Dear Gunnar
You have just written: "I'd love to see math, sociology, anthropology,
etc. faculty deal with the question of what they have to offer my
students other than - we, designers assuming... - that their fields
are important..."
Some 30 years ago, within the Industrial Design Department at the
University of Montreal, we were strongly encouraged, and
administrative arrangements were taken that we, design students, would
be allowed to attend classes in other departments and faculties. Some
of us did, often with very poor academic results.
In the same move and for some classes, a few lecturers from other
departments and faculties would come and give us respective classes,
exclusive to us, within our Department. To my knowledge, however, the
individual experience both for students and for lecturers, as well as
such a departmental initiative, have never been evaluated.
Now that you mention it, I think, instead of just sending us over to
other departments and learn whatever is offered there (silly to expect
them to "deal with the question of what they have to offer" to design
students), or instead of having professors in other disciplines
invited over to freely teach us their respective subjects, it would be
or have been more beneficial if educators in Design would clearly
identify those pedagogical trans-disciplines needed, first. And then,
as I said in one of my recent posts, go out and recruit teachers in
those disciplines needed, with specific briefs corresponding to those
needs set. This is he ideal, however, on the other hand there always
is the question of budget availability...
Regards
Francois
Kigali, Rwanda
On 9/19/13, Gunnar Swanson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is probably more about undergraduate education in general than it is
> specifically about the subjects of this list so apologies for the slight
> off-topicness.
>
> This is also not at all what Terry meant but I'm going to offer another take
> on teaching math to design students. I'll limit myself to graphic design
> students--even graphic design students at East Carolina University.
>
> About twenty years ago, I wrote something for Design Issues about liberal
> education. (You can find it at
> http://www.gunnarswanson.com/writing/GDasLiberalArt.pdf if you're
> interested.) I have some questions and problems with what I wrote but I'll
> stand behind one of its basic premises--that "liberal arts education" has
> been overtaken by our successes. The phrase used to mean all of the stuff
> that an educated man knows. (It was a man back then.) There is no longer
> much of anything that fits the description. It's hard to describe a common
> body of knowledge about physics for an educated physicist. So liberal arts
> education has become what many of us compare to a Chinese restaurant
> menu--take one from column A, two from column B, etc.
>
> We then leave 19-year-olds with the task of integrating things that we fail
> to integrate for them. The solution I offered was choosing a topic that was
> an intellectual nexus (I suggested graphic design) and studying it not as a
> vocational pursuit but because it leads us to (through?) physiology,
> psychology, electronics, etc. The question most related to this thread might
> be what math it would lead us to.
>
> A couple of years ago, East Carolina University (where I teach) established
> a new writing program with the slogan "write where you are." The idea was to
> make writing classes connect in obvious ways with a student's filed of study
> thus both encouraging attention and focusing skill in a useful manner. My
> initial reaction was a worry that students in too many fields would have
> their writing instruction limited to interoffice memos and the like. After
> more consideration, however, I think the program makes sense.
>
> Writing classes are among several categories of required "liberal arts"
> classes my students take as part of a graphic design Bachelor of Fine Arts
> degree. What would a "math where you are" or "social science where you are"
> programs look like? I've been thinking recently that there is potential for
> saving liberal education through the vocational impulse--the tendency in
> education that is seen as the enemy of broad education.
>
> My students are forced to take a math class that is, as best I can tell, the
> class you'd take to prepare to take the first math class you'd take if you
> were embarking on math or science study. I end up teaching them what strike
> me as advanced elementary school math concepts like counting in binary and
> hexadecimal.
>
> My niece (who taught math concepts to Chicago teachers and calculus to tons
> of undergrads on her way to her math PhD) and I were talking about what math
> is taught to non-math/science students. Anna made the case that the
> important thing that math has to teach the rest of the world is structured
> thinking. (Students at ECU do have the option of taking a formal logic class
> from the philosophy department but I don't think any of my students have
> ever done so.) I'd add the ability to understand numerical
> descriptions--basic numeracy. These would be much more useful than the first
> (and immediately-forgotten) step on a study path that is clearly not the
> path they will take.
>
> I'd love to see math, sociology, anthropology, etc. faculty deal with the
> question of what they have to offer my students other than the assumption
> that their fields are important, thus taking any randomly-chosen portion of
> their offerings will lead to the student being more "rounded." (I'd also
> love it if I had to devise a class that would benefit their majors.)
>
>
> Gunnar
>
> Gunnar Swanson
> East Carolina University
> graphic design program
>
> http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Gunnar Swanson Design Office
> 1901 East 6th Street
> Greenville NC 27858
> USA
>
> http://www.gunnarswanson.com
> [log in to unmask]
> +1 252 258-7006
>
>
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