The power of the post it note
Contextual Background
I co-teach and helped to develop the “Introduction to Performance” unit for first year BA students on the Performance courses. We teach an average class of around 70 students as they begin their university career. Although I have taught this unit for about 10 years, it has gone through many changes and this year we remodelled it again so that it concentrated more on introducing students to university learning and more broadly to the performance industry as opposed to design for performance (it’s previous focus).
Evaluation
This is the first opportunity for students to bond as a course and year group and begin to make sense of learning in a university context. They are often living in a new home and country, without familiar surroundings, making friends and managing multiple demands on their time. A high number of students have learning differences, face financial challenges and are feeling anxious.
We try and create a teaching environment that is relaxed, using a variety of different methods of delivery and assessment. This introduces them to the styles of teaching and a reflective and experimental way of working that continues through their course specific units.
Our challenges are :
- Welcoming, understanding and supporting a large diverse group of new students
- Delivering a lot of key content, some of which is course specific and some of which is university wide in a way that excites and engages them in their new course
- Finding ways of fostering a course identity and facilitating collaborative relationships, as well as getting to know them in a short timeframe.
Moving Forwards
In the latest iteration of this unit delivered in October/September 2024, I was inspired by listening to an interview on the Today programme that asked new students in HE about their experiences. They talked about the “first term wobble”.
This also chimed with recent research from the UPP foundation, a leading higher education charity which found “a growing sense of apathy and disengagement amongst students, with a significant divergence between student expectations and the reality of university life. For example, the research found that 44% of students surveyed said they experienced loneliness during their time at university, that 44% of students were less engaged with extracurricular activities than they were expecting to be, and a quarter (25%) had never engaged at all.” Brabner R. (2024)
One recommendation that stood out to me was to find a way acknowledge the various pressures and stresses that students were under, helping them to recognise that they were not alone. We signpost student services, Academic and Disability support, and used resources such as MyCaff to help students recognise challenges and foster an open mindset in facing them, but we hadn’t previously tried to ask the students these questions directly. I think we were worried about this being too personal , and were not confident that we could frame this in a sensitive way. However, with these numbers in mind, it seemed we should try again. My teaching colleague Ben agreed.
Although the large numbers in our classes work against the sort of intimate atmosphere that encourages sharing to some extent, it did occur to me there may be a way that our numbers may work for us. I felt that it was important to empower the students to support each other and with a large student body the chances that there might be some wisdom to share might be higher.
I developed an exercise whereby the students shared a challenge of fear they had about university life on a post it notes and stuck it on a board. They were then tasked with finding another note that they could respond to, writing some words of comfort, support or just recognition in an anonymous way.
Post it notes are visual, anonymous, and compact, indicating that an essay is not asked for here.
I was concerned that the students just might not engage with the exercise, feel it was too simplistic or be too inhibited to contribute. I tried to give some parameters, so that no one felt they were being asked to give sensitive information. As it was, they all contributed to both the sharing and responding aspect. Later, one student commented in their reflective journal:
“ I found it hilarious from the perspective of what I wrote and what answer I received , but also a supportive and out-of-judgement system to make us feel safe on our starting journey. I found it so thoughtful. ………We had to write on a stick-on note what is we think stops us from getting or achieving what we want; and I wrote ‘My nailsL’ and then sticked them all on a table and then a person would pick an anonymous note and write some kind supportive words on the back of it and I received the following answer – ‘ Don’t let your nails dull your sparkle! Maybe cut them a little shorter, but NEVER stop.. It was absolutely hilarious and I felt so supported ! “ Bara A. ( 2024)
In fact, the students contributed generously, posting concerns and giving responses that ranged from the earnest to the light-hearted. I understood that these parameters helped to encourage sharing:
- Frame and exemplar the tone of the sharing – it doesn’t need to be deeply personal to be comforting
- Encouraging kindness and support but also specificity
- Framing it in terms of future collaboration, discussion, feedback
- Making it visual and creative (drawing!)
I will run this exercise again next year and display the results – it is a shame that there isn’t a physical noticeboard on which to store it so that students could continue to build on it perhaps looking back on it in year 3. We have tried to reproduce this kind of communal sharing area in online spaces, so that it has more longevity and can be added to, but without much success. I re-consider the potential of this in one of my reflective posts after reading a paper by Lee Lewis and Stacey Leigh- Ross where they observe
” We co-create the board, the space, and each lesson together. I can’t cultivate any relationship unless they actively cultivate with me. I can bring the infrastructure but without their input, it’s just an empty space and a sequence of ideas for a lesson.”
Leewis L / Leigh-Ross S (2022)
Interestingly, they use post it notes too!
However, I decided to share it with the rest of the teaching staff as a reference point, and I will also refer to it at the end of the first year, looking at how the students feel they have grown in confidence, and how far they have come in achieving their goals.
I have also resolved to be braver and look for the ways that the students can share their worries and author their own responses and strategies, supporting each other in small non- pressurised ways that can sow the seeds that make them into a strong team.
Bibliography
Brabner R. (2024) Growing disconnect between students and their university experience, UPP Foundation report finds Available at: https://upp-foundation.org/growing-disconnect-between-students-and-their-university-experience-upp-foundation-report-finds/
Leigh- Ross S and Leewis (2022) Home sweet home: achieving belonging and engagement in online learning spaces Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal / Vol 5 / Issue 1 (2022)
Bara.A.(2024) Journal UAL Submission for Introduction to performance unit
