Dear Jaques and list,
This topic interests me greatly. But I am surprised to hear contributors' comments on student levels of skepticism/ critical thinking. You say:
"If we wish for design students to have better skills in critical thinking and in
making arguments, we may need to revisit the criteria used to select students
in our design schools. Do we continue to use hard-skill criteria such as GPA
and portfolios, as many school still do, or do we add soft-skill criteria to the mix?"
I have never been very good with buzz words but if I correctly understand the meaning of 'hard skill', I am wondering why the portfolio is put into this category along with GPA (which I believe stands for 'Grade Point Average')? In assessing applications at Masters and PhD level, the portfolio is the key place for me to find evidence of many manifestations of thinking- skeptical, inventive, witty, subversive, imitative or otherwise. It is also the place to find manifestation of the applicant's sphere of knowledge of and interest in design history, again embedded in the creative work. Selecting students on 'the ability to draw' (whatever that means) is a good idea only if that ability is being employed in interesting or promising ways.
In my (admittedly limited) experience of teaching in the USA and as a member of an advisory board at an art institution there, I do recall being surprised by the far greater preoccupation among students there with issues of technique and 'rendering' ahead of concept and personal expression (though paradoxically, I sometimes feel that we could do with a little more emphasis on technique here in the UK). On the Masters course that I lead, we have a very high proportion of students from the Far East and it can sometimes take a little while for them to embrace the culture of skepticism that we foster.
I may have misunderstood but alarm bells always go off for me if I think there is a suggestion that the portfolio is the place to see 'skills' while the written/ spoken word is the expression of 'thinking'.
Best wishes,
Martin
Professor Martin Salisbury
Course Leader, MA Children's Book Illustration
Director, The Centre for Children's Book Studies
Cambridge School of Art
0845 196 2351
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Jacques Giard [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 4:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: How to teach argument ability to design students?
Dear Lubomir, Gunnar, Enbo et al,
The topic of design students and their ability to make an argument is the
proverbial tip of the iceberg. As we have seen with several responses the
topic has expanded into several interesting and meaningful directions. Let
me add yet another.
A few years ago the principal of a leading American design firm
specializing in medical equipment visited Arizona State University and
made a presentation to the industrial design program. As expected, the
presenter showed a range of design projects that his firm had developed.
Students were particularly excited by what they saw, especially the ones
who were about to graduate. If nothing else they saw an opportunity for
possible employment. It did not take long after the talk ended for one
student to ask, ³What are the qualities that you look for when you hire an
industrial designer in your firm?² The presenterıs answer shocked the
audience, ³I rarely hire industrial designers in my firm because they are
not educated to be skeptical.²
I was in the audience and the presenterıs response resonated with me. One
of the areas that I teach at ASU is design research, mostly at the PhD
level. I have always made it clear that a good dose of skepticism should
part of a researcherıs mindset. However, traditional design studio
education does not integrate, at least not in any overt way, traits
connected to skepticism and most other skills associated with research.
From my perspective, skepticism is only one soft skill that is necessary
to be a good researcher. There are others such as making and supporting an
argument.
Itıs at this point that my comment connects to the question posed
originally by Enbo. From my experience, we often select design students
via what some psychologists call hard skills, that is, those skills that
are more or less tangible and measurable such as the ability to draw or to
use this or that CAD application. However, soft skills such as creative
thinking, cooperation and communication, to name but three, are more
illusive. They are not as tangible nor as easy to quantify. Yet these same
soft skills are becoming more important in the success of of designers. To
some degree there is perhaps truth in the glib comment that C students
hire A students. Again from my experience, C students often demonstrate
more of the aforementioned soft skills and less of the hard skills, which
explains the fact that they are C students.
What does this all mean for design education, especially as the practice
of design itself is changing, e.g evidence-based design? If we wish for
design students to have better skills in critical thinking and in making
arguments, we may need to revisit the criteria used to select students in
our design schools. Do we continue to use hard-skill criteria such as GPA
and portfolios, as many school still do, or do we add soft-skill criteria
to the mix? In a way, an architecture colleague made the point to me when
he showed me results of Myers-Briggs tests taken by students in
architecture and students in real-estate development. The scores placed
the two groups in opposite quadrants. Despite the fact that architecture
and real-estate development are both centered on the built environment the
people in each perceive it quite differently. Clearly, these two student
populations had very different mindsets irrespective of a common ground.
Best,
Jacques Giard PhD
Professor of Design
The Design School
Arizona State University
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