Let us talk about design teaching and learning. I want to hear your success or horror stories. Write me something interesting and full of honesty and I will consider in publishing it in my next magazine/graphic novel. Students also tell me about your perceptions and thoughts on learning! Let’s share! Send me an email if interested and possibly a 100 word proposal.
Cheers,
Roberto
Quite often, I discuss issues that surround poor teaching practices and the institutional forces that make teachers’ environments difficult. What I don’t usually discuss are the great teachers out there and their practices that help our students. Well, actually I do discuss that issue although often part as a reference for my complaining. Recently, I have been observing the practices of a few teachers in my college and found that they have really shaped the students’ learning in a strong manner. It is not how they write their lesson plans or curricula nor their creative projects that inspire the students but their expression and communication with students in class. We tend to forget how important this ‘expression’ and connection is to students no matter how great you schedule teaching and learning activities within a lesson. This connection, feedback and expression becomes the identifier of the teacher and perhaps one of the crucial evaluative factors in the minds of students. I am not talking about sympathetic or empathetic values but the successful ability to communicate verbally with students and demonstrated energy expressed during the lesson. This could be time for me to start researching students perceptions and conceptions of the teaching environment. Another graphic novel?
Hello All! Happy New Year!
With this great year coming I thought it was time to start asking some new questions.
1) Should new design teachers be put through some sort of short induction course to familiarise them with some important aspects of pedagogy which I have discussed earlier? If so how would this be regulated? In Australia teachers who work in the private sector need to go through a course call TAA Certificate IV. In my opinion, it is completely useless for the design teacher or any post-secondary teacher. It’s basically a ‘paper work’ course. You learn how to document everything but not how to teach.
2) Who would fund this? Should design organisations become more involved?
3) I mentioned before in a previous post concerning developing some sort of flexible pedagogical success factors for private and public institutions:
a) How much of an investment are institutions willing to make in the maintaining and developing of good teaching and learning environments? Any ideas?
Well more on this later.
I know I have written about this in the past but I feel I need to talk about it again. What to do…when there is almost no possible way to align your teaching (constructive alignment). Institutional forces sometimes seem to be so great that there is no way around attempting to provide a deep learning environment. If you are able to achieve well focused student-centred learning that aligns with your assessments etc. through the modification of your teaching and learning activities, the larger problem becomes “are you the only one doing it”? Are students jumping from one environment of learning to another? I mean, we don’t all have to teach the same but some sort of congruency of basic pedagogical principles and theories needs to be taken into account. Or is all hope lost for these institutions?
I think the design community with the help of design organisations, should think of something quick. There are many private design colleges and the number seems to keep on growing. Many of these students end up working in DTP environments with quite construed view of what design is.
What is our message to these institutions?
(my political post)
Today, I presented my research at the Cumulus conference. I am glad I submitted my paper for this opportunity because I managed to receive good constructive feed back to help me move this research forward. This was the third conference I have presented so far and some speakers were inspiring and some were not. In any case, it helped me think about the possibilities and concerns that are contained within this project.
I was however somewhat shocked at some of the presenters understanding of pedagogy and how they are running/changing curricula. This seemed to be more prominent with educators who deal with smaller institutions rather than the universities here in Melbourne. This made me think even more that my research is well grounded and could be pushed even further. I don’t want to ‘save design education’ but I do feel that it is important for all educators to at least reflect on their teaching practice.
Hemispheric Shifts Across Learning, Teaching and Research
The Educator’s Role in Preparing Visually Literate Learners
Susan E. Metros (2008)
Metros gives us a good background on how our culture has become dependant on the visual
-visual literacy: capacity to communicate instantly and universally.
-advances in technology fueled shift
- Some students and some teachers lack a vocabulary of vision to communicate non-verbally and the ability to express themselves visually
Why Visual Lit?
(Hicks & Essinger) (1991)
Research into cognitive science suggests that users prefer visual displays of information to verbal descriptions.
Not to negate written word as it is just as important. This multi-modal literaciy enhances highly cognitive thinking possibly by allowing the user to see relationships between graphics and text allowing a faster reaction to anylizing.
-The human eye-brain system automatically searches for a visual order and heirarchy in wat it perceives.
It reduces learning cognitive load by simplifying meaning and providing clarity to complex concepts.
(Some reasons above why graphic literacy, if used well, is important to facilitate pedagogical theories. Describe deep learning again?
Graphic/Visually Literacy
- connect abstract concepts to life
- direct user’s focus and attention
-aid the user’s perceptive and cognitive skills
-stimulate interest and excitement
Tang,G.
“Graphics have been shown to be efficient tools for making visible the knowledge structures which underlie the information. In other words, graphics communicate the shape of the information, thus making it possible for students to transfer their learning beyond the immediate lesson.”
What?
It sounds a bit like student-centered learning. In this case graphics are used to stimulate learners to actively participate in their own learning and move beyond ‘surface’ learning to start to think about relationships and abstraction.
“…graphics, thus, provide a context which can be recycled and reused…”
As I mentioned in my last post since last week I have been desperately struggling to write a mere 400 words of positioning statement for the New Views 2 conference. Well, It’s done and thankfully so. I did learn a lot though from going through the process. Early on in the process I was trying to get the “flashy” or “catchy” topic. Too concerned with what type of paper they were looking for and not enough about what I really did know in the big world of design education. After speaking with my supervisor I understood that I was trying to drive to paper to far. That is, too much knowledge that I was not aware of, at least not yet. So her suggested I narrow it down to what I knew about which is for now, a lot about teaching, learning and knowledge. I framed the abstract around questions that I do not necessarily know the answers to but feel through some deep reflecting that could provide a useful insight to the use of research in design education. Also, through this process I found that I really need to get organized. I cannot afford to lose so much time sifting through notebooks and loose articles to find that reference. Oh yes, she did say something about assessment…where did I put that article…or maybe it was someone else that mentioned it. Where’s that notebook! I got away with that before but now I have an even larger pile of articles and notes. Next week, design a filing system that works!
Here’s the paper abstract.
Researching for the Future:
How principles of teaching and learning may facilitate communication of research in graphic design education.
It has been a good ten years since Sharron Poggenpohl from the Institute of Design described in her paper “Why we need Design Research”1 the need and call for research implementation in graphic design curricula. Many other educators also expressed their voice and advocated for a swift re-evaluation of graphic design pedagogy. Since then there have been many advancements towards the investigation of diverse methodologies and their relationship with the constantly changing landscape of professional practice.
“While many schools claim that their graduates can handle the analysis and solution of large scale or complex communication problems, rarely are their college experiences grounded in study that supports designer development of successful strategy.”2
The intertwining, complexity and relationship of research, learning and teaching have raised some important issues on how practice in the future will affect design research education. Recent studies have found that even with the awareness and use of research-led teaching, some methods are still directed towards the final product instead of process outcomes.3 Even though enquiry-based learning has become a standard in most universities as way of encouraging research 4 there is a void in the education of practice-based research to handle the communication problems faced today.
If we now understand why design research education is important then the next obvious step would be how to teach this knowledge towards a practice and educational system where project-based learning environments prevail. Drew argues that it is the way teachers conceive of and approach teaching that encourages deep learning.5 Paul Ramsden also describes how the goal in any teaching is to change the students approach to the subject matter they are learning.6 By actively inviting students to participate in their own learning teachers may find channels towards higher cognitive levels of understanding. These deep learning environments facilitate understanding and process in education and while they may not be directly linked to design research they provide a pathway for students to actively participate in their learning of reflection and process.
The question today is not what is design research and how is it useful but more importantly how are teachers adjusting to the urgent need of research integration in design curricula and what may be alternatives for creating a research-learning environment? This paper will examine how approaches to learning in higher education may provide an invaluable link towards research integration in graphic design pedagogy.
1 Helmer Poggenpohl, S. (1996). “Why we need Design Research.” Graphic Design Journal(4): 20-25. 2 Davies, M. (2005) “Raising the Bar for Higher Education.” The Education of a Graphic Designer. Allworth Press, New York. 3 Bew. A. (2001) Conceptions of Research: a phenomenographic study. Studies in Higher Educations, 26, 271-285. 4 Drew, L. (2007). “Designing the Interface between research, Learning and Teaching.” Design research Quarterly 2:3(July). 5 Drew, L. (2000). A disciplined approach: Learning to practice as design teachers in the university. Paper presented at Reinventing Design Education conference, Curtin University, Perth, Australia. 6 Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to teach in Higher Education. London, New York, RoutledgeFalmer.The Nature of Research into Design and Design Education
Professor Bruce Archer
Idater, Department of Design and Technology, Loughborough University, 2007
Educating Designers in the Digital Age
Mervyn Kurlansky
Digital Creativity
1998, Vol. 9, No. 4 pp. 218-222
Manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus
Pele Ehn
Malmo University Sweden
Digital Creativity
1998, Vol, 9, No. 4 pp. 207-216
Editorial
Digital Creativity
1998, Vol. 9 No. 4 pp. 193-197
Lone Malmborg
Circles of Practice: educational and professional graphic design
Cheri D. Logan
Cumbria Institute of the Arts, Cumbria, UK
The journal of Workplace Learning
Vol. 18 No. 6, 2006
pp. 331-343
Emerald Group Publishing
In the Academy: Print’s survey of design schools.,
Lewis, Robyn
Vol, 49, Issue 6. 1995
Business Source Premier
On graduate education and graphic design
Behrens, Roy, R.
Vol, 49, Issue 6
Print. 1995
Introduction: Indian Design and Design Education
Scotford, Martha
Design Issues: Vol. 21, No. 4. 2005.
Redeveloping Design Education in Hong Kong?
Siu King Chung
Design Issues: Vol. 19, No. 3. 2003
Education through Design
Melissa Niederhelman
Design Issues. Vol. 17, No. 3, 2001.
Rethinking Design Education for the 21st. Century: Theoretical, Methodological, and Ethical Discussion.
Alain Findeli
Design Issues. Vol. 17, No. 1, 2001.