My teaching is on the Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS), a sandwich year out in industry, for second- and third-year undergraduate students across 11 diverse design courses at UAL’s London College of Communication. Students often work internationally during this year, and teaching is delivered in a hybrid model to support global access.
One of the key challenges in planning and supporting learning on DPS is delivering a consistent and engaging student experience despite the remote and dispersed nature of the cohort. Students are physically based all over the world, so learning environments must be flexible, hybrid, and accessible asynchronously. One of the most valuable tools we’ve developed is our Community of Practice (CoP)—a weekly one-hour session on Wednesdays featuring a curated programme of guest speakers across all areas of design. These sessions help students stay connected, expose them to a variety of professional pathways, and foster a shared creative culture across disciplines.
For example, in Autumn 2025, the CoP will feature guests such as:
- Spring Studios (Art Direction) – Pidge Olesen
- Selfridges (Design Management) – Laura Oliver
- Nomad Studio (Graphic Branding) – Stuart Watson
- Chrissie Abbott Studio (Illustration & Visual Media)
- O-SB Studio (Graphic & Media Design) – Anne Odling-Smee
- Breed Agency (Illustration) – Olivia Triggs
- Kellenberger White and Gitta Gschwendtner (Interaction Design Arts)
- Ben Terrett’s Team (Service Design) and Céline Dalcher (National Maritime Museum)
- John Lewis UX Lead (User Experience Design) – Chan Brahmbhatt
- Jason Bruges Studio (Interaction Design Arts)
This programme ensures equitable access to industry insight across all DPS courses, encouraging cross-disciplinary exposure and modelling inclusive design thinking.
To continue supporting student learning through diverse and appropriate environments, I intend to strengthen three core areas: hybrid delivery, professional engagement, and structured feedback.
In hybrid delivery, I’ll expand our asynchronous resources—like recorded seminars and online Padlets—to ensure students in all time zones remain included. The weekly CoP sessions will be recorded and archived so students can access them flexibly.
In professional engagement, I’ll continue to programme our Wednesday guest speakers to reflect the full range of our 11 DPS courses. I’ll also focus on building long-term partnerships with agencies so students can return to them later for work placements, mentoring, or portfolio reviews. My industry background, including at venturethree where I supported their Creative Shift programme in collaboration with UAL (venturethree, 2024), has shown me the value of demystifying creative careers through direct exposure and dialogue.
To improve structured feedback, I’ll integrate more group tutorials where students can review each other’s portfolios, cover letters, and websites in small peer clusters. This will supplement 1:1 tutorials, which are essential for personal progress but can isolate broader learning. Informed by constructive alignment principles (Biggs & Tang, 2011), I’ll ensure our activities directly align with learning outcomes around employability, creative identity, and industry readiness.
A timed action plan has been developed to implement these steps across Autumn 2025, including targeted communication with guest speakers, expansion of asynchronous learning tools, and reinforcement of feedback loops via structured peer review.
These developments not only meet the practical needs of our global student body, but also model the inclusive, industry-connected, and practice-based ethos at the heart of the DPS course.
To improve engagement in our hybrid sessions, I plan to embed more active learning strategies such as lightning critiques, flipped pre-tasks, and collaborative peer feedback using tools like Miro, Padlet, and Google Slides. These techniques create a more dynamic environment and mirror real-world design collaboration. Grounded in Biggs and Tang’s (2011) model of constructive alignment, these changes ensure that learning is participatory, authentic, and aligned with students’ professional goals.
References:
Biggs, J. & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 4th ed. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
venturethree (2024). Tackling Diversity in the Creative Industries. [online] Available at: https://venturethree.com/thinking/tackling-diversity-in-creative-industries
UAL (2024). Careers and Employability Resources. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/student-careers
Session plan interactive elements:
Tools I’ve researched that I learned to use on my PG Cert to make my support more fun and engaging via active learning: I will adopt a mix of interactive methods, collaborative tools, and industry-relevant tasks that build on my hybrid, real-world learning models. Here are practical strategies tailored to my teaching context:
Before the Session: Set the Stage
1. Flip the Session with Pre-Tasks
- I’ll assign quick pre-tasks using Padlet or Miro, such as:
- “Post a job listing from If You Could Jobs that you would apply for.”
- “Upload your portfolio cover slide and ask one question for peer feedback.”
This creates immediate discussion points in the session and gives quiet students a voice upfront.
2. Warm-Up Polls or Quizzes (5 mins) that I’ve learned from the cats on PG Cert
- Use Mentimeter or Slido to ask:
- “What’s your biggest block right now—portfolio, time, confidence?”
- “Which of these skills are you most confident about?”
This helps tailor the session on the fly and surfaces trends.
During the Session: Make it Active and Applied
3. Speed Critiques or Lightning Rounds (10–15 mins) like we did at Gogle with The Dots when I spoke there
- Breakout groups (3–4 students) critique one slide of each other’s portfolios using a checklist (e.g. relevance, clarity, impact).
- Use Google Jamboard or a shared slide deck for live annotation.
4. Real-Time Role Play: ‘You’re the Hiring Manager’ I can reference doing this at Selfridges IRL
- Show a real job ad from The Dots and ask students to role-play shortlisting 3 candidates based on fictional or peer portfolios.
- Then flip it: they must pitch their own portfolio in 60 seconds.
5. Guest Speaker Co-Design
- Before the talk, ask students to submit one burning question for the speaker. During the session, students can host short “interview” sections.
- Assign one student to produce a visual takeaway (Miro/Canva) to share on the DPS Teams page.
After the Session: Reinforce Learning
6. Peer-Generated Resources
- Each week, a different student summarises the main takeaways from the CoP session and posts it on Padlet or Teams (video, slide, or text).
- Reward participation by linking to UAL Arts Temps or We The Makers opportunities to encourage engagement.
7. Reflection Prompts
“Who inspired you today and why?”
Use quick reflective forms (Google Forms or Teams chat) asking:
“What’s one thing you’ll try/change this week based on today’s session?”
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