Educational Concepts for Design Lecturers

In this paper Darrall Thompson from UTS, Sydney discusses the design of learning environments for design courses. It is particularly interesting to me in this stage of my research because it touches on some approaches to learning which might have been helpful when I was designing a graphic design curriculum in 2006.

Thompson first argues the necessity of “deep” approaches to learning which gives the students a value for their learning process other than having the students work towards what the teacher would like to see and the avoidance of students with a “superficial design process.” My take on the deep approach to learning is that students develop an understanding and self awareness of their design decisions, with self-motivated “excavations” into their own process and project.

Darrall Thompson adapted his surface and deep learning approaches from Paul Ramsden, 1992, (Learning to teach in Higher Education.)

The paper then moves on to discuss learning styles. Thompson makes strong references to Kolb’s Manuel for the Learning Style Inventory, 1976 and argues with modifications Kolb’s research is very relevant in design education today. The learning cycle re-adapted shows four ways of student learning and discusses that the learning experience could be enhanced if the student engages in all four. This could be a way for and educator to look at their own program, course or project and analyse if it promoted any of these learning experience. Once again, this may could have helped my curriculum design by using it as a guide to my understanding of deep conceptual thought in graphic design.

Thompson, Diagram 2, The learning cycle and learning style with students preferred activities, 2006

Prof. Thompson also discusses Prof. John Biggs‘ design of the learning environment. Biggs describes three essential components to learning:
1) the design of the learning activities;
2) The stated learning objectives;
3) the assessment criteria used to measure the students process and result;

The revisit to this article has definitely helped me reflect on how important are the learning styles in design education and how teachers can use these strategies to re-think their methods of teaching and research.

‘… we cannot train students to use deep approaches when the educational
environment is giving them the message that surface ones are rewarded. We
deceive ourselves if we think we can tell students not to imitate when they look
around them and see imitation, suitably disguised, appears to them to be what
teachers want.’ (Ramsden, 1992)