Listening to Tim walk me back through the different sessions I delivered and providing feedback was a great experience, I listened quietly and intently so I could absorb as much of his rich knowledge and experience and possible. I wrote almost 5 pages of notes in our observation feedback and I am sure there were things that I missed even then.

I don’t think I’ve ever been very particularly good at taking on feedback – well at least this was what my A-Level Maths teacher told me when I got a D in sixth form and it’s stayed with me ever since. Up until that point I’d been a serial overachiever so this was my first real hurdle where I might have actually benefitted from asking for help and taking it on board.

I would say I am fiercely independent (think Merida from Brave if you’re looking for context there) but I hugely value the input of others and love collaborating. I finished my MA and went on to start up my own business, another situation I got myself into that didn’t involve much feedback and learning from others reflections of myself. It wasn’t until I started at UAL and worked closely with Roxanne that I started to see the value of feedback as she supported me in reflecting on my sessions. I then made it a fixed monthly date in my calendar where I would sit with Roxanne and look through some of the sessions and 121s that I had delivered that month to see what I did well and where I can improve.

At this point in my blog if you’ve not realised I like things in threes I’m not sure what you’ve been reading (aha), so here are the three main things I’m thinking about following Tim’s feedback:

1.TIME – from here forth I am putting myself on a ban on using the phrase ‘a couple of minutes’ because once Tim flagged it I realised I must say this 40+ times a session, from now on I’m going to focus on precision when it comes to my time communication.

2.EXPLAIN – I managed to explain my card game activity with clarity during the microteach, but things seemed to get a little cloudy whenever I’ve explained it since. I’ve thought about different ways I can speak and show the activity intro so I will work on implementing these soon.

3.REPETITION – repeating stuff is important (see blog 3 for how I learned the law at Plymouth) and Tim showed me how important it is in teaching so I will keep this in mind for my future sessions to make sure that students come away from their session with a clear idea of what they’re learned.

*bonus point – 4. ME – I’m generally a pretty confident person so I need to keep this up, it was great to hear about how my teacher persona was coming across in the recordings that Tim observed. So the moral of the story is keep being me and try to bring in a little bit of funny (I also tried in my blog so please laugh!).

Getting involved in the microteach day with my group at LCC was a great experience. In my planning leading up to my 20 minute session I wanted to focus on trying something new with a group that I hadn’t tested out before. As intellectual property can be a complicated topic to get your head around in the first instance I set to work on creating a simple card game that might help people with understanding the key elements. The focus for the microteach session was on object based learning which was an exciting spin on things because this is something that I haven’t applied to my IP education as of yet.

I started the task by asking the group to have a look in their bag for something that might be protected by an IP right and we got lots of wonderfully random responses! I was able to respond to these to get the ball rolling with individuals understanding of IP in context. Understanding the different IP rights is all well and good but the key for my work at UAL is context.

Presenting the card game:

There are 4 cards in a matching set – 1 pink (IP right), 1 blue (what can be protected), 1 purple (timeline), 1 orange (example). The aim of the game is to gather together four sets of four cards. On paper this may seem relatively straightforward but in practice it proved quite a challenge. Once you’ve completed your four sets of cards you need to rummage around in your bag to find one object that can be protected by each of the rights – copyright, patent, design right and trademark.

I was pleased to get some really positive feedback from my peers which included ‘working with the cards was engaging and informative – leading to discussions and thinking about IP’ (Ike). Tim’s feedback on my activity really got me thinking about how I could create differentiation even within this simple activity and included ‘lots of clarity here in the ‘transparent teaching’ methods – all the cards are on the table so to speak!’.

Key takeaways:

• think about how I introduce and explain the card game. Rather than the approach of ‘here are some cards, it’s pretty straightforward so off you go’ I need to think about introducing what and why to the group before I set them on the task.
• from watching a group of students engage with the activity I was able to see that there were actually lots of different ways of working with the cards. For example, I could hand out only two colours of the cards and students start with this which is a simpler approach.
• I could definitely do this activity with or without the cards, from testing the session with this group of students I learned that just the mere act of getting something that might be protected by IP out of your bag and discussing it can be a great activity in itself (and would have saved me a lot of time laminating my cards!).

I was lucky enough to observe Jackie’s Imposter Syndrome workshop, these types of psychotherapeutic workshops are part of the service offered by staff within the counselling and health team alongside 121 counselling. The aim of this workshop was to help students feel more confident and supported in their creative achievements.

Managing the session: Jackie encouraged the students to introduce themselves at the beginning as an ‘ice breaker’ and this allowed them to feel more comfortable sharing their experiences throughout the workshop. It was great to ask the students more about what they wanted to achieve from the session or what they were currently concerned about, I felt like this worked to get everyone involved initially and allow the students to realise there was no right or wrong answer. There was an overwhelming feeling of calm throughout the online session, which was only enhanced by Jackie’s ability to wait patiently for the students to respond and listening so effectively.

