Innovation and Excellence Grants celebrate their success in practice - Volume 2

Research teams as a way to interactive learning? Yes, but...

The idea of simulating the real conditions of team research, characteristic of scientific projects nowadays, looks appealing and logical at first sight. Especially in the field of arts sciences, the experience of working in a team is not yet a common part of the education of future professionals. This also corresponds to the rather individualistic approach to research in the arts sciences. In an effort to strengthen this level of competence in students of the Faculty of Arts at the undergraduate level, it is necessary to consider the risks and limitations that arise from the new type of teaching. The following text is a summary of the findings and outcomes of the implementation of research and simulation-based teaching in the two-semester course Aesthetic Theories of Multimedia and Synesthesia I and II at the Faculty of Arts within the framework of the programme Innovations in Teaching Aesthetic Theories of Multimedia and Synesthesia I and II (MUNI/IVV/0764/2023).

In the past, the teaching of the above-mentioned two-semester course was mainly in the form of lectures, which included discussions with students developing the content of the lectures and reading of recommended texts. The final output was in the form of a written test or essay. However, essay writing is becoming problematic, if not anachronistic, as a result of the advent of artificial intelligence tools, and closed-question tests can again tempt students to adventure in the form of guessing contests. Masaryk University's course innovation programme has therefore come at the right time to offer teachers and students a chance to transform the form of teaching into a more interactive form based more substantially on team research work.

The course primarily aims at familiarizing students of the Interactive Media Theory and Sound Design and Multimedia Technology programs with forms of technologically (media) based creativity and art not only in practical demonstrations, but also through the study of theoretical texts and artistic manifestos of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The starting point was the assumption that if we want to really activate and motivate students to study forms of contemporary multimedia creativity, it is necessary to show them the door (didactically speaking), but they have to enter and walk the path to their own knowledge themselves. This is done in groups under the non-invasive mentoring supervision of an educator. Translated into practice, the original series of about 13 lectures per semester has been split into two main methodological parts: the first half of the course is delivered by the teacher in the form of lectures to present the basic themes and outline their contours. At the same time, immediately in the introductory classes, student research teams are formed and their focus is defined. Students build their teams completely independently, based on their own preferences and the topics proposed in the lectures. In parallel with the ongoing explanation of the topics during the course, the teams' own research is already underway. From the middle of the semester onwards, group presentations of the results will begin to take place. The purpose of this teaching concept is to simulate the conditions of a real research operation: from the specification of the subject of the research, through its staffing, the formulation of the methodology and objectives, to its actual implementation on the basis of collaboration and communication in the group, the subsequent presentation in the seminar and the acceptance of feedback from colleagues. After incorporating the comments, a written version of the team output is produced, which together with the presentation is the final assessed output of the course.

If we were to look more closely at the form of the topics and research methodology of the individual teams, we would predominantly find case studies of individual artists or groups of artists, or analytical work contextualized within a theoretical framework proposed by the teacher. In some cases, students embarked on creative experiments in which they attempted to replicate selected artistic approaches through their own means. Interviews and questionnaire surveys were a common part of the teams' work, mostly in the area of qualitative research.

The innovated course included two waves of student feedback on the course: an internal questionnaire examining the effectiveness and quality of teaching and student presentations during the semester, and a final course opinion poll in the MUNI IS.

The internal questionnaire aroused more interest among students than the course opinion poll, so I will take the liberty to point out one of its most interesting results. Almost half of the respondents preferred the lectures given by the teacher because of the balanced quality of the presentation of the topics, clarity of the explanation, stronger theoretical grounding, logical structuring, consistency and continuity of the explanation. An equal proportion of responses found both the lecturer's lectures and the student presentations to be functional. Only a tenth of the respondents were more interested in the students' concepts than in the teacher's explanations. In their presentations, colleagues appreciated the originality and distinctiveness of individual outcomes, the sense of belonging and empathy, and the narrow focus of topics.

One anonymous respondent, when asked if and in what ways a teacher or student presentation is more beneficial to students, stated:

"I think it's about 50/50, although it turns out that presentations are not a very effective way of learning. [...] student presentations are more meaningful to the students themselves because they can address topics that interest them. The benefit of teacher presentations is also great, especially if it is a subject that is new to the students, it will bring new perspectives, in this case on art and multimedia. However, I see teaching through presentations as problematic in general and this is shown in the survey (for example, in Slovakia there is very poor reading literacy among children and this is also attributed to teaching through presentations)."

So it turns out that student presentations can be (and often probably have been since primary school) a counterproductive or even abused teaching tool. As much as independent research work in teams seems to have obvious pedagogical benefits, this may not be the case. Professionally, students' preference for the teacher's interpretation may still prevail.

However, the chosen teaching method is actually a kind of didactic Trojan horse. Students focus on mastering the technical topic, but often miss that another (hidden, but perhaps more important) subject of their education is soft skills such as team communication, work organisation, time structuring, public speaking (rhetoric, body language, etc.).

In the questionnaire, students were also asked to evaluate team presentations, thereby covertly evaluating themselves as well. Some revealed this game immediately and wrote their findings about themselves honestly in the questionnaire response. For example, they appreciated the opportunity to be represented by colleagues in the presentation because they were socially anxious themselves, or they found that they were not as reliable as they had originally thought.

Thus, if for a variety of reasons, the vocational aspect of the student research project happens to miss its target, it certainly fulfills it in the soft skills arena, where students have the opportunity to explore the pitfalls not only of team communication and collaboration, but of the realistic distribution of responsibility for the work done. The last, but perhaps most important goal here is the motto of the Delphic oracle Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, or know thyself, mentioned by Socrates (or Plato).

Martin Flašar