Appendix Eight - Pilot Feedback

Interview with Students – 14.07.16

The seven students involved in the pilot project were gathered and asked to give feedback on how they had found it.

 Interviewer: How have you found project based learning?

Student 3: I liked it because it allowed us to be individual in what we wanted to do. We could do what we wanted to do rather than being set tasks so I felt I had more freedom and choice.

Student 4: I found it really difficult at the beginning but I like it now. I think it took me a while to get into it and get used to what we were doing but I’ve enjoyed it since then.

Student 3: We are so used to having really structured lessons so this was a bit of a shock. It was good to have something different though.

Student 4: You and I had a chat at the beginning when I was finding it hard and that got me into it; I think I just needed help getting started. It was also nice having a taught lesson on theory in the middle because that got me started with theorists. It kept me on track.

Student 2: I found the opposite. I found it really easy to get started but then I lost momentum. For the first week I was fine; I was doing stuff outside of school but after a while I didn’t have the motivation to keep going. I think I just needed to go back to the question a bit more. I kept forgetting to tie it back to the question.

Student 3: Yeah, me too. I forgot about the question!

Student 6: I got more motivated and am really enjoying it now. I think that’s because as we’ve gone on, I’m developing my understanding and now I’m really clear on what we’re doing but I’m also more confident to try and experiment with things.

Student 4: It’s really evident that you’re getting more into it because your video experiment is so good and you clearly put a huge amount of effort into it.

Student 3: I think everyone has found something, one task or activity that they’ve enjoyed.

Student 1: I didn’t enjoy it. I just don’t like music videos. As for working independently, I think that’s fine up to a certain point but I kind of lost momentum and needed some motivation from a teacher. I did one task and then didn’t know where to go. I didn’t ask for help because I knew there were others I could do, but I didn’t do them because they felt optional.

Student 3: I think as students we actually like structure more than we like to admit. It’s all we’ve ever known.

Student 7: I don’t like working independently. I just like group work, especially with subjects like media. In the real world if you went into the media industry you’d only work in groups so I don’t think you should have to do it independently in school.

Student 5: It’s inspired me to do more. I’ve been spending my free time looking at music videos online and finding examples of coursework to see what other people have been doing. It’s made me excited for the coursework. I’ve seen some really good music videos and some really bad ones and that’s inspired me to want to do well.

Student 4: Yeah, I’ve done the same. It’s shown how you can get brilliant marks with quite a simple idea if you do it well. I think research and planning is going to be really important. Last year we did things like storyboards because we had to but I think they are going to be really important next year.

Student 3: We all seem really motivated to do well now. And I think I’d be confident enough to ask to do things my own way if I felt the need. That’s not something I’ve done before now. I have really enjoyed the project style of working.