering independence is a key aim of the course as a whole.

The course team have taken advantage of the staff development programme run over the past two years to pioneer teaching and learning strategies that place considerable responsibility with students. The use of learning agreements, negotiated study, peer- and self-assessment, group learning and proctoring are all common from the earliest part of the course. The operation of these methods and the benefits they bring to the student are laid out in the student handbook.

Implementation

The learning pack that forms the centre of the unit grew out of learning materials which were given to students to support their studies when technical drawing was taught conventionally. It was put together by the tutor responsible for delivering technical studies, following a curriculum workshop for the course team, which specifically identified ways of bringing students up to speed in key areas where their previous educational attainment was likely to be varied.

Resources

The resources consist of a small pack of 16 pages of information and diagrams on:

• orthographic projections;
• single-part and assembly drawings;
• metric projections;
• perspective drawing.

Students are required to read the material provided and carry out a series of practical exercises designed to test their understanding of the concepts explained in the pack.

Operation

New students are sent a letter with the pack explaining its contents and how they are to be used. They are also advised on the simple items of equipment they will need to complete the briefs in the pack, all of which will be required for future work on the course. The assessment date is also indicated in the letter.

The learning pack is sent out during the summer vacation as a project for completion by the first week of term.

Brief 1 deals with lst- and 3rd-angle projections. Students are asked to read notes on orthographic projection, which explain both its function and how to do it in 1st and 3rd angle. Diagrams accompany the notes. Students are then asked to produce orthographic projections of a three-dimensional rectangular block with chamfer and a wedge cut out of it. Instructions are given on how to lay out drawings on an A2 sheet. Assessment criteria are specified.

Measured Drawing Brief la

The second brief gives students ten further exercises in drawing plans and elevations from ten isometric drawings, and then a further, more difficult, exercise in producing sectional drawings from an orthographic projection of an assembled component.

The third brief introduces metric projections and gives examples and diagrams of how these have been produced. Students are then asked to produce their own axonometric, isometric and oblique drawings.

The final brief considers perspective drawing and introduces the Jay Doplins cube method of working up a visual. Again students are asked to complete two exercises in constructing a cube in 45/45 and 30/60 degree perspective. Step-by-step instructions are given here.

In total students are expected to spend approximately 24 hours carrying out the briefs. The assignments are assessed by staff after the start of term and grades returned to students with their work marked and annotated.

Costs

The cost of preparing the pack has been minimal as it grew out of materials already used as handouts to support conventional delivery. There are demonstrable savings both in staff time and space utilisation.

Evaluation

The course team were initially concerned that the delivery method encouraged a surface rather than a deep approach to learning. But they have been reassured by the students performance on subsequent modules, which indicates that in fact the reverse is true

All students passed the unit when a resource-based approach was used for the first time in 1993/94, and the level of success remained as high as in previous years. Students who had done some technical drawing in their preparatory courses tended to get higher grades, but not exclusively so. The course team were impressed with the consistently good level of achievement.

At the class where grades were presented, students were asked what they felt about the unit. Many, including those who had done well, said that they had not fully understood what they were doing and why they were doing it; in some cases they had copied the examples step by step and thereby achieved the correct results. However, in a subsequent module, which requires students to produce drawings of models they are constructing, they have been able to apply the skills learnt on the measured drawing unit to their own practice with greater confidence than previous cohorts

Developments

During the first year of operation a surgery was arranged for students who experienced difficulties; 14 of the 45 students signed up for this. Most of these are students who actually did well in the unit, and the course team is reconsidering the way in which it can support weaker students while also giving successful students more confidence in their own abilities.

An area of concern is the amount of time students devoted to completing the briefs which for some far exceeded what was expected. As a result, the course team is reducing the number of briefs set for completion before term starts and setting the most difficult brief at a later stage in the course.

The course team claim to assess self-management as well as technical skills through the unit; but in the first year of operation the drawings themselves were the only evidence of this. In future students will be asked to provide a written critical reflection on how they managed to carry out the set acr planning pro-forma, carry out the library assignment and present a preliminary bibliography.

The results of their work are discussed and debated at seminar 3. The role of the tutor is to give verbal feedback and provide paradigm examples. In seminar 4, nsider [sic] that this method of delivery is particularly suitable for introducing technical skills. They are planning further packs on the use of typography in packaging and the development of basic IT skills. They also see the potential of resource packs for enabling students seeking direct admission to level 2 and to the BA(Hons) year to provide additional evidence when they wish to have their prior experiential learning accredited.

Conclusion

This course team took material which they had originally generated to support direct teaching sessions and packaged it with learning activities to form a learning resource pack. They therefore spent little time in materials production and the whole exercise was extremely cost effective. The problem of access to the drawing studio was solved, since students produced their work off site.

The experience of the students suggests that staff need to spend a little more time revising the materials in order to give more specific instructions and ensure that terminology is consistent between the learning materials and learning activities. This should help reduce confusion. The staff intend to involve students in the revisions.

All students who are accepted on the course are interviewed, which allows admissions tutors to discuss the course approach to teaching and learning. This factor is critical to the success of RBL so early on in a student's contact with the course and college, which colours their expectations of the responsibility they will be required to take for their own learning. The pack could benefit from further explanation about why this approach to student learning has been adopted, and from a short guide to additional resources which are available in libraries and bookshops. Some students had used both books and other people to help them.

The introduction of a self-study, resource-based initiative right at the outset of the students' studies has established an ethos of independence and resourcefulness which continues to be apparent in this group. The quality of learning has improved and delivery costs have been reduced.