Outlining potential difficulties: I felt that Jackie was able to clearly outline the potential difficulties in her OB1 form, she stated that ‘students can feel shy to introduce themselves at the beginning. Also they might feel too comfortable to share their experience. also I will need to ‘contain’ the sharing as ‘oversharing’ can leave a student feeling vulnerable afterwards and others finding it too challenging or confronting.’. Although Jackie highlighted this as a potential issue she was able to listen to students and then offer a fantastic, reassuring, and personable response to their thoughts. I almost felt like each of the students was in their own 121 session with you because her responses were so thorough and thoughtful.

Future facing feedback: Overall I thought Jackie put on a brilliant session and that the students were very pleased with how she tackled some of their initial concerns and enlightened them about some possible work arounds. In future sessions Jackie could think about offering alternative ways for students to share their thoughts. For example, providing a whiteboard or Padlet page that would allow students to ask a question or share something anonymously. In this session most students were confident enough to share in the chat or using their microphone, but I wouldn’t want to assume that every student is comfortable sharing this way, in that sense providing something anonymous might be beneficial.

By definition intellectual property is a set of international legal rights that protect the financial and reputational interests of creative and innovative practice. This includes copyright, trademarks, patents, design rights and trade secrets. ​They can be commercial assets and/or shared freely to collaborate, build communities and encourage knowledge exchange.

What is the relevance of IP for UAL students?

IP plays a central role in students journeys through UAL and into their careers after graduating to ensure that their skills are respected, their contribution to society is recognised and their voices are heard. Whether it is through creating, capturing or delivering value, creatives can be taught to recognise the value they add to their industries and how to safeguard their reputation. At present IP education is not embedded in every course at UAL but we are working closely with different pathway and course leaders to embed core IP thinking practices into their curriculum. Having an IP element in courses can help students find out more about their rights and make informed decisions based on this.

What is the current IP offering at UAL?

When I started my role at UAL in February 2021 the IP Education team was just one person! The existing offering was scarce and involved a very responsive approach to urgent student enquires and providing IP sessions or workshops when requested by course leaders. As our tiny team doubled in size once I had started in my role I was able to offer further support to cover some of the 121 enquiries and additional sessions. On reflection during the summer months we reflected on the offering and started to test a co-design approach working closely with course leaders to design unit relevant workshops that could be embedded from September.

What might the IP offering look like in the future?

To some extent due to the nature of the work there will always have to be a reactive nature to my role. Students may have urgent IP problems that they need to tackle and expert advice is needed to manage the situation in a speedy manner. The initial co-design tests that our team implemented from September have thus far been successful so we have adapted to streamline the process and will continue in this vain to deliver workshops. In the last few months I have reframed my personal 121 offer to be more enterprise focused as this is where my areas of expertise sits. In the near future I hope that our team continues to grow in order to support the large number of student and staff enquiries that enter our inboxes each week and we are able to continue to enhance our offer to reach as many students at different touchpoints as possible.

How might my PGCert journey impact the IP offering?

One of the main things that I wanted to achieve with the PGCert was to give myself time and space to get creative with the way that I approach my workshop session planning. In my previous sessions (I started taking sessions in September 2021) I have focused on the content and making it as relevant to the course in question as possible. Within just a week this can vary from architecture to illustration and fashion management to interior design. In my time at law school problem-based learning was one of the main teaching methods used to promote our learning of difficult legal topics. This term I would like to implement some problem-based learning scenarios into my teaching sessions based on the reading and development I have done around the pedagogical approach through my PGCert reading.

At law school our teaching was focused preparing for two part exams which included essays and problem questions. Preparation for both was reasonably similar and it usually involved memorising hundreds of cases and building your understanding of the topic and themes. But problem-based learning (PBL) questions in an exam were always interesting as they were always an extreme dramatisation of a situation. For example, in Criminal Law the main character – let’s call him Ben – would go out of his house and every possible thing would go wrong for him (think car crash, roof caving in, being eaten by a dog and falling in a drain) all in one scenario. By definition PBL ‘is a total pedagogical approach to education that focuses on helping students develop self-directed learning skills’ (Major, 2001: PAGE). By placing emphasis on PLB the intention of the law school typically was to support students in ‘acquiring creative thinking skills as they tackle complex, interdisciplinary and real-situation problems’ (Awang and Ramly, 2008: 635).

