Dear Mike,
This sounds very interesting. It brings Gibson's "educating attention" to mind.
How many students would be involved in these cross disciplinary learning situations?
In my experience it's a challenge to balance a studio based learning approach with large numbers of students.
I realise I'm assuming you do have studio based design education.
How would the students bring what they learn from a perception, materials and interaction course say into play as regards a particular design task?
How would you enable the students to relate what is learnt in the modality courses to the processes encountered in resolving a design task? For example, what is the role of artefacts in the design process and their relation to perception, material, interaction?
Are you thinking of cross discipline project work that runs throughout a semester in parallel to the "modality" learning?
One example I have that may touch on your ideas was with design engineering students. The emphasis of the education, apart from the technical learning, was interaction design and user oriented, collaborative design. In each semester there was a semester project that the students worked on in teams of three to five. I was responsible for introducing a project's brief.
Usually these were pretty specific. An exerciser for senile dementia patients, a play object for patients with arthritis, medicine dosage, etc. These followed semester themes: 2. muscles and motors (mechanics), 3. senses and sensors (electronics), 4. brains and bytes (HCI), 5. values and value (business), etc.
The semester themes were very valuable as a means of thematising the semester projects and as providing links to relevant design courses of ethnography, perception, HCI, interaction etc.
In a 4th semester (senses and sensors) I tried an experiment. I kept the brief as open as possible: Child nutrition and unclean water.
That was it!
The intriguing development was that the students, without my asking them to, didn't end up with the one final proposal, usually a technical device, but an encompassing concept. It included an ultra violet scanner, a logistical system for building a new well and the distribution of clean water, an educational health program (cleanliness) for children at school, which was also designed to help parents at home, and an advertising campaign that related to the ethical issues arising form the conflict between breast feeding of infants and the use of powdered milk.
Together with the concept results they wrote a reflection report that discussed mini research questions they posed with regard to their process, similar to those I mentioned above and that related to a broad range of design and other related research literature.
So in design education terms the students were traversing, product design, interaction design, systems design, visual communication and design studies.
My point being, born out by many other similar experiments over the years, that by placing students into the "discipline silos" I do believe it can hamper their ability to fully bring their designerly resources, sense of empathy and imagination into play.
And probably, even more importantly, enable their ability to learn how to work in a cross discipline working environment. Which will be their future.
It seemed that this small example legitimised the students to think and act in ways they might not otherwise have done so.
They stepped out of their particular discipline silo.
I'll be intrigued to se how your ideas develop.
Writing this I wonder if the semester theme principal could possibly be a way in which you and your colleagues could pull together the various modality courses. With cross discipline semester projects binding the understanding gleaned from the courses together whilst resolving a design task. With reflection moving the process and practice understanding back and forth between the modality courses and actual design practice.
Just a thought.
Best,
Chris.
references:
Gibson (1986: 254) "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception." Lawrence Erlbaum Associates - New Jersey
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On 14 Nov 2012, at 22:25, "McAuley, Mike" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> We are currently looking at updating the structure of our BDes programme and are considering whether this is an opportunity to move away from traditional discipline silos. One such consideration is to base our programme on an epistemological basis, identifying, if possible, different types of knowledge, or possibly even basing it on human behaviour. Instead of having a traditional structure where at the top are disciplines, i.e. Communication Design, Industrial Design, Fashion Design etc, we could consider an epistemological, bailiwick structure. The bailiwicks could be knowledge based. For example a bailiwick titled 'modality', could cover areas of design relevant to how we make personal meaning and how we experience the world. This could relate to areas such as observational drawing, colour theory, perception, cognition and so forth. A bailiwick (or mode) titled 'strategy' could relate to how we make meaning for others and might be recognised within traditional discipline areas such as graphics, advertising, etc. However, no discipline would have ownership of these knowledge bailiwcks. And that would be one of the key differences. The key purpose to this is to create fluidity between specialisms, break down the bastions of traditional knowledge and to see a greater connectedness between design disciplines. The disciplines themselves can still exist, as they become the means by which knowledge is created; but they become no longer self contained knowledge structures.
>
> I would welcome my international colleagues insights, ideas, opinions, examples of future focused design education structures.
>
> Regards
> Mike
>
> Dr. MIKE MCAULEY
> SENIOR LECTURER, SUBJECT DIRECTOR,
> ILLUSTRATION
> Institute of Communication Design
> College of Creative Arts
> Massey University
> Museum Building
> Buckle Street
> Wellington
> http://creative.massey.ac.nz<http://creative.massey.ac.nz/>
> