Dear Terry,

Good question. What is the difference between design learning and 
"other" types of learning?

I wonder if  it's because:

1. The activities involved in the design task will have an effect on 
the outcome of the learning, hence one can call it design learning as 
opposed to just learning. For example I had a task to design a new drug 
delivery system for people who had to take large amounts of daily 
medicine. I learnt a lot about drugs, chemists and doctors' practice, 
but never learnt to be either. But the sum of these kind of "enquiry 
learnings" and the design learning involved in the collaborative 
negotiations and understandings on the way, I would call design 
learning, particularly as I can use the experience gained in other 
design situations.

2. Referring to Harold Nelson's concept of " composition", I wonder if 
design learning is such, because of the unique "combination" of 
activities and elements of construction and negotiation of meaning, the 
use of representations, material and immaterial, visual, written or 
verbal that act as mediating artifacts in a collaborative environment. 
The collaborative environment also being unique in that it is 
established to solve, or attempt to solve a design task as opposed to 
say a surgical operation task.

3. An added twist. One can emphasise this "composition of elements" as 
opposed to just introducing one or another element, in such a way, that 
the activities are more inclined to encourage and support "design 
learning orientation" as opposed to a "design-solution-production" mode 
or task orientation.
I think the natural progress of any design process is more task 
oriented towards the final phases.

I have tried to keep my response to the area of professional design 
practice, as I think there is still a lot we need to understand. It is 
almost given that design education deals with design learning in some 
form or other. But to treat aspects of design practice as design 
learning is not often dealt with.

But on the design education front, I have one example of a discussion 
with some students who were able to identify various approaches to a 
set of design tasks. The most significant idea they had was that if 
they were given the opportunity of a design learning phase in the  
task, ie: given the opportunity to identify with and find meaning in 
the task, to use their imagination and experiment, then it was easier 
for them to make the necessary and more pragmatic "task oriented"  
compromises necessary to carry the task through. The opposite was true 
if they were deprived of exploring the design learning phase. I suspect 
the same is true of design practice.

Best regards,

Chris.

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


On Tuesday, August 26, 2003, at 10:20 AM, Terence Love wrote:

> Dear Norm,
>
> Good post. You say,
>
> "Design learning can be seen as an interaction and manipulative 
> interplay
> between persons, materials, objects, our conceptions and the responses 
> they
> elicit...at another level this activity may be seen as an enmeshment 
> within
> the relations which constitute the whole of a being-in-the-world...this
> view presents design as elemental to human sapience as a continual 
> (albeit
> inhibited & interrupted in some  societies) cognitive tradition 
> undivided
> from the world...an enmeshment within the relational knowledge of the 
> world."
>
> Just wondering why 'design learning' . Seems to me that what you are
> describing in this and your second paragraph is the same as what is 
> normally
>  meant by 'learning' - the ordinary sort that is learnt in order to do 
> something with it.
> Seems a bit odd to need to prefix it with 'design'?
>
> I welcome your thoughts.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Terry
>
>
-------------

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

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