Teaching

Last week I was invited to sit on a panel about critiques in the classroom at the Center for Teaching Excellence.  Three other faculty and myself did presentations on our student critique philosophy and then had a health discussion with the attendees.  I went over what I did in the classroom but also wanted to share a little bit of research on an area of interest to me.

A couple years ago I went to visit my  brother Ben and sister-in-law Angela in NYC.  They introduced me to Project Runway.  Like so many it became a border-line obsession for me.  Imagine a reality competition show where contestants are actually judged on talent!  Anyway, what struck me was how Tim Gunn critiqued contestants.  How suave he was in guiding designers through their creative process.

Then a freshman student in my Foundations of Photography class started to make full use of  the “Make it Work” tagline in his feedback to other students.  Over, and over, and over.  Is there something to this in our teaching?  Or even more so do students enter college with the expectation they will be critiqued in Tim Gunn or Simon Cowell fashion?

I found a lovely paper titled  “From Simon Cowell to Tim Gunn: What Reality Television Can Teach Us About How to Critique Our Students’ Work Effectively.” It was written by Michael J. Higdon, a lawyer professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.  Read it!