We are (once again) evaluating and looking into our education for doctoral students.
The problems we encounter are mainly concerned about time, relevance and flexibility.
The projects of the candidates differ widely, and so do their competence, coming from design practices to academic backgrounds. We encourage design related research including research by design projects. With an increasing number of project-financed students they do not start at the beginning of our academic year (August) but can start up at any time when ever the project period starts. These students also need to finish within three years; they do not have the fourth teaching year a "normal" stipend financed doctoral student has here. So time is short, need for diving into the particularities of the project immediately is great, no time for maturing, background is often young practitioner with super high level of knowledge on the subject of research but practically no background from philosophy of science.
So we try to redesign our courses to be more flexible, more relevant and less time consuming.
I am sure there must be others facing similar challenges. There might most likely have been previous tracks and discussions on these topics. I would love to exchange ideas with you.
Best regards.
Birger Sevaldson
Professor PhD
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
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