Frequently Asked Questions

How many hours per week will this course require?

A minimum of five hours per week is expected, working through the course content and creating work for your portfolio.

What learning routines do you recommend?

Try all or some of the following.

Make sure you plan regular sessions to work and practice your developing skills.
Experiment with materials and techniques you may not have explored before.
Keep an open mind to new or different ideas, try not to produce a final idea right at the beginning of your projects. Sometimes being surprised by a direction your work takes you is a lot of fun.
Take risks and challenge yourself. You will grow as an artist if you learn new skills and ways of working.
Write your notes and annotations as you go, as leaving them all to the end can make it harder to capture the point you wanted to make.
Ask family or friends - communicating your ideas to others can help you confirm when an idea is right.
Know when to stop; if a piece is not going quite right, take a break. Often when you come back to a piece of art you will find the solution you need.

Why do I have to record my work to show my tutor and eventually the exam board?

There are two reasons why we need you to record your work. The first is so that your tutor can see what you are working on and how you are going about it, which will enable them to give you timely and relevant feedback on your assignments and during your video calls. The second is so that Wolsey Hall can build a body of evidence that will support your final exam entry, validating your work and providing evidence that it is actually you who has done the work submitted. Without this, the exam board will not accept your exam entry.

So how do I do this?

You will need to set up a mobile phone/ipad or other device on a desktop tripod which points down at your art workspace.

Only activities completed under the Work Session icon should be recorded.

Here are our guides to help you with the technical sides of creating and submitting your evidence:

Use our step by step guide to help you upload your files to Canva.
For more information study our detailed Guide to Topic Check Ins and Assessment [not available with sample course].
Watch the two videos below to on how to compress your MP4 video recording and how to submit your Topic Check in to Canvas.

WATCH - Video One: How to compress your MP4 file.

WATCH - Video Two: How to submit your Topic Check-in to Canvas.

When can I talk to my tutor?

You can send your tutor a message via Canvas at any time but there are specific opportunities built into this course for you to have a face-to-face session with your tutor where you can show them your work and they can also give you live help with anything you may be struggling with. These sessions are called Review Calls and there are six of them throughout the two-year course – they are scheduled to coincide with significant points during the course.

A welcome call after Module Zero where you will meet your tutor for the first time and have an opportunity to go through your Module Zero quiz results and to show your tutor examples of artwork you have done before starting the course.
A review call after Module Three, where you will look together at the work you have begun to compile for your ePortfolio (Modules One and Two don’t count towards your ePortfolio as they give you a chance to settle into the routine of creating and recording your work, whilst also reviewing some of the art techniques you will need for successful completion of the course)
A review call after Module Six will look at your mock exam results and provide feedback as you complete the first year of the course.
A review call after Module Eight will focus on your ePortfolio as you will pause work on this now in order to begin your Component 2 work across Modules Nine and Ten.
A review call after Module Nine gives you and your tutor an opportunity to go through your preparatory work for the 10-hour exam, ensuring that you have time ahead of the exam to make any final alterations.
A final review call after Module Eleven is designed to help you make your final tweaks to your Component 1 ePortfolio, to which you will have returned after your 10-hour exam, and which must be completed by the end of April.

What happens if I submit work that isn’t my own?

Whenever you try to pass off work that has been done by someone else as if it is your own, it is called plagiarism. There is a helpful resource on Plagiarism which we strongly recommend that you read at least once, because we take this very seriously.

In this art course especially, because you have the flexibility to do all of your work at home and unsupervised by a teacher (as you would be in a school), we will be checking carefully to make sure that we can be confident that the work that we eventually submit to the exam board on your behalf has definitely been done by you, and is your own original art.

If we suspect that someone else has done work for you or that you have simply downloaded images from the internet and pretended that they were done by you, we will be unable to submit your work to Pearson Edexcel and your final exam grade will be at risk.

If this happens, your tutor will talk to you about the artwork in question and give you an opportunity to correct your error before going on any further with the course. Clearly, this does not apply in the Component 2 ten-hour final exam, as you cannot change anything done in this exam after it has been completed and submitted.

How can I get the most out of this course?

Firstly and most importantly, enjoy it! This subject is one which can be immensely rewarding and fun to study, so throw yourself in to it and you will be richly rewarded.

Secondly, use every resource and piece of feedback you are given so that you can improve your skills as much as possible. You will have opportunities to explore recommended websites, view and interact with artists, and watch tutorial videos that are excellent and which you can view over and over again if you need to refresh your memory.

Thirdly, explore the art world that is available to you. Visit art galleries, follow artists on social media, watch programmes about art – there's so much out there that you can draw on for inspiration and education!

Finally, pace yourself and work steadily and consistently throughout the two years. Art IGCSE follows a strict schedule set by the exam board leading up to the release of the Component 2 theme in January of your second year, so you could find it hard to catch up if you fall behind. If you complete all of your Topic Check-ins as you go, and stick to the assignment schedule you are given by your SPM, you will be more than ready to complete your exam work at the end of year two.