Showing papers in "Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education in 2020"

Educating relational thinking to improve design creativity

Abstract: Developing the creativity of design students is widely considered to be an important goal in design education. Finding effective training and instruction to improve creativity is a challenging subject for design educators and researchers. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of relational thinking training on creativity of design ideas in an analogical design task. The proposed training consisted of three steps: finding relations between two sources; the characteristics of each source; and relations between a new idea and the sources. The participants were 45 second-year architectural design students. The results indicated that the training significantly improved the quality of design ideas and significantly changed the type of similarity that designers established between source and design idea from literal similarity to analogical similarity. We concluded that stimulating relational thinking of design students by an educational training is an effective way in design education to improve the design creativity.

Changing pedagogic identities of tutors and students in the design studio: Case study of desk and peer critiques

Abstract: This article explores the tools and processes of effective learning in the design studio with a special emphasis on the pedagogic roles of the tutors and the students in desk critique and peer critique. It aims to identify the ways that pedagogical roles of the tutor and the student change due to the nature of their communication and the degree of their engagement in learning processes. The inquiry is based on the findings of a qualitative case study involving tutors, students and graduates from a bachelor of architecture degree programme. Data were gathered via focus group and in-depth interviews, studio observations and analysed through qualitative content analysis. The findings indicated that the pedagogic identity of a tutor could help scaffold the formation of a community of learners in the design studio. However, the lack of negotiation and trust between a tutor and students in the feedback processes weakens the students’ effective learning experiences.

Using desirable difficulty concepts to enhance durable learning in design education

Abstract: Cognitive psychologists have identified that introducing manageable challenges into the learning environment, coined as ‘desirable difficulties’ by Robert Bjork, helps students retain knowledge more deeply over time. Handling small, workable obstacles in the learning process slows down the learner and can have positive effects on retention and application. The more effort learners must apply to retrieve knowledge for a concept or skill, the more this process of retrieval enriches learning. While there is established literature on desirable difficulty in the field of cognitive psychology, the theory has not been applied to design education. The characteristics of the signature pedagogy of design naturally contain many of the key markers of desirable difficulty that drive learning retention. This article summarizes the major scholarship around the concept of desirable difficulty and explores applications for the teaching and learning of design, specifically around the signature pedagogy elements of critique, the design process and project-based learning.

Investigation of the contribution of virtual reality to architectural education

Abstract: This study mainly examines the contribution of the virtual reality environment to architectural education. The primary aim of the study was to investigate the theoretical possibilities of VR technology in an interactive and participatory educational environment that would allow students to examine architectural components and inter-component relationships. A group of 160 volunteers participated in the study, with participants asked to design villas in both natural (non-VR) and virtual reality (VR) environments within a specific period. Designs made in both environments (VR and non-VR) were evaluated by a team of five experts (jurors). For the evaluation, jurors wore eye-tracking devices and were asked to comment on the designs in both environments. In the virtual reality environment designs, the following categories showed significant differences over the drawings in a natural environment: functionality, aesthetics, user perception of space and internal physical quality (light quality), indicating that the virtual reality designs were examined more closely by the jurors than were those in the natural environment. This study will contribute to design discipline if virtual reality systems are adopted in architecture education.

Service design approaches and applications in higher education: A thematic literature review

Abstract: Service design has gained ground in the field of education. This article aims to reveal current approaches of service design applied to higher education pedagogy. The methodological approach is thematic literature review. Great variation in the application of service design can be found through review of selected literature. Three key categories were used for analysis: service, method and value. Four main approaches emerge from the results: service design applied on (1) courses and assignments; (2) pedagogical methods or models; (3) pedagogical applications for specific groups and (4) pedagogy outside formal education. Managers, teachers or researchers can use the results of this study to develop higher education pedagogy with service design approaches. Results also indicate possibilities for further research in the area of participatory design, international and national collaboration or value creation.

