Dear Harold and Ken et al,

Ken thanks for the link to the DRS review and actual site of the new
proposed design program at UC Irvine in S. California.

And Harold, thank you for your very detailed account.

Three aspects of what you wrote struck me as being particularly
interesting, two of which are very similair to my own experience.

You wrote:
"... I realized that there were several implicit process in place based
on how people assumed scientific knowledge was created and accumulated
and thus transmitted to students, or how the humanities or the arts
assumed knowledge was transmitted and accumulated etc. so my design
question was how does design knowledge get created and accumulated?..."

I have been looking into in this line of research now for about two
years and have come to the conclusion that although there is a need to
generate a deeper understanding of the learning processes involved in
design learning, one can't just apply the learning theories that are
out there. Design learning has often been described as a constructivist
approach or learning by doing, which is simplistic to say the least.
I recently coined the terms "Learning By", "Learning With" and
"Learning In" as a way of trying to assess the range of types of
learning theory that exist and that occur in design learning.

Learning By: - Constructivist learning theory
Hands on tasks designed to link the acquisition and construction of new
knowledge, to experiment and understanding. This integration of the
students’ world of association and experience is explored with an
emphasis on the visual and sensory world and the physical manipulation
and use of mockups, models and artifacts, throughout the design process.

Learning With: - Awareness learning theory
Encourages the students to actively use their personal resources of
prior life and learning experience, in relationship to their design
learning.
Demands of both students and staff, an understanding of the interplay
and relationship between a student’s experience and awareness of his /
her perception of the general educational context and the current
learning situation.
Encourages the development of a student’s meta-awareness of his / her
personal or collaborative working and thinking processes, to enable the
construction of personal meaning and generation of intrinsic identity
with both their design learning and design practice.

Learning In: - Activity learning theory
Utilises the collaborative, context orientated, artifact mediated and
negotiation of understanding of design practice, to further design
learning within the students’ own community of practice. And link this
learning to an understanding of the daily lives and practices of
others, from the perspectives of social, cultural and working contexts,
in the design of user centered products or systems.

I thought maybe design learning could be explained in terms of an
interaction between these three learning approaches. I think there is
still somethhing in my idea, but it doesn't account for the very
specific nature of design learning.


But, as you say:
"...I have come away from this experience convinced that design
learning requires its own intellectual tradition upon which to build..."

  I agree with you in that any design learning theory or approach has to
relate to design thinking and practice, but design's intellectual
tradition, as far as I can work out, has not really looked at or tried
to understand the learning processes that are involved. A lot is
accepted as implicit. Knowledge or skills are just transferred somehow.
My own experience is that of intuitively constructing a course for
design students, that happened to work. It was some time before I
decided to look at my own practice and try to understand what was going
on in terms of learning. But as much as I've understood some of the
learning processes involved, there is still the extra dimension of
design learning.

You wrote:
..."The core idea I chose to work with was that any design process was
essentially a learning process. I used a generalized design process as
the overall learning process model for the programs..."

Here is I feel a key to a deeper understanding of design learning. I
am very keen on exploring the common threads that exist between design
learning in an educational context and in a professional context. I
think it is interesting that in a professional design situation, one
has to actually accept that one doesn't know an awful lot about the
design space of the task, the people involved or the technology that
one will possibly use. One has to adopt a "learning orientation". One
accepts that one has to learn. Or maybe one has to deliberately leave
what one knows on a shelf for a while and "unlearn something".
I'm sure that others who are either professional design practitioners
or tutors have experience of what happens when confronted with those
who won't adopt a learning orientation to a task. Who just want to get
the job done!

So I was really interested in your idea of composition, when you wrote:

"There were many challenging questions that arose from both outside and
inside the program during my tenure because it was so different from
other university's programs including other design programs. For
instance a recurring question was about breadth vrs. depth of
knowledge. How could a program that was not focused on a particular
content area and that cut across disciplines and fields of interest
have rigor? This was a special concern for the accrediting teams
(regional and university based) that reviewed the programs several
times. The design answer was that the expertise was not in breadth or
depth but in a third way—composition i.e. how things were connected;
integrated in such a way as to evoke desired emergent qualities."

I was of the opinion that a lot of design learning in collaborative
practice occurred as a result of intervention. That as a designer one
can divert attention away from normal practice to generate new
perspectives and thereby create a setup wherein learning can occur.
But I am wondering if ways of ensuring that design learning can take
place, is by utilising your notion of composition. That in a given
situation or community of practice, it is the "combination" of certain
elements that can encourage design learning. I'm not too sure yet what
the implications are, but I sense that your concept of composition
deserves to be looked at in terms of design practice. I can't but help
think of gestalt theory - that the spaces "in between" elements have as
great a role to play in the overall understanding of a phenomenon as
the elements themselves.

With regard to design education, I too have been involved in developing
a design program from scratch - or nearly!
  It was an interaction design program for electronic engineers. The
only bricks that were in place was the existing engineering curriculum
around which we wove a collaborative and interaction design philosophy.
I don't feel that we were so focused as you seemed to have been around
the concept of "design process" although we did try to reflect the
initial phases of enquiry and investigation in the first semester,
which led on to a semester by semester exploration of different areas
of interaction design. Mechanical interaction, electronic interaction
and intelligent interaction. The design disciplines were placed in the
curriculum so that they had an inherent incremental effect. We focused
a lot on design anthropology and communication. Initial communication
techniques, both of a visual, written or verbal nature were slowly
developed into the more complex negotiation of collaborative practice
and interactive sketching techniques, that could electronically
demonstrate interaction possibilities.

We did have one aspect, that maybe comes close to your concept of
"composition". The notion of aiding learning with regard to electronic
sensors, for example, by having parallel courses in human sensory
perception - hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling etc. The idea is to
enhance the engineering learning by giving the students a reference to
their own human experience which could be explored in projects that
specifically utilsed a particular sensory and relevant sensor concept.

Any input on design learning from both educational and professional
practice, will be most welcome.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Chris.



-------------

from:

Chris Heape
Senior Researcher - Design Didactics / Design Practice
Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark
Sønderborg
Denmark

http://www.mci.sdu.dk

Work @ MCI:
tel: +45 6550 1671
e.mail: chris @mci.sdu.dk

Work @ Home:
tel +45 7630 0380
e.mail: [log in to unmask]