First Campus Session at Hendon Campus, Middlesex University 10th April 2017

When I first arrived at Middlesex University's Hendon campus, I was super excited! It was the first time I had visited the campus since beginning the BAPP course and was instantly blown away by the building, both inside and outside. The striking red, the clock tower, the open space for students to unwind and study were all so incredibly appealing and I couldn't wait to get discussing the main theme of the day; Acting and Writing!

I met Paula and the other students at reception, commenting on how different people appeared compared to their online pictures, which also made me reflect on the online network that is at the heart of the course. Seeing someone with your own eyes can  be a completely different image to a picture you have in your head from engaging online!


We first began our session by reflecting on different forms of writing in order to get us prepared to think about our Critical Reflection and how to assess our learning as a result of theorist studies and practical experiences. This was useful, because we looked at the styles of writing and discussed how we preferred to read set information. We were all instantly attracted to the report style, because it was structured nicely in paragraphs and had the balance between writing and pictures to support the writing. 

Middlesex University, Hendon Campus facing Reception

We then looked at Stella Cottrell's Critical Thinking Skills and looked at how a preposition or a statement could be structured in a way with other prepositions to form an argument with an introduction and conclusion that can make up that of an essay structure that has a point to make, using prepostions as a lead up to draw to a conclusion.

We then went to the campus library to have a talk about library resources, which was incredibly helpful. We looked at the various ways to access resources, whether they be online or in the campus library. We were taken through the online Unihub to show us how to access these and found out many useful things such as how to select quotation marks in order to access the way to Harvard reference a particular line from a text and to find how to narrow down a search to simply 'full text online' and read information from the web there and then. 

To recap and understand the different forms of resource finding, we were taken through the task of matching the resource to it's definition and purpose for using that particular resource. Here is a picture of the exercise below. This was in itself a way of recognising the various professional networks we can use in order to benefit out learning.

Resources, examples and definitions 

After this library session, we went back to the meeting room to continue discussing writing and how we would go about our critical reflections. We reflected on what we might want to discuss about our learning and what areas we might want to look at in terms of professional networking. This entire discussion was incredibly helpful, because ideas and experiences of learning were being sparked as a result of what other people were saying! 

We talked about the Acting industry and how networking had impacted our profession and the positives and negatives of this networking among professionals. I thought of many stories where there had been postives and negatives from professional networking and communications which allowed us to think about the ethical values of professional communication. What is right and what is wrong? Are people in the industry really who they say they are? What have we found from having online professional profiles? Is there more good than bad?

The session overall really gave me food for thought. I enjoyed discussing what I had found in my teaching and what I'm discovering since linking my dramatic skills to a new community; a school setting. It was so helpful to simply communicate my thoughts and feelings on my findings and gave many people the opportunity to voice their own opinions on the reasons why I may be finding engaging a class so challenging when not in a drama class setting outside of school.

I am interested to see now how I find the critical reflection and look deeper into the transferring of drama skills through the study of theorists and resources and writing about them in my Critical Reflection.