de-briefing time… It’s been a long time. GRC October ‘08

Roberto — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 10:15:09 +0000

My last post was after my 2nd GRC (Graduate Research Conference) presentation. I made a lot of discoveries but there have been some significant shifts in my research and thinking since then. At the last GRC I presented my main on-going project, a comic series for graphic design teachers, as a method to visualise my research findings. The comic allowed me to deepen my understanding of the learning/teaching environment through reflective practice and through the relationships of my other projects. Then, I positioned my comic as the main vehicle of learning without understanding how siginificant this process was to my entire research and impetus. So…I started to ask myself why I chose comics to facilitate teaching and learning principles and what effect does this have on my entire research?

Here’s what I have been doing in the mean time.
To dig deeper into this question I went through a design process as any researcher would…right?
- I investigated the comic craft: You can’t use comics unless you attempt to learn how it works as a medium of communication. This means practicing illustrating, narrating, etc.

- An understanding of visual/graphic literacy through lit. reviews and comic design process

- The writing and design of a poster paper for Glide’08 (design education conference) Here I described the role that graphic literacy may have in facilitating teaching and learning principles to graphic design educators.

- Reflection from interviews of three design educators

- Mapping, and reflecting on my past projects and exercises in order to understand my learning.

This has led to some discoveries:

- Graphic design education may have not kept up with advances in pedagogical theory because of its past separation of practice, research and theory in its teaching/learning structure

- Has led to the consequence that teachers may find it difficult to encourage process-led enquiries and deep learning approaches in the classroom.

- Which may be attributed towards the lack of understanding and familiarity of the academic lexicon that is quite often used in pedagogical theories.

- Graphic literacy can aid in this facilitation

- Comics may act as a bridge in the awareness of pedagogical theories

That’s a lot of stuff to think about but I feel this shift, makes sense and has caused an enlightened approach to the dessiminiation and future of my research.

All this has led to a research title and question change:

FACILITATING PEDAGOGICAL AWARENESS THROUGH GRAPHIC LITERACY IN GRAPHIC DESIGN EDUCATION

How can graphic literacy help facilitate pedagogical awareness in graphic design education?

So I passed my penultimate but these are some items that the panel would like me to work on:

- Incorporate other types of graphic literacies into the comic (diagrams, maps)

- Elevating the presentation and writing to a point that it is taken seriously

- Who am I talking to? All graphic design teachers? Casual/sessional teachers? Tenure?

- Dive deeper into graphic literacy literature to provide a better foundation for my writing

- Watch my language! Rhetoric phrases, pretentious language, historical references

Next post: Reflecting on my research diagram.

GRC 2007

Roberto — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:36:00 +0000

Here at RMIT the Architecture and Design schools hold a twice a year Graduate Research Conference. This three day event allows candidates to present their work-in-progress to a panel for review. This was my first GRC presentation and also my submission for candidature of my research project. For some reason I was very nervous which is unusual because normally I don’t have problems with public speaking. I have been doing a lot of reading and reflecting about my project since I arrived and the horror of leaving out important information was of big concern.
Stumbling through my presentation, I gather it went well for the most part. Some of the panel’s concerns was that the research was too generic and my graphs of my reflection on past design process lacked support from my readings. Some suggestions where to use my past curriculum design as a case study and to map out professional research and academic research. I think these events are integral to post-graduate education and allows the candidate see different or closed-off paths in which may have not been originally visible in the study.

Teaching Teachers: Learning through Graphic Literacy » GRC 2007

de-briefing time… It’s been a long time. GRC October ‘08

GRC 2007