IP has always been taught to law and business students and only more recently to creatives. In order to effectively portray some of the key legal elements to non-law students it is essential that IP teaching is relatable, accessible and inclusive. That is where the concepts I’ve learned through my problem-based learning experiences come in. In my work it is important that IP is positioned in an active role within a creative, practice-led space that encourages students to think critically and take practical and value-led approaches to real-world scenarios. During my time on the PGCert I’ve set myself the task of introducing some new PBL concepts into my IP teaching.

I like this quote from Steinemann which explores the scenarios that students might be faced with in industry, ‘they deal with multiple and often conflicting goals and values, work with constraints, and determine the most appropriate action to take, often in the absence of complete information or certainty’ (2003: 218). It makes me think about how we can best prepare UAL students for tackling IP related situations outside of university by providing them with open ended problems to tackle within our sessions.

The typical approach of PBL is problem presentation, problem investigation, problem solution and process evaluation (Shepard and Cosgriff, 1998). More reading, researching and planning needed to outline how I might effectively integrate PBL into my IP sessions. Updates to follow!

Reference list:

• Awang, H., and Ramly, I. (2008) Creative Thinking Skill Approach Through Problem Based Learning: Pedagogy and Practice in the Engineering Classroom. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology. 16(1), pp. 635-640.
• Major, C. (2002) Assessing The Effectiveness of Problem-Based Learning in Higher Education: Lessons from the Literature. vol 5(1).
• Shepard, A., and Cosgriff, B. (1998) Problem-based learning: a Bridge Between Planning Education and Planning Practice. Journal of Planning Education and Research. 17(1), 348-357.
• Steinemann, A. (2003) Implementing Sustainable Development through Problem-Based Learning: Pedagogy and Practice. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice 29(4), pp. 216-224.

Image descriptions: Image 1 – learning the law through memorising case law example notes. Image 2 – an outline of two problem-based learning flowcharts. Image 3 – an example of a problem-based law exam question for torts.

Reading. Might not sound like a big deal as we do so much of it without noticing as we scroll through social media, and I certainly read more than my fair share of books in the first lockdown. However, getting back into the swing of academic articles and really being able to digest their content was a slight concern of mine at the beginning of January 2022.

I’d managed to adopt some great reading habits during my MA – which included the fantastic app ‘pocket’ where I could download the days Vogue Business and Business of Fashion articles to read off line on the tube to campus. But these had definitely not been continued as I moved into the world of work. So what better opportunity to get back into action than starting as I meant to go on in 2022. Reinvigorating my reading habits revolved around three things:

1. physical copies – print outs of important articles that were heavily highlighted in pink were crucial during my MA and it was time to get the highlighter back out to start with a few journal articles a week.
2. contained notes – I had previously discovered a great note taking strategy that helped to keep information in my brain (thanks law degree) which simply involved only writing maximum of one side of A5 for each article that I read. Then overleaf I’d whittle this down to just 3 bullet points.
3. morning tasks – saving the most challenging until last, in order to properly adopt my new reading habit I had to find the right time of the day. To make sure I had no excuse but to get through a couple of readings a week I glanced over my articles first thing once I was sitting at my desk, with a large cup of breakfast tea (not much milk – just like the builders have it).

Hello, my name is Eleanor Rockett (real surname I promise!) 

My first experience of UAL was as an MA Design Management Student at LCF in 2019 – this was quite a drastic change from my undergraduate degree in Law in many ways. Not only the culture shock of moving from the ‘Ocean City’ of Plymouth where I surfed at the weekends to a campus in the centre of Oxford Street… but also shifting my brain from case law, memorising and 3-hour exams to design thinking, creative development and collaborative projects. I’m looking forward to the 5th May 2022 where I’ll be able to join my 2019 classmates to graduate, only 3 years late – thanks Covid! 

I do a couple of different things at UAL so here’s a little introduction: 

1. IP Education – The core of my work is as the Intellectual Property Educator at UAL working across all six colleges to embed IP thinking in the practice of students and staff. Our tiny team of two is situated within the Careers and Employability department. I work on IP education for three days per week and began this role in February 2021. 
2. Design Management – On my other two days a week I work as an Associate Lecturer at LCF within the Fashion Business School. As a graduate of MA Fashion Design Management most of my AL hours are focused on this course, teaching business model design, research methods and fashion innovation. 

If two jobs weren’t enough for one person, I thought I’d add a few more things into my week. Alongside my work at UAL I run a fashion business consultancy called Rockett Fashion where I work with emerging designers to support their business development and operations.

I’ve chosen to undertake the PGCert in Academic Practice as developing my teaching practice will support each of the three stands of my ever evolving career. Although I’m relatively new to the university (unless you count recently being a student!) I would like to focus on furthering my professional development, meeting new people at UAL and crafting space in my week to spend time on further scoping out IP thinking.