In The Window Placement - Semester Two and the Benefits of E-Learning

Unfortunately, I had to miss our first lecture for this module in our second semester due to work commitments, but one of the few great things about e-learning is that all of our lectures and seminars can now be recorded on and saved to Microsoft Teams. Straight after work, I found and watched the recording ready to take notes. Although I missed the interactivity of the live online lecture, it was quite useful to be able to pause in places to better see images on a presentation slide or to give myself time to write down what had been said. 

Anna Francis discussed what we would be doing for this semester, our assessment criteria and deadlines as well as going through with us how best to document and evaluate our placements. She showed us the documentation and evaluation processes for past projects of her own as well as later giving us examples of blogs that we could look at in comparison to our own. We not only discussed how to document our activity for our projects but also how to do so within a sensitive context ie. a school or public space, where photo permissions or ensuring anonymity would have to be considered. Although my exhibition is in a public area being in a window in the city centre, it is unlikely I will photograph passers by and there will be no problem photographing the installation process with in the gallery. It is something I will consider should I capture onlookers in the street during the exhibition dates. 

In terms of evaluation tools, what I found most useful were the examples of the various ways to get qualitative feedback from our work, in my case, in an exhibition but also from workshops, community projects, events and more. Although in the past I have used comment books, Post-It stations, social media and other methods to gain feedback from exhibited work and should have already considered this for my exhibition at AirSpace, I had not. I am now able to plan for this for the postponed exhibition and am disappointed that I had not planned for this myself as it is something I know is needed from learning about exhibiting and curating in a module last year! 

The feedback will be particularly useful when evaluating the placement for the written work for this module. In the lecture, Anna helped to illustrate the difference between typical academic writing and the reflective style of writing which would be required, with great examples of what to consider. I feel prepared to write about this placement in this way. 

Finally, it was discusses how placements may potentially have to take place online due to Covid-19 and how that might be facilitated. At this point, the group was split into smaller groups to discuss this which I have unfortunately missed out on. However, it seems likely that although my exhibition has had to be rescheduled, my placement will mostly go ahead as is. Though this has made me consider how I might share my exhibition online through photos, video or even live streaming to reach a larger audience and to practise for scenarios like this in future! 

A screenshot from the online lecture on MS Teams