Feedback / Evaluation

The project has enabled students to create their own art object developed from a range of experiences, helping them to understand the CAD/CAM design and manufacture process and some aspects of contemporary culture and practice in the creative industries. It has also introduced possibilities of more creative uses for computer aided design and manufacturing technology. Below are some of the comments made by the project team during an evaluation meeting regarding the timescale, the impact of the technical problems on this pilot project and ideas for the future if the project was to be repeated or further developed.

Timescale
With projects with a high technical content, more time is needed.

We were both learning. You need a technical support person, a technician, so that teachers can concentrate on teaching.
Katharine Willis

More planning time was needed, more time in school. More time for the teacher and the artist to rehearse the project together.
Steve Herne

A long run-in was needed, the way you pilot the process then give it to the kids. We found that in the testing ground of the project it was too short.
Brad Wilson

Problems
During the project there were problems with getting the ArtCAM software to work with the MiniCAM software. This software drove the Denford milling machine which was used to manufacture the students' three-dimensional designs. In the last lessons we were trying to get their CAD models better so that we could actually make them and refine them a bit. If there hadn't been those technical problems you would have begun to get the feedback from the students seeing the outcomes and that would have influenced what they went on to design and make.
Katharine Willis

If I was to do it again I would actually prototype something myself, as a way of working. It's good for the students, they never watch a movie where the hero dies in the end. It's good for them to see a big project which doesn't turn out quite right in the end. They are old enough to deal intellectually with the ideas of problems and problem-solving.
Brad Wilson

If we were to do it again....
It's a two-stage project needing a session a week over a term. The first half of the term would be the actual research and development of the idea and CAD. The outcome of that would be printed out. The second half would be the CAM. Students would actually put their ideas through the computer, they would learn to set up and program the milling machine. This would be small group work.

One way of using this project to link Art, ICT and Design & Technology would be to run this as a two hour session after school, as a club. This way you may well be able to get teachers and students from the three different areas to work together very profitably.

It's a good idea to develop the project with a CLC. The idea of the CLC is that it allows teachers like me to come in and develop projects there. The project then becomes a model for other schools in the area. Looking back we could have brought the CLC in earlier.
Brad Wilson