Many students in creative disciplines hesitate to take risks. They avoid untested ideas, stick to familiar techniques and stay within the bounds of what worked before. For educators, this creates tension: you want students to experiment but you also want them to feel secure enough to recover from missteps. If one poor decision knocks their confidence, it can take time to regain momentum.
One approach that works well to counter this is to design projects that guide students through two modes of working: first, as part of a group, then as an individual. Moving from shared responsibility to full personal ownership changes how they make decisions, manage setbacks and define achievements.
I introduced this method in a third-year sound module. Students were given a soundless clip from a well-known TV series and asked to create a complete, believable soundtrack.
Phase one: start with a shared goal
The first stage is group-based production. Students work together to generate shared source material, sound for film, a design prototype, research data, a business proposal, a lab experiment or a set of interview transcripts. Every member shapes the result.
In my module, I let each student randomly draw sound tasks from a “sound hat”: examples include footsteps, clothing friction, breathing, doors, 3D printers, keyboards or environmental ambience. They were responsible for recording and labelling their sounds to contribute to a shared library. A group chat kept the process active, with peers offering real-time feedback and sometimes encouraging classmates to rerecord or try a new approach.
In this phase, accountability comes from the fact that each person’s work is visible to the group and directly affects the outcome. There is natural pressure to deliver on time, at a standard that meets the team’s expectations.
For many students, adapting to others’ working styles is as valuable as the technical outcome. They must negotiate roles, balance opinions and make compromises without losing sight of the goal. Working in a group makes risk-taking feel safer, as responsibility is shared and mistakes draw less attention.
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Phase two: move to individual control
The second stage shifts the project into full individual ownership. Each student works from the same shared material but creates their own complete version. Creative direction, style and execution are theirs to control.
In my module, this phase was for individual mixing. Students worked independently to create their own full soundtracks, using the shared library of recordings from phase one. This was their chance to take full ownership of the project, shaping a personal interpretation of the scene and recognising how earlier contributions supported their creative freedom.
Without the safety net of group consensus, students cannot rely on others to fix weak sections or correct poor choices. At the same time, they are free from compromise and can push ideas as far as they wish without considering the impact on someone else’s work.
Even though everyone begins with identical source material, the final outputs often differ. Placing them side by side sparks valuable conversations about technique, interpretation and style.
Why this works
This approach addresses two common barriers to creative growth: fear of failure and uncertainty in technical ability.
In the group phase, shared responsibility gives students space to try new approaches without the full weight of the outcome. In the solo phase, they carry forward what they’ve learned and feel more confident to attempt ideas that might have felt too risky before.
The model builds persistence. When the group stage is challenging or results fall short, the solo phase offers a chance to refine and improve. When group work is strong, it inspires individuals to rise to the challenge. Students see that the same starting point can lead to many valid interpretations, shifting them away from thinking there is only one “correct” path.
How to make it work in different disciplines
While rooted in creative arts teaching, this model adapts well to other fields:
• In business, groups might co-develop a market entry strategy, then each member produces their own plan.
• In science and engineering, teams could run a joint experiment, then analyse the data individually.
• In humanities, a group could compile primary sources or a shared literature review, then each member writes their own essay.
What matters is making the shift between phases clear. Students should know when they are building towards a shared goal and when they are free to follow their own instincts.
The role of reflection
Reflection is what gives the two-phase model its depth. Without it, the work risks being just another project. With it, students examine what shaped their choices, what they discovered, the challenges they faced and how they might approach them differently next time.
I embedded opportunities for student reflection throughout the process. In the group phase, students compared their recordings in real time, often encouraging peers to rerecord or test new ideas. In the individual phase, they reflected on how those shared contributions influenced their own mix, often noting that responsibility to the group pushed them to aim higher.
This blend of peer feedback and personal reflection helped students track growth in both technical skill and creative confidence. Simple prompts supported this process:
- How did working with others influence what I did?
- Which ideas came alive in a group but felt different alone?
- What happened when I tried something new?
Conversations with peers added another dimension. Comparing approaches highlighted differences, opened discussion on why students made particular choices and pointed towards improvements individually and within the group.
What stays with students
By the end of the exercise, most students are more comfortable working both together and alone. They have navigated other people’s styles, balanced their own ideas with shared goals and taken full responsibility for work carrying only their name.
They also experience what it feels like to recover from setbacks. For some, the group stage doesn’t go as planned and the solo work becomes a chance to turn things around. Others take a strong shared outcome and push it further.
Most importantly, students leave with a clearer sense of their own creative voice. They experience both the support of collaboration and the freedom of independence, while also recognising that this structure is not a replacement for other approaches but part of a varied curriculum. Where confidence matters as much as skill, it helps them take more chances, think more deeply and value both shared and individual effort, and they carry all this forward into whatever they create next.
Dane Taylor is lecturer in sound for film at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China.
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