I want to create some kind of tool for staff (and students) that will track students technical journey. Particularly in their 3rd year where this is crucial to how they progress and create their final outcome.

All the teaching staff (and by this I mean Course Leaders, Visiting Lecturers, Visiting Practitioners, Technicians) and the students rarely get in a room together. Yet we are all working towards the same goal. Technical performance staff do the lions share of supporting and making final pieces with students, but other staff still have input. We are all sort of working blindly to what other staff have conversed, suggested and encouraged students to do- the only record we have is the students version of this. Unless we schedule meetings about this but everyone is so busy it is hard to find the time. Sometimes this can be fraught with misunderstandings of feedback and feelings of too many conflicting opinions. It would be good to have a central place for main important decisions/topics/lines of inquiry/timeline etc. that everyone has access to, besides students personal log books. With the digitisation of them too, I find students showing me them less and less, I have to request to see them, and often they are completed on reflection at assessment deadline rather than along the way.

Traditionally the academics use tutorial log sheets, but nothing like this exists for technical staff. This is a pretty archaic process, students and staff lose the slips, they are forgotten to be filled out in the first place and scribbled on paper, handwritten items have accessibility issues. There is also a big cumbersome folder with students final designs in it that we can look on, but this too can be evolving, and its separate to any tutorial log sheets. I’m interested in all staff being able to have an authentic trace of students progress and not just rely on students to relay this to us. It will also form a useful record for us as technical staff to look back and see what students have achieved as we often have only our memories of what students have done and not final products. I believe keeping some kind of digital record of this will help us to analyse further what we do and how we do it, and could also be used in teaching future students.

The digital record would include agreed design images, technical spec drawings, a working timeline/plan of action, things to try and test, resources suggested, final make pathway. I’m not too sure on the format of this or where it will be accessibly stored as yet. I’d like to chat with management and pair up with the Media Lab on this.

I realise this is yet more ‘digital paperwork’ to keep on top of, but I think if we got used to this way of working it could be really beneficial. The main goal is CONSISTENCY of modes of operating for staff and students.

During lockdown I started to use a padlet to keep track of tutorials and keep everyone on the same page. It was definitely a useful tool for me. It meant that even if I wasn’t involved in the marking process, markers could refer to this if need be.

Future thinking I would also like to carry out my SIP project on a much larger scale, get many more opinions/experiences/feedback and perhaps even trial out new ways of working with technical input into assessment.