"My teacher today is the floor. I spent sometime observing and looking at different floor textures inside and outside, and then I compared to floor pictures from back home. I realised the textures are different. Ones that can trap dust are less in use over in India. That is what I learned today."
UAL Student during user testing
The Project
A learning system where students recruit the faculty
INSTITUTE
MY ROLE
TIMELINE
OBJECTIVE
The Brief
Design learning for people who refuse the tools most online education depends on
The Design Question
How is knowledge produced? And how is it shared, without a platform the cohort would trust?
Metacognition
Understanding what you already know before seeking what you do not. The student maps their own knowledge gaps.
Action
Engaging with unfamiliar knowledge through a structured task. Learning happens through doing, not being told.
Reflection
Documenting and communicating what the task revealed. Reflection is made concrete through a chosen format.
Discussion
Sharing with peers to deepen and challenge the learning. The cycle feeds back into what the student now knows.
The Framework
Anarchism applied to higher education
A university, through an anarchist lens, is a library and a connector. Not an authority. The design needed to commit to that fully: students carry the knowledge, the university provides the infrastructure for exchange.
Drawing from Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, self-regulated learning theory (Brenner, 2022), and scaffolding theory, we identified four components that support genuine independent learning.
Earlier Iterations
Two ideas we tested and moved on from
Knowledge as a map
A self-regulated learning tool where students chart their own knowledge journey. Inspired by the metaphor "knowledge is a journey, not a destination" (Lakoff and Johnson, 2008). In testing, the map made knowledge feel like a destination. Students focused on completing it rather than exploring it.
Result: Turned exploration into completion
The Ledger
A peer Q+A tool inspired by graffiti communication (Leong, 2016): two questions, passed around the cohort. "What do you want to learn?" and "How can you contribute?" In testing, engagement was high but exchange was not. Responses stayed performative rather than dialogic.
Result: Engagement without real exchange
The Insight
Who is your teacher?
Workshops
Testing the concept with UAL students
"I was just going to write a note but then I saw the effort everyone was putting in, so I decided to explore the documentation more."
Workshop Participant
"The task of having to look for a teacher made me look everywhere. And when I saw someone look at the pigeon, that was also interesting, giving me ideas for where to look."
Workshop Participant
I designed and facilitated two workshops, each with five UAL students at BA and MA level, run on the same day.
Each session followed the same structure: a group discussion on what a teacher can be, a 30-minute solo exploration of the surrounding area, individual documentation of findings in any chosen format, and a group sharing session.
Teachers found across both workshops included a pigeon, a bench, a refrigerator, and a floor. Documentation ranged from written notes to collages to physical models.
Two things became clear. Peer visibility, being able to see each other's process, raised both the quality and ambition of individual work. And the act of physically searching changed how participants related to their surroundings.
The NFC Tag
Students are given a set of physical NFC tags. When they find a teacher, they tag it. A later student who encounters the same bench, pigeon, or wall can scan the tag and access the previous student's documentation. Knowledge accumulates on a location over time.
The Open Platform
All documentation is uploaded to an open, non-proprietary platform. Any format is accepted: written notes, photographs, audio, collage, models. The platform is the cohort's shared record, searchable and accessible to future students.
The Welcome Kit
When a student joins the cohort, they receive a physical kit: NFC tags, a Teacher Tagger ID card, and the current cohort brochure. The brochure lists the faculty as decided by the cohort so far, updated as new teachers are tagged and agreed upon.
The Fluid Cohort
Membership is not fixed. Students can join and leave. The cohort collectively decides its own faculty. There is no set syllabus. New students enter an existing body of peer knowledge and add to it.
Impact
What the workshops and collaborators observed
"The idea of discovering an alumni's work, past student work built into the system of exploring a subject, can bring about the feeling of community among online cohorts, which is something they miss out on."
Ian Trulove, Research and Innovation Coordinator, UAL Online
"Recruiting teachers feels rebellious and fun. The thought and discussions around why a non-human should be faculty, held with peers, could surface many individual observations that would otherwise go unshared."
UAL Student
