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Dear Chuck, Thanks for your very warm response. I was interested in your reference to case based learning. You wrote: "... ... Lawyers and doctors have learned to turn case based learning into a (more or less) creative way of thinking and Schon has noted a useful dynamic in the reflective thinking of practitioners. Schank has pointed out the significant role of situationally anchored, easily visualized "scripts" in how we recall and apply prior knowledge in similar situations... Understanding how knowledge is assimilated and recalled is crucial to our task. As design educators we need to place more emphasis on how we think and less on the form of the outcome (without ignoring that of course..." I have often wondered how one could take the imaginary story that I referred to, slightly closer to the real world. A kind of step-up in complexity and tangibility. I used to have a subscription to the Harvard Business Review and in each copy there was a fictitious "case" that represented a synthesis of various real cases, drawn form business life. The cases were typically human resource situations involving, leadership, communication and sometimes innovation. There was a panel of experts, often top level industry leaders or recognised scholars, who commented on the case. I was always intrigued as to how seriously everyone took this. The cases and the following discussion was very enlightening. Over here they use this technique to teach students at the business gymnasium level (6th form college). With regard to design students, I have always been concerned as to how one can introduce "real life" design situations, (and my interest is collaborative design situations), into the curriculum, that would allow students to get acquainted with the human interactions involved, without first throwing them to the wolves of a real professional situation. They must, at some stage, get into the thick of industry, even whilst they are students, but hopefully adequately prepared. I wonder if case based learning could act as some kind of intermediary step? This interest in giving students an understanding of the human interactions involved in collaborative design and the development and deployment of personal design resources into the collaborative design arena, is the driver in my interest in looking at the students' community of practice. My general approach to the students is that they all have resources that are far greater than they realise. They have, most of them anyway, about 23 - 26 years experience in being a human being. So they're not completely green. I think a greater understanding of the students' community of practice, could reveal potential resources that they could build on, maybe supported by case based learning. I'm sure that they could learn strategies of human interaction, that would help them when they ventured into industrial practice. You mention Roger G. Schank and the need to try and understand the students' thinking processes. I first came across his thinking when I thought my research was mostly about creativity, both individual and collaborative. After reading in particular Schank (1988, 1999), Dewey (1933) and to a lesser extent Schön (1987), I realised that it was necessary to really dig into the thinking process involved. This then led me onto general learning theory. Much of my thinking about experimenting and creativity as "making mistakes" sometimes on purpose, in order to then come up with an explanation as to why, came from Roger Schank. He had a deceptively simple way of cutting to the bone of what creativity was for him. Best regards, Chris. References: Dewey J (1933) How we think, a restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. D. C. Heath and company, Lexington, Mass., (x, 301) Schank R. G. (1988) Creativity as a Mechanical Process. In: Sternberg RJ (ed.) The Nature of creativity : contemporary psychological perspectives. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; New York (pp 220-269) Schank RC (1999) Dynamic memory revisited. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; New York (xii, 302) Schön D (1987) Educating the reflective practitioner. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA ------------- 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]