A2 Learner Voice 2017

See below this year’s learner voice survey from the A2 Manchester trip. Each category is listed with the overall percentage of students that mentioned it in the survey.

What do you love about art and design at Thomas Rotherham College?

Facilities and Equipment – 87%

Our most popular answer in the ‘Love’ category this year was the facilities and equipment available to the students. Namely the darkroom, computers, cameras and access to a variety of printmaking techniques. Photography students were the most vocal about this category with 86% saying they loved what’s available to them, so the darkroom and cameras are clearly very popular!

11% of students specifically told us they loved the addition of new equipment in the department, referring to photo screen printing and also the new intaglio tools. Feedback like this is crucial in pushing ourselves as a department to give you all the widest variety of equipment we can provide so all of your skills are tailored to, and also to allow you to experiment with things you may never have the opportunity to do outside of college. We aim to continue pushing the department (and our budget!) to bring even more opportunities in to give you the best experience you can have here.

Open Door Policy and Supportive, Friendly Environment – 69%

At least 50% of each endorsement told us that this was something they loved, and this wasn’t much of a surprise to us given that you all tell us this every single time! Which is fantastic. We love to see that the space is being utilised to its full extent and also being enjoyed. We aim to give you as much support as we can in the department and love to see you all coming in during frees and putting a lot of time and quality into your work.

The Printer – 31%

The epitome of a love/hate relationship. Yes it can be a bit slow at times, but you’ve given it a lot of love with 22% of Art, 12.5% of Graphics and 17% of Photography saying it was one of their favourite things in the department. A printer is something students have been asking us for since the dark ages of learner voice, as the strain on reprographics before there was a printer was huge. We eventually thought it was about time we got one, and it certainly was a good decision – and we’re glad you all agree!

A Few Honourable Mentions..

Purple Books – 31%

Extra Hours Homework – 22%

Reprographics – 4%

Art Shop – 4%

What do you wish for in art and design at Thomas Rotherham College?

MORE GUILLOTINES!! – 53%

YES WE HEAR YOU LOUD AND CLEAR! This is another age old request that we get every learner voice we do. And one of my favourite bits about it is that no one ever knows how to actually spell it which is always fun.

I’ve bought 2 guillotines since I started working here last February but clearly you can never have too many guillotines! We realise how essential they are and whenever we have a space in the budget, we consider buying another one. But unfortunately there is generally always something more urgent we need to buy instead. We don’t think we’ll be able to get another one before the end of this year sadly, but we will try our very best to buy at least one more next year.

Another Printer/Faster Printer – 40%

With 31% of students saying this was something they loved, it is understandable that much like guillotines, it would be amazing to have lots of them. And for them to stop being so bloomin’ slow! But unfortunately another printer brings the problems of 1. Space and 2. Money. But clearly as there is such a high demand for this, we will have a chat about the possibility of having another one. We can’t do much about it being slow though unfortunately!

More Printer Credits – 31%

This is something that has certainly become a serious issue this year. We did manage to get an extra £5 for art students at the beginning of the year, but we do realise that in this department, £5 gets gobbled up quite quickly, especially when you do two endorsements. It was brought up by double endorsement students that you should get £10 to cover the 2 subjects. We will have a word with the LRC about this as they deal with printer credits, not us. We will also discuss the possibility of getting the existing £5 to be paid per term rather than just once a year. We’ll definitely look into it for you, we know you’re not made of money and we expect a lot a printing done, so leave this with us and we’ll see what we can do.

Better Studio in Art – 28%

We recently created a make shift studio in the little room upstairs in art, which we did after a lot of requests for one and students telling us that the studio in Woodhurst was too far away.

I know the studio we have can be a bit cluttered and cramped so I’ll give it a good tidy when I have a minute and maybe try to set up a permanent white and permanent black backdrop so there doesn’t need to be any swapping and changing. I’ll also talk to site staff about sorting the sensor light into a light switch instead. Other than that I’m not sure what else we can do to make it better to be honest! If you have any specific ideas please come and tell me and I can have a think about it.

More materials – 20%

We used to put out a lot more materials in the classrooms but the reason they aren’t still there is because they inevitably got stolen/misplaced/lost. We have had at least £200 worth of materials stolen or lost this year, and we can’t afford to keep replacing them. The big victims being contrast filters (£11 a pack), craft knifes (£1-£2 each) and recently the new intaglio tools (£3.80 each!). Pretty much anything you need can be found in my office if you come and ask me, but if it is something you want to borrow, you must bring them back to me so other people can use it as well. I don’t even think all of this was stolen, it’s just a case of putting things back where they belong when you’re done with them.

As happened with the intaglio tools (the loss of which cost us over £70), when a significant amount of something gets stolen or not brought back, it means we can no longer justify giving them out to loan and students have to buy their own. There has to be an element of trust to allow us to put materials in classrooms, and this has sadly been lacking recently.

More Space to Work in and More Storage Space – 16%

‘Expand the art department for more space and storage’ YES PLEASE! This is the dream.

But I’m not sure how we can actually do this… As you all know we have a big ol’ storage problem and never have room for anything. We have been tackling this by throwing away pretty much everything we can and trying to expand the room downstairs so we can have a bigger exhibition space. But unless we get our hard hats on and start knocking down walls and building extensions (which I would totally be up for), we can’t make the department any bigger than it is.

However requests like this have gotten two walls knocked down in the past, so you never know…

A Few Honourable Mentions…

More scanners – 17%

We have recently had a new A3 scanner installed and will look into the possibility of further scanners

Key to the Woodhurst studio – 16%

I am speaking to Steve about seeing if we can get a copy.

More Steve! - 15%
We all love Steve, and we know his specific knowledge of technical photography and darkroom processes is really appreciated by the Photography students (and by us!). We also wish we could steal Steve and his expertise more often! We are hoping he will be able to come over and give us a helping hand with the exhibition later in the year.

Be more lenient with double endorsement students – 9%

We do appreciate the workload of students who do two subjects, and the work and time you put in does get acknowledged I promise!

Better communication between teachers – 7%

This is something that used to get mentioned a lot more by students.  The timetable this year was designed to alleviate this by groups being split across teachers less, however, ideally in Art we like to have 2 teachers per group, sometimes two heads are better than one in a creative subject.  This was only mentioned by students in Fine Art and this is the only endorsement where, due to timetable constraints, classes had to be split further.  However, the good news is this percentage is significantly lower than previous learner voices.

There is also more clarity about specific homework's and tasks set as purple books have standardized the information given across all groups.  The slides used for students are displayed throughout lessons all week and tasks are broken down in the same way.  These are also available on moodle for students to check independently outside lessons.  We have also introduced a new 121 system which has been underway since the start of the ESA.

Less pressure on printmaking – 7%

This also got mentioned by the AL students in October’s learner voice. To this we respond by saying that your course requires experimentation in order to achieve a high grade. The best (and easiest) way to show lots of experimentation is different forms of printmaking, which is why we tend to push you in that direction initially. However, after a few weeks into your projects, we do encourage you to do what you enjoy and what you feel you are good at.

Cleaner sinks – 4%

Yes our sink does smell and is very grotty, but to this I say – don’t make it messy then! Every now and then I do give it a good tidy but it gets messy again within a day. And when the sinks get blocked and full of water, it means I’ve had to spend many an hour with my hand down the plughole fishing out shellac, paint and blue roll. This is a wish you should sound to your peers and ask them to be a bit tidier and more considerate.

More storage on Z drive - 2%

I'm going to speak to computer services about possibly getting more storage space on your Z drives, I know this has been quite an issue this year in particular. But in the meantime I would recommend investing in a really good memory stick or external hard drive. I know they’re expensive but I’ve seen so many of you wiping originals of photos and just saving them as small images on word documents to save on space. OH MY GOODNESS DON’T DO THIS!! You really need to take care of all your work, you never know when you might need to go back and find something. I recently bought a hard drive and it has been a life saver, so I really recommend it.

What do you think about some specific changes/decisions recently made in art and design at Thomas Rotherham College?

This is completely new to learner voice! We thought it would be useful to see what you all thought about some of the new things we have introduced this term. One of these was the addition of Purple Books, the other about a recent homework in which students were asked to spend 3 extra hours in the department to spend time on the quality of their sketchbooks and work.  We have focused specifically on promoting independence and improving time management. Your feedback on these is important as it it feeds into how we design the course and resources for you to use.  

Purple Books

Here are the results:

Helps me keep track of the classwork and what the homework is	51%
Helps me to manage my 2 endorsements	31%
Makes me feel more organised	24%
Good for time management and planning	22%
Not useful/Don’t use it	11%
I have seen an improvement in my work since using it	4%

An overall super positive response to purple books! We introduced these to help you manage your subject, and also allow you to think about how the generic classwork can be tailored to your own work and concept, and we’re thrilled they are genuinely really helping you and making you feel more organised.

Extra 3 Hours Homework

Here are the results:

Helped me utilise the department more and gives me more time to complete deadlines	38%
Generally found it helpful/useful	24%
Difficult for students who do 2 endorsements as it is 6 extra hours	22%
Good for quality over quantity	18%
‘I would have been in the department anyway’	7%
Made the department too crowded and there was no space to work	7%
Didn’t particularly like it	4%
Difficult to find time for other subjects	4%

Mixed responses here over the 3 hour homework. 22% of students in the ‘love’ category told us this was something they really liked, and 84% of students here said they found it very useful. What looks like the issue is here is that the homework was a great idea, but 3 hours is too long. This is really helpful feedback for us as we didn’t realise the impact it would have on your other subjects, and also the impact of doing 2 endorsements (6 hours!). Also the issue of space when everyone is coming in during their frees. We believe it would be valuable to do this again, but to improve based on this feedback, we’ll shorten the time to 2 hours instead. This would mean 4 hours for double endorsements and will hopefully free up some work space in the rooms.