Dear Chuck

Your post brings some important insights to this conversation about design
history and its role inside design education. I do believe that it has a
role in the modes of reflection that it can support and we do need a theory
that can help teachers and academic planners to grasp this need and apply
the principles to curriculum planning and assignment design. I believe that
assignment design is at the very heart of design education since it can
frame the way in which learning uy doing can be steered and insights from
this practice can be harvested by the student and the teacher alike and I
further think that it is best done as a collective activity in teams rather
than as individual journeys within design education.

This has been on my my mind for many years now and through the courses that
I have developed during my teaching at the National Institute of Design,
Ahmedabad, India. We stated experimenting with "Learning by Doing" as an
institutional policy way back in the 60's when the institute was led by the
sibling team of Gautam and Gira Sarabhai who took the Eames India Report
and converted it into a programme of action along with a highly motivated
and committed faculty and student team. For this Gautam Sarabhai drafted
and shared a seminal document titled "NID - Internal Organisation,
Structure and Culture: September 1972" and you can download this from my
Dropbox link here.
<
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vq1gdykpudt3rej/NID%20-%20Int%20Org%20Str%20%26%20Culture.pdf
>
Seen along with the Eames India Report that was the vision document one can
feel the power of design through a culture of reflection and action.

My own work in design education has been documented on my blog "Design for
India" and several papers that are available for download from here and two
recent posts try to reflect of our design education experiments
particularly in the area of design thinking that I developed in a course
called "Design Concepts and Concerns" see these posts at these two links
below.
<>
<>

On 24 August 2012 02:19, Charles Burnette <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Terry, Don, Kari and colleagues,
>
> I agree with Terry, Don and Kari that we need to rethink how knowledge of
> design history is developed, delivered, and acquired. But Terry's
> proposition has a severe weakness. Where is the theory to guide learning by
> doing in design education? Where are the general principles? Where is
> designing conceptually specified enough that the model can be validated, or
> built upon?
>
> There are scattered opinions, practices, methods, techniques, strategies
> and some  empirical evidence, but, unless I've missed something, there is
> no theory sufficiently comprehensive or operational enough to support the
> incidental learning of design history as it could and should occur. Chris
> Alexander's Pattern Language and Case Based Reasoning (Kolodner) are among
> the few approaches that have systematically linked prior situated knowledge
> to future design decisions.
>
> I have worked over the years to build a theory that is comprehensive and
> testable ("A theory of Design Thinking" and related papers) and have
> demonstrated its use in situated learning and doing (
> www.idesignthinking.com)  I know of no other general theory with the
> potential to support Terry's view of the future importance of theory in
> Design Education, or one operational enough to support learning and doing
> beyond the studio or laboratory. In A Theory of Design Thinking, Reflective
> thought recalls and applies knowledge gained through experience, culture,
> and society. Although the potential is there, design history has no
> specific sub-model within Reflective thought, the domain of memory, past
> experience, and assimilated knowledge.
>
> Design history should provide understandings of conditions and
> consequences that can inform or stimulate current design thinking. The
> problem is to bring prior knowledge into play as relevant and to encourage
> historians to critically interpret prior design experience for the
> collective memory.
>
> Or, so I believe,
> Chuck




-- 
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*Prof M P Ranjan*
*Design Thinker and author of blog -
www.Designforindia.com<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/>
*
E8 Faculty Housing
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 India

Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
email: ranjanmp@g <[log in to unmask]>mail.com

<http://www.ranjanmp.in/>blog: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com>
(current and with downloads)
education blog: <http://www.design-concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.com>
(archival)
education blog: http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com (archival)

web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp (disabled by Apple)
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp>web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in (disabled
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