Dear Chris et al

I am presently working on a manuscript describing my experience with 
the design of a graduate design program. It was an extended 'action 
research' project rather than the more typical incremental curriculum 
redesign processes that is typical at many if not most universities in 
North America. Russ Ackoff, a well known American systems consultant, 
makes the case that optimizing only an element of a system 
sub-optimizes the system as a whole. So designing a whole curriculum 
rather than an individual course seemed like a good way to test 
Ackoff's belief in the academic realm. The process of introducing 
incremental changes into existing curriculum with extended periods of 
time spent getting approvals and then evaluating the effects of the 
changes incrementally had been my experience prior to this opportunity. 
For me this was an opportunity to design a curriculum based on the 
design tradition rather than borrowed from one of the other 
intellectual traditions. I don't know that this approach would be 
appropriate for other design fields but for organizational systems 
design it was very successful based on a wide variety of measurements 
and evaluations.

In the case of the design of this new design program (actually two 
delivery methods but one pedagogy) I first explored the implicit 
educational designs in place at the universities I had attended as a 
student or worked at as a faculty. I looked at other university designs 
as well but did not make a comprehensive study of all programs. For 
instance, as an undergraduate in architecture, it was assumed that 
physics 101, 102 and 103 would 'add up' for me in the end. The 'adding 
up' process. took many forms; aggregation of facts and information, 
hierarchy of knowledge etc. 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? 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. Students engaged in three design projects, two from the 
very beginning. The first project was the co-design of their 
educational experience, the second was the design of the designer i.e. 
personal and professional development and finally a design project that 
started later in the process that involved real clients and included 
experts from outside academia as coaches, mentors and evaluators in 
addition to program faculty. The degree process consisted of very 
different phases, each depending on the prior phase and feeding into 
the next phase. Each phase had it own dominant learning approaches such 
as analysis in one phase and synthesis in another. Learning was 
demonstrated at key milestones throughout the process. Documentation 
for the degree included documentation from all phases of the degree 
process and not just the terminal phase. It was complex and demanding 
for both students and faculty and was not nearly as economic as 
lectures and large studios (which was the biggest challenge to its 
survival).

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. For 
any such questions that emerged we always tried to answer them from a 
design perspective so that if changes or modifications were made it 
would be based on a congruency with the underlying pedagogy of design 
learning. I have come away from this experience convinced that design 
learning requires its own intellectual tradition upon which to build. I 
am not optimistic that this can occur easily in existing North American 
universities but there are some exciting exceptions like the new 
proposed design program at UC Irvine in S. California.

Regards

Harold


On Sunday, August 24, 2003, at 04:03 AM, Chris Heape wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Firstly Chris Kemmett and Chuck, thanks for your responses, re: 
> learning experience.
>
> Chuck, you very much confirm my own experiences with the students. 
> Namely that the students can be shown that they understand a lot more 
> than they realise - even if they've just started.
> My own view is that once they can orientate their own human 
> experiences to the experience of the task, then their range of 
> associations and links to their imagination can give them an 
> understanding that means something to them at a far deeper level, 
> than, say, if they'd just been served up with some information. Hence, 
> I suspect, the reason for the quality of discussion afterwards.
>
> Now if I may, I'd like to try and broaden this discussion.
>
> I would really appreciate some input and challenges from the list 
> regarding the notion of "Design Learning".
>
> In a mail to the list (18th August - re: Judgement and decision 
> making) I briefly explained my understanding of design learning as:
>
> ..."Just to make my interest clear, I would like to introduce the 
> notion of "Design Learning". I sense that design learning is an 
> attitude of mind that relates both to the context of design students 
> learning AND to the exploratory and experimental phases of 
> professional design practice.  I consider design learning as a concept 
> that covers a broad range of activities, processes and methods used to 
> gain an understanding to make the necessary choices, decisions and 
> judgements with regard to a given design task..."
>
> I see now that where I've written exploratory and experimental phases, 
> I should also have included enquiry.
>
> So what I'd like to put up for debate is:
>
> How is the term "design learning" understood?
> What is it?
> Is it, as I have suggested, linked to both design education and design 
> practice? Or is this an anomaly?
> Or is it only something dealt with in an educational environment?
> Can one approach an understanding of design as a combination of design 
> solution-producing activities and design learning activities?
> Or can one describe design as essentially design learning, in that 
> there is an ongoing series of enquiry and experiment, the synthesis of 
> which is expressed as negotiated proposals that must ultimately 
> reflect the learning involved?
>
> I feel that there is the potential for a rich discussion here and I 
> would very much appreciate any kind of input, be it theoretical or 
> examples of specific cases or contexts.
>
> I need to broaden my understanding of the concept of design learning.
>
> I look forward o your responses.
>
> 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]
>
Harold G. Nelson, Ph.D., M. Arch.
President; Advanced Design Institute
www.advanceddesign.org
Past-President; International Society for Systems Science
www.isss.org
Affiliated faculty, Engineering, U. Wash.