Participatory Action Research and design pedagogy: Perspectives for design education

Abstract: Design’s scope of practice has grown from one that was traditionally defined by materials and processes to one where designers are working on some of the most pressing challenges of our times. Once a reactive, artefact-based practice (e.g. poster, typeface, chair, etc.), design is now being situated as a proactive, social and participatory practice focused on outcomes as much as artefacts. Historically, as an academic subject, professional practice and research area, design has suffered from a lack of formal, established research frameworks and theoretical practices. By drawing on established literature, this article makes the case for the use of methods and practices developed in Participatory Action Research (PAR) to inform and enrich design practice, research and particularly education. The article identifies three shared areas between PAR and design that offer an opportunity for further interrogation; these are: a central concern of working with people; the use of iteration and reflection; and the measuring of success through change.

Art school as a transformative locus for risk in an age of uncertainty

Abstract: Risk is not a neutral term even in (western) contexts of art and design pedagogic practice, where risk-taking is entwined into the matrices of the academy from the macro to the micro: from institution to studio to tutor to student. Neither design education nor practice exist in a vacuum, so the conditions and contingencies of risk in contemporary design pedagogy are unpicked, in relation to place, process and people, as inter-connected (though often fragmented) components of study. Art school is examined as a transformative locus for risk: a conceptual-architectural site for knowledge but also a temporal space of subversion, within which the studio provides students with a relatively safe setting for risk in individual and collective formulations. Neo-liberal policies of standardization and competition are as embedded in educational institutions as they are across all levels of society: the resultant loss of agency is felt individually and collectively. This article reframes risk as fundamentally located and dialogic, an autonomous cooperative and collective action, underpinned by critical thinking and disobedient pedagogies. This is a transformative educational process anticipating change in an expanded mode of design in which the student members of the Alternative Art School are considered as critical agents, employing creative reflexivity as an antidote to the neo-liberal stifling of risk.

Arts education and writing as research and pedagogic practice: Critical perspectives in higher education or how we became the teachers yet to come

Abstract: Based on the educative proposal of Dennis Atkinson, this article discusses the written practices of two teachers who lecture for a Ph.D. in art education. The goal is to analyse the process of conceptual appropriation and curricular development over four consecutive years of this experience, in relation to both the pair of teachers and the students. Using a hybrid methodology, which combines autoethnography, self-study and the narratives of the teachers and the students, writing emerges as the main focus of the research, as it is an essential work instrument of the classroom, of the teachers’ personal reflection, and at the same time a spring that provides sources and means for its own analysis. It is through writing that one explores the appropriation of concepts as diverse as pedagogy of the event, real learning, intra-relation and intra-action, which leads to the process in which the teachers end up becoming the teachers yet to come.

Becoming designer/researcher/teacher: Working towards decolonization of/through design in South African higher education

Abstract: This article provides a new materialist perspective on design education within the context of decolonization in a South African higher education institution. It reflects on a specific case of design/research/teaching that transpired within the context of the Visual Communication Design curriculum at Stellenbosch University. A post-qualitative approach was followed; i.e. the researcher actively worked at resisting pre-conceived hierarchies and differences not just in thinking about the research, but also in its doing. The research demonstrated that decolonization requires relentless processes of collaborative resistance and that active commitment to new materialist praxis can positively contribute to individuals becoming more attuned to recognizing moments of transformation within their situated present. It was found that integrating creative play with representational media such as text and layout design within the research process facilitated this. The more transformative moments became visible and felt, the more ‘real’ decolonization seemed to become.

Graduated scenarios: Modelling critical reflective thinking in creative disciplines

Abstract: This article describes the development and implementation of Jenny Moon’s ‘Graduated scenarios’ (2004, 2001, 2009) in the disciplinary context of media production. Graduated scenarios have previously been used to model different levels of critical thinking and reflection and have been based on situations and experiences that can be related to by a wide range of people. Our development of them in a specific creative disciplinary context, for use by students within that context, represents an evolution of the process, but we also consider the possible reception of such models in the context of debates around academic literacies and the degree to which they may be seen and used as contributing to an orthodoxy of expression. We acknowledge that this experiment in writing and pedagogy may be perceived as providing ‘exemplars of standards’, but argue that it actually models differing depths of thinking, and also opens up discussion about orthodoxies of academic writing. Our four models of different levels of critical reflective writing are provided as appendices, and may be used or adapted as necessary. The production of such graduated accounts is ‘effortful work’, but the process can help us (academics) to better understand our own, as well as facilitating learners’, concepts of depth and ‘good practice’.

Dialogue in the studio: Supporting comprehension in studio-based architectural design tutorials

Abstract: This article examines perceptions regarding the purpose and delivery of tutorials in the architectural design studio that can support how students comprehend feedback. It draws on literature on ‘dialogic feedback’ and theoretical accounts of ‘dialogue’, framing the notion of the dialogic as one in which meanings and identities are realized through a multi-voiced state, questioning the extent to which studio-based tutorials can be considered dialogic. The study uses thematic analysis to reflect on 212 accounts of educators and students at a UK-based architecture school. The article highlights that a comprehension-oriented praxis as opposed to an assessment-oriented praxis can better enable dialogic practice, allowing learners to realize, position and comprehend their own voice amongst the divergent views. The article extends the critical body of work dedicated to evaluating feedback delivery in one-off review sessions, to the context of tutorials and their longitudinal implications on the learning experience.

Simulation and reflective experience: An effective teaching strategy to sensitize interior design students to the visual needs of older adults

Abstract: Given global population ageing, there is a pressing need to train students of design using methods that convey the impact of age-related vision impairments on the everyday function of older adults. Design students participated in an experiential study wearing goggles that simulated the prevalent markers of senescence and eye diseases, then completed everyday tasks such as walking down a hall and negotiating visual information. Results reflected the difficulty in detecting objects and signage as experienced by individuals who have visual problems. Students strongly agreed that the simulation experience was valuable and reflective comments on the experience provided insights regarding the perceived difficulty of walking as well as a heightened empathy towards those experiencing age-related eye problems. This study revealed that learning about visual senescence through lectures or cognitive emphasis curriculum could be strengthened by incorporating simulation as a teaching strategy to sensitize design students to the needs of older adults.

Bauhaus: To turn away from normality

Abstract: This paper revisits the history and legacy of the Bauhaus from the vantage point of contemporary art education. It explains how the design school was never a unified project, but rather a collection of disparate voices and opinions, and shows how ideas of community and subjectivity were at its centre. The author asks if these ideas, born out of early 19th century educational reform, and pressurised by the political turbulence of 1920s and 30s Germany may be the most useful influences for the Bauhaus impacting on Art and Design education today. The paper was prepared for the opening of the conference Bauhaus Utopia in Crisis, 24th October 2019, University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Arts. The conference was part of the week-long OurHaus festival at the University that ran between 21-25th October 2019. The festival included the exhibition Utopia in Crisis, curated by Daniel Sturgis at Camberwell Space Gallery (16 September – 9 November 2019) touring to Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar (2020).

To erase or not to erase, that is not the question: Drawing from observation in an analogue or digital environment

Abstract: Erasing when drawing occurs for a variety of reasons. While the most obvious may be correction of mistakes, at other times erasers are used to create such things as highlights or marks that introduce particular aesthetic elements. When a drawing is made on paper, partial erasure ‘marks’ can provide a useful record of a drawing’s evolution. For the teacher, this historical record can be a catalyst for helpful commentary and criticism. While programmed to simulate an analogue eraser, in a digital environment the erase function can eradicate a drawing’s history with a single click. We studied analogue and digital tool use behaviours (including erasing) to compare the frequency of erasure and the effect of erasing on observational accuracy in adults between the age of 17 and 64 with various levels of drawing experience from less than two years to more than ten years. The study involved participants making one drawing on paper with traditional drawing tools and one drawing on a digital drawing tablet. We then had the drawings rated for accuracy. Among other interesting results, we found that erasing occurs with greater frequency when participants work in a digital environment than in an analogue one and that, while there were significant tool use differences between the environments, those differences did not result in differences in the accuracy of final drawings indicating the adaptability of our participants using different means to achieve the same effect.

The Graphic Design Process: How to Be Successful in Design School, Anitra Nottingham and Jeremy Stout (2019)

Abstract: Review of: The Graphic Design Process: How to Be Successful in Design School, Anitra Nottingham and Jeremy Stout (2019)London: Bloomsbury, 200 pp.,ISBN 978-1-35005-078-5, p/bk, £19.99