Hopefully you have had some sense of what shape your exhibition will take as you’ve been working on your project for UNIT5. It is really important to build the planning for your exhibition into the planning for your major project.

So far, this MA has been all about changing your own professional practice in some way, so that you become leaders of change in your own areas. The next step is to communicate your ideas to a wider audience of stakeholders and interested parties.

The idea of the exhibition is to narrate your scholarly journey and to have a wider impact than just writing a 20,000 word dissertation – which is the usual exit point for a masters degree.

There are some alarming statistics regarding the number of people who actually read dissertations (!!), so we really don’t want all your hard work to go to waste. So, your exhibition needs to capture the academic grammar of a masters dissertation, but in a way that is in communion with your major project and that will have some influence.

So, in this latter stage of your final project, I want you to think carefully about the outputs thjat will have most impact in your organisation and professional practice.

Your audience/stakeholders.

We’ve been banging on about identifying an audience for all of your projects. Some of you are better at it than others, but it’s crucial for your exhibition. You could have a range of different audiences, or just one. Choose the appropriate audience for your project and gear everything towards them.

Presentation of your exhibition.

You need to choose an appropriate vehicle for your exhibition. It could take the form of an installation in a physical space, or it could be exhibited online. It’s up to you, but you must engineer a way of capturing your exhibition in some way so that we can assess it.

Gathering and reflecting on feedback.

This is very important. You must ensure that you get some feedback and that you show clearly how you have reflected upon it.

Future implications.

We want to see something that illustrates your own personal learning journey and how you’re perhaps going to take that forward beyond this MA programme.

We will post the assignment criteria at the start of UNIT6, but for now, I want to see your initial thoughts on how you’re going to engineer your exhibition.

The deadline is the 29th January 2010. That seems like a long way off, but you have plenty to do.

Please post your thoughts on exhibitions either in your own threads – to bring them back up to the top – or in the dedicated exhibition thread. Over to you…