As I am sending a response for the first time, I would like introduce myself. My name is Tiiu Poldma, and I have been a member of the PhD list since I attended my first Design Research Conference in the UK in the fall of 2001. I have just completed my Doctor of Philosophy( April, 2003) at the Faculty of Education at McGill University, and I am an assistant professor ( since 2000) at the University of Montreal in the School of Industrial Design. I am a supervisor to some of the students in the Design and Complexity Masters program headed by Dr. Alain Findeli.

I have been a practicing interior designer for over 20 years, and came into teaching through being "a hired gun with a bachelors" back in 1987. My road to a PhD has been through reflection about the practice, its roles within the visual art and built environment disciplines, my interests in spatial thinking and how students learn theory that is then transformed (or more often not) in practice. These are all part of my fundamental interest about the values used that underlie the ways that we teach design in general, and architecture and interior design in particular.

I would like to add to the consideration being given to "sketching", by suggesting that perhaps a deeper point to be made here would be regarding the pedagogical reasons that are being engaged by the choices that are made when we construct a curriculum. There is a difference between "teaching sketching" because it is a design tool( a craft, or a means to an end), and choosing ways for students to become creative thinkers. I see sketching as a pedagogical tool not to "teach a means to an end", but rather to realize the potential for self-internalized ideas to come to be expressed very quickly. These intuitive thoughts need a means of expression, and sketching is a way( not the only one...!) to express ideas and thoughts quickly, to a teacher, and eventually to a client. Whether by electronic or more traditional means, ultimately what I hope we aim to do as educators is teach students the passion and desire to communicate ideas through visual means, leading to broad choices, a creative concept that solves a problem, and, in the case of the interior space, can ultimately be built and become a tangible reality. This process, in my view , includes sketching, as generating visual ideas quickly is a cognitive means to help students learn how to take an idea "inside the head" and bring it to life tangibly.

I refer to my dissertation where I studied the actual student experiences in a bachelor interior design class, and how issues of form, creativity , etc. were discussed in much the same way that we have been engaged in dialogue here on this list. But in the end, what I also experienced as a teacher is the joy when students understand and express themselves creatively, first through sketching and later on electronically through the various languages ( FormZ, Photoshop, Autocad) made available to them. Arnheim ( Margolin & Buchanan,2000,p.71)suggests that sketching is a means to achieve this.

I will also give you an example that recently proved my point. I happened to see the making of the movie "Finding Nemo". I was astounded that the first images that were generated by the design team, after extensive research, were created by pastel drawing onto large pieces of paper, before any imaging was even considered. I used to teach pastel drawing about ten years ago, and have kept insisting on students learning multiple media forms of expression through the years, despite the onslaught of computer technology. For example, at the University of Montreal, even though the tendency is towards computer aided design we also include at least some observation drawing techniques, for just these reasons, in the interior design program.