'I'm A Lifelong Learner'

Successively finishing learning in teacher’s training, I was more captivated doing casual work in media and creative trading until a proposal came from a Dean of art college who offered a teaching job in Fine Art college. Till that instant, I was only concentrating on my learning, but teaching at this Fine Art college made me understand that distribution of the gained information with others makes learning more operational and continue obliging for an extended period. While teaching, I always felt that there should be somebody or some constraint that could do the critical, qualitative and measurable exploration of my teaching methods and share feedback to help me inventing or increasing specific talent in my teaching aptitudes.

Undergoing a work-life of 30 to 35 hours per week in a design school and writing a full hypothesis on active involvements in art and design with self-exploration helped me to create contents for the master program course created for one of the design universities and getting it sanctioned by the professionals from academic contextual became easier. Since January 2019, I got a new responsibility of being a course leader for Post-Graduation Communication Design (PGCD) Course at Pearl Academy. Hence, my teaching reduced and nearly replaced by keeping the record of every learning conclusion, session preparation, assessment record, managerial work, retaining the quality of teaching and learning practice for the learners as well as the deliverable from full-time and guest faculties for learners at Pearl Academy.

Colour is one of the visual elements I always think as a versatile medium to create any kind of design or an art form. While I was perusing Fine Art education in 2001, I wrote a thesis on a topic- Perception of Colour. For this thesis I had to study colour-psychology and did almost 120 case-studies by using various samples of coloured patches and images. This thesis aimed to represent the perception of every singular and combination of colour on various individual level including human psychology, colour theory, colour implementation, types of colour & its definition, chemical reaction/effect of colour, the importance of colour in Indian culture & Mythology. This topic revolves around the perception of colour and its implementation. Self-made hand-drawn illustrations, Paintings in watercolour, Oil-colours, acrylics on paper & canvas, photography and interviews with people helped to collect the data for final compilation of this thesis. The thesis was full of philosophy and observations made during the different kinds of experiments I did. That practice always came in handy while creating a certain type of learning experience or a teaching technique in my academic career.

Later in 2008, I completed Master Degree course from Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay in Visual Communication Design. I started my career in design industry by working as a visual designer at one of the design firms in Goa. The work process in this studio had to create the number of concepts, ideation, styles, applications and prototypes and finalize the outstanding concepts for the final artwork. Simultaneously, I was working as a Documenter- Design Consultant for D’source, IDC, IIT Bombay. I Worked remotely as a design consultant on the sponsored project Creating Digital-learning Environment for Design in India (e-Kalpa) as well as documenting the Indian traditions and the art forms in India. My area of interest was in visual ethnography of Goa. These modules and projects contained documenting the art forms and the cultural creative products in Goa through interviews, demonstrations and photography.

My journey continues as a Learner...

As part of the Post Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) Module 1, I got to experience the sessions based on the observation of a peer and reflection on teaching practice. While practicing this observation, as a visual designer, I continued my documentary techniques of doodling, scribbling and making notes related to what I observed as a peer. This practice comes in helpful as I write my first essay on my reflection on the teaching of a peer. I'm grateful to Pearl Academy for having the excellent and accountable academic and administrative staff who is always helpful in making possible all the required information available whenever needed. Counting on this experience, I have decided to make it worth learning from each small or a significant segment to be able to create a better learning platform for the learners.

Here I'm sharing few achievements and examples of learning from my learners, peers, colleagues and design industry.

'Being with nature, being with yourself' One of students clicked this picture during our study-trip to Sikkim, 2019. Tried to let them all observe and create memories by being with nature, a break from routine classes.

The study-trip to Sikkim was a part of 'Open Lab' in which the students were asked to work on the Photography tricks and methods. Tanvi Satpute- a PGCD student clicked this 'silhouette' for her visual exploration in Photography.

I conducted a workshop for one of the tuition's students in 2019. Apparently, the material got misplaced but that issue didn't stop me from delivering a design experience. That made me observe, the material is secondary element for expected creative outcome.

honored to be one of the jurors at Ecole intuit lab in Mumbai in 2019. this experience got me a chance to see other designing students work and their way of working on the design solution for the social cause.

Pearl Academy always work on creating a strong bond with the environment by offering various social events. I contributed to nature along with my colleagues through planting plants at college premises in Mumbai.

At Pearl Academy students are not restricted to think only limited to an inevitable outcome. They are always encouraged to build references outside their discipline and should consider best practices across the globe, not losing on visual identity while developing their individual identity. Kajal Singh from UGCD created an innovative tabletop from waste material for her final project under my mentoring.

To create something new and innovative, we need to know the history of that particular domain. Along with the students and other faculty team members, we often visit various museums around us. PGCD students visited Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai in 2019.

Students at Pearl Academy got to attend and learn from a Master class conducted by experts from the design industry on innovative design thinking in 2019.

I created a better experience in learning by having an appropriate and suitable environment for the particular subject. Students got to explore photography indoor as well as outdoor with the proper types of equipment availed by the organization.

I gave a demonstration of various techniques and methods of colour application to PGCD students, followed by the interactive session to deliver explicit and correct knowledge in the subject.

Along with the students and other team members, I visited an annual exhibition of paintings, installations by multiple contemporary designers and artists from Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai to study how the concepts can go beyond the boundaries of current and future trends.

PGCAP gave me a chance to be the learner again. To accomplish, improve, develop the understanding and to learn in the Teaching and Learning Process.