On 12 Dec 2006, at 1:38 am, Tunstall, Elizabeth wrote:

> These kinds of courses, Research Methods, should be a core element of
> design education at especially the graduate level.

> So how does this experience compare?

This post has happily coincided with the last session for this  
semester of our module 'Foundations of Research' which is taught by a  
colleague and myself.  The module is intended for MA students: at the  
moment these are from interior design and graphics, but we hope other  
courses will join us in future.  The module is also a core  
introduction for beginning PhD students, and is partly a response to  
the funding councils' wanting more explicit training in research  
methods.  The focus of the module is evidence based reasoning, and it  
is fairly 'traditional' ie. it provides among other things an  
introduction to comparative methodology.  Indeed I would not have  
problems in the view taken of it by colleagues in other domains with  
a longer history of research methods training.

The great majority of these MA students are non UK, so we have some  
interesting cross cultural discussions.  I am really knocked out by  
the enthusiasm and commitment of the students in engaging with, to  
them, new and often alien notions of research in design that moves  
beyond information gathering and the simpler analysis that they have  
become accustomed to in their undergraduate courses.

In the washup session today it was clear that many felt that they  
were being enabled to think about designing within a richer framework  
of information and decision making, with some tools to help them.  In  
particular, they learn that there are many robust tools from outside  
of design that can be of help.

Though I have been engaged in this kind of training for some years  
with both MA and PhD students, I had not taught it as a core module  
before the last couple of years here at Middlesex.  The experience  
has made me increasingly of the view that before students can really  
apply research to their designing, they must have a grounding in what  
is robust and available to them.  It would reduce some of the  
silliness we see from time to time, where methods are invented with  
scant regard for validity.

So I certainly support the view that this kind of training should be  
a core study for [post]graduate design students taking studio masters  
degrees.

Of course, for PhD students there are further opportunities in extra  
supervision, and specialist modules available within the university.   
At the moment, for Design, we are supplementing these with AHRC  
funded collaborative doctoral training workshops partly taught by  
that chap Friedman (who some of you may have heard of).

David
________________________________________________________________________ 
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David Durling FDRS • Professor of Design • School of Arts &  
Education, Middlesex University,
Cat Hill, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN4 8HT, UK • tel: 020 8411 5108 (24  
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