PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

EDU120 PGCHE Assignment 6 by Darren Whittington 06/15

INTRODUCTION
3 people, 3 diverse backgrounds, 2 completely different areas of employment within the University, all
trying to find a common ground to discuss professional practice and how its influenced our teaching
and roles within the student experience.
The participants:
RB- Senior Lecture BA(Hons) Digital Games
RG - FXU
DW- Senior Lecturer BA(Hons) Creative Advertising
The following notations outline our group conversations which were recorded(Appendix 1.) and pulls out
the key aspects that link our working practice and how they fed our final presentation(Appendix 2.) which
used the topic of employability as the driver to discuss the influence of our professional practice on
the way we build and deliver our courses in two very different ways and how this influences the student
experience.
In order to build a structure for our 10 minute presentation we used the latest information gained from
Falmouth Universities teaching, learning and strategy discussions which aim to embed an
employability framework into our teaching practice, showing how our courses are already achieving the
challenges set and also how these courses can be seen as best practice models for others in two diverse
ways and answer the call of students that employability matters.
NOTES FROM INITIAL MEETINGS: AUDIO RECORDING 20/05/15
These notations include transcribed material from the audio recording of our first meeting(Appendix 1.)
which lasted 50 minutes and helped us find an approach to integrate our discussions into a coherent
presentation that could engage Robs professional practice from the stand point of CEO of the students
union speaking on behalf of the student experience and what they expect from university and Rich and
myself as senior lecturers using our industry experience to deliver quality learning that is focussed on
giving students the right skill sets and knowledge to be real world ready.
Transcription 1. Overview - The employability question
RB - Our priority(BA Digital Games) is making sure people are employable, not just about knowledge
but how you behave, how you interact, how you structure your learning and the way that links into your
professional practice with industry e.g. teaching them to work in teams in order to reflect the way the
industry works
DW - We also work in teams(BA Creative Advertising), the course is integrated into the industry and
runs live briefs that inform the course but also give the students opportunities to work at the agency and
gain front line insights to make them highly employable
RG - One of the key issues we get is the employability of students, my job is to inform lecturers that they
should embed employability because this is what students are asking for i.e. students are going to university looking to leave with 45k worth of debt but have better opportunities in the work place.

The university needs to step up to support that agenda and your two courses are quite advanced in that.
RG - How do students know the reasons behind the way you teach
DW - Embedding live briefs with industry adds the value and knowledge to help students
contextualise why they are creating the work in the first place and how it reflects real world encounters,
this also builds a sense of trust in the knowledge enparted from myself and allows me to refer back to
their own experiences to help them reflect and produce better work
Reflection:
The discussion continues to unpack the way that the modules I run deliver briefs from agencies to give
them a real world opportunity but is supported with a lecture series and workshops that help them
contextualise the brief using my own industry insights, helping them unpack the core problems, benefits,
features, and audience just as you would within an agency debrief and team discussion, showing the
students a clear path to beginning the creative process with best practice and also what the agency
expectations are from their creative work.
This initial commentary was really useful to help me unpack my own professional practice which I
sometimes take for granted as a logical way of approaching problem solving but is actually quite
specific to advertising teams working in a highly pressurised environment.
Transcription 2. Conversation about BA(Hons) Digital Games
RG - So BA(Hons) Digital Games has been designed and built with the end goal in mind and then
work backwards?
RB - Within the quality framework the students can decide what kind of work they wish to do and what
sort of studio they would like to work for and personalise their experience accordingly within a team
DW - So your set up as a business ?
RB - Sort of, we dont have the control of the resources and finances but we do integrate with other
courses to mimic the real world experience i.e. integrating BA(Hons) Creative Writing modules into
Digital Games to allow writers to work within the teams
Reflection:
This was an intriguing part of the discussion where RB starts to dissect how the course is built upon a
pipeline system which mimics the way that industry actually works and gives the course a unique
identity where rather than a subject based practice the course actually caters for an entire process within
the games industry from project management to creative output and business management.
The course is only one year old but its clear that the focus is on employability and built upon the
professional industry knowledge of the team behind the course and not from an academic perspective.
The goal is clear and the delivery is unique within a university structure, but it does give the students
a paralleled real world experience and interaction with the studio environment from every perspective,
which gives the students the tools to succeed beyond a creative approach to including lifeskills that
allows them to diversify their career paths within the university environment.
Transcription 3. Conversation about BA(Hons) Creative Advertising
DW - (BA Creative)Advertising is very much linked to industry with a focus on creative teams but not in
such a strict way like Digital Games and how it parallels the business structure. Some of our modules are
embedded within agencies rather than just mimicking the real world allowing the creative teams to learn
direct from industry as part of the dept.

We did consider setting the course up as an agency itself but this opened up the hazard of becoming the
universities marketing dept and we also couldnt get the resources like producers and project managers
to back you up
Rich - As an organisation one of the big things we sell is that were running the university as a business,
we dont want to just be an academic organisation, everyone wants us to be successful but were still run
like an academic institution. In business youre always dealing with risk and opportunity but with
universities were risk averse but we still want the reward, but this doesnt work.
Darren - Weve made the conscious decision not to pursue the agency mentality but show the students
what the business is really like whilst allowing them to fail within the confines of the course and learn
best practice, find their voice. If we paralleled the industry it would be brutal and wed struggle to
remain inclusive because some students arent able to present or have other disabilities that affect them.
Theyre(students) still learning and we need a buffer between the industry which protects the students
from being destroyed in an industry crit which is built upon a pressurised environment.
Rich - We say to our students this is your time to fail because now you can try things that are radical
than when you have a job or business, learn from your mistakes because we expect them to make them,
but only once. University is their crash mat. You(Darren) couldnt send one of your teams out there
because you know they would get a beating. By insulating them against failure it stops them giving up.
We want them to understand the value this gives them, but allow them to be ambitious and learn
from their mistakes.
Reflection:
This is just a clip from a discussion that started around the way we build courses that embed or reflect
industry and the problems or benefits it brings, this quickly became a discussion around the way both
courses encourage students to fail in order to learn.
This is an interesting insight that should be explored further for the PGCHE but also pulls out how our
own professional practice is actually the crash mat of the university, we know where the pressure points
are, what will work, what wont but this also allows us to give the students educated direction and instil
ambition and desire to find new approaches beyond our own practice. It is clear that in education there
is a clone mentality to teaching but professional practice should allow students to challenge a better way/
alternative way, this in the advertising world is a quality that is highly desirable, the maverick always
does well.
Rich also makes a valuable point about how failure becomes a life skill to stop them giving up, which in
both our industries is an essential quality to be able to get back up and start again.
Its interesting how valuable these perceived life skills actually are across industries but actually not
taught but learnt from experience, and both courses are encouraging this if in slightly different
structures, they both have industry experience and skill sets at their heart.
Rob - When do you introduce employability?
Darren - From the off, unlike Digital Games where its integrated within the course structure, Creative
Advertising works in parallel with industry building the students thinking and portfolio, giving them the
skills required and networking opportunities to get a foot in the door which allows students to find their
own path within the industry and also the industry the chance to nurture the talent they
actually need.
Reflection:
Students on Creative Advertising are instilled with an understanding that opportunities to work within an
agency are slight which in turn puts an owness on building a portfolio that showcases their thinking and
them as individuals which can be tailored to their preferred agencies, they become highly targeted about

where they want to work and we help them develop the right skills for those particular agencies, our own
professional practice informs this process knowing the difficulties in finding the right creative teams for
the job and the personalities that will actually fit.
Transcription 4. Conversation about course structures
The conversation between us then moves on into the way the two courses were constructed, where it
started and what influenced it and RB makes an interesting point about other courses in his sector that
he worked for that were producing good games designers but they didnt have any longevity in the
industry because they couldnt work with people, in teams or have an understanding of the pipeline of
the business. This has clearly influenced the structure of the Digital Games course at Falmouth directly
from industry experience as opposed to an academic approach.
BA Creative Advertising was built from an academic stand point by people who were not from the same
industry sector and as such we had to painstakingly refocus the course from a broad academic
framework around digital advertising(which doesnt mean anything) towards what the industry was
actually looking for, creative talent that was pushing the boundaries of campaign thinking using their own
understanding of the ever-changing media landscape.
RG - So which is the most successful route?
Both in a nut shell, because both industries behave differently and both courses are tailored to how that
industry works in order to produce industry ready graduates.
Its our professional practice that informs the structure and delivery of the courses, the skill sets required
and when and where the industry engagement begins.
Reflection:
Through our initial discussion we found a common ground that helped us unpack the way we interpret
professional practice and how its benefited the way we teach and improve the student experience.
In order to convey this discussion into a presentation we agreed to use the Falmouth University
Employability framework that had been presented to us in various forms at School Dept. meetings which
could inform the PGCHE group of what it really entails and also how the two courses are actually already
good case models for best practice in implementing the framework with the students employability goals
at the heart of it.
This approach would enable us to create a presentation that integrated our three diverse practices
and roles whilst also showing a proactive approach to professional practice that can improve
students employability.
BUILDING THE PRESENTATION - Appendix 2.
In order to get our points across in just 10 minutes we decided to unpick the employability framework in
bullet points, these would be introduced to put it into context and then show how each point was already
being used in practice so that the PGCHE cohort could also reflect on their own practice and engage in
the framework with which very few people would have encountered.
The key areas were:
Student behaviours - Which unpacked why the framework was important
The Challenge - That which is set by Falmouth University with broad ideas for implementation
Our approach - Each course and its broad approach to the framework

Which then broke down into more specific directives from Falmouth University and how we already
approach them:
- All courses should incorporate a placement and/or industrial mentoring
- Introduce credit bearing live projects that are co-assessed by industry partners
- All new courses developed in partnership with industry
And then we introduced the targets set by the University and how we are already meeting them:
- Develop highly employable graduates
This helped gives us the structure to discuss our best practice and also integrate all of us into the
presentation with one voice but with 3 perspectives for the same outcome.
SUMMARY
General feedback was positive towards the presentation and as expected most of the group hadnt heard
about the employability framework, but all now had a clear idea of how they were already implementing it
using their professional practice.
In terms of our own professional practice and how we crossed over with the broad theme of
employability it actually allowed us to dig quite deep into the nuances of what we do but also
the similarities:
- Personal Industry connections
That help us stay at the front line of our industries and help the students build their networking
opportunities. A source of live briefs that give the students real world experiences.
- A focus on the end game
Employable students that have multiple opportunities because of their skill sets
- Discovery
Allowing students an environment to try and fail. A space to find their voice
- Team mentality
Giving them the skill sets to work with others in pressurised environments
- A broad skills dynamic
Building the students life skills, confidence, communication, conceptual thinking directing others and all
delivered by industry aware individuals
It is clear that when professional practice overlaps with teaching practice very positive things emerge, the
trust that was put in place to build BA Digital Games and reposition BA Creative Advertising has paid off
for the University and that trust was reliant on the lecturers professional understanding of their subjects
and knowing what the industry was looking to nurture.
By using what we have learnt from industry experience has improved the employability of our students
and given them multiple opportunities within their chosen profession.

APPENDIX:
1 Audio from initial discussions. 50 minutes. Transcribed material in chronological order.
2 Final presentation boards with notes.
3 Audio from presentation with feedback notes.