Microteaching Session: Visual Judgement Activity

For my microteaching session, I designed a visual judgment activity leading my peers (imagined as students) to evaluate a collection of magazine covers I had selected. Among these covers were notable industry contributors such as Stormzy featured in the December 2023 issue of Vogue, Halle Bailey for the 2023 Cosmopolitan issue, Skepta for the September 2023 Evening Standard, Daniel Kaluuya for the January 2024 GQ issue and Cleo Sol for the 2023 Dazed issue.

The session aimed to assist students in overcoming the obstacle of connecting with stories or deriving ideas from research that might not initially appear relevant to them, a common challenge in fashion communication courses. I adapted a version of this learning activity with the students I teach, these students are usually between 16-18, transitioning into higher education and understanding their creative opportunities after college. The feedback from my peer emphasised the importance of ensuring that students understand the purpose behind their engagement with specific fashion material and the subsequent steps that follow this interaction.

To begin the session, I initiated the activity by outlining the task without delving into detailed context. Instead, I presented broad prompts and encouraged the students to apply these prompts to any of the magazines on the desk.

For the first 3 minutes, I encouraged them to write what came to mind, their initial impressions, preferences, and observations about the covers without touching them.

After I introduced labelled Post-it notes that provided context as to who the people were on the covers, the notes displayed their various occupations helping to manage the discussion I had planned for after. I allowed them to interact further with the content for another 5 minutes before we jumped into a discussion.

When we finally transitioned into a discussion, the students shared their insights and exchanged perspectives.

Some highlighted their difficulty in figuring out the relevance because they had no prior knowledge of the celebrities, while others pointed out connections between races and industry roles. We deliberated on the role celebrities in comparison to politicians play in influencing and guiding our society and the pressures that accompany that. The discussion also included areas like the pricing of the magazines and opinions on appeal.

What I found successful was the student’s ability to contribute beyond stereotypical analysis like typography or colour scheme and dive into the process of publication production and pulling themes that could spark a foundation to begin research however because the background of my peers was more developed and mature than students I usually, attend too, the conversations were harder to manage or anticipate.

The feedback I received after:

‘The approach you took for your microteach was very useful in generating
ensuing conversation which flowed into questions. It is often the case that
when persons of colour are presenting a teaching topic that reflects their
visual self, participants often question whether there are specific
conversations required. However, by centring judgment on identification and
perceived theme it gave participants a chance to voice personal viewpoints.

Your supporting cues led to contextual discussions that were very
interesting for how the materiality of people, who were deemed to be celebrities
of colour, was in focus. In addition, the deliberation on print buying being
replaced by digital media was very relevant. It was a successful session that
covered topics beyond the expected including how often black creatives have
their context punctuated by their colour/race.’ – Dr. Kwame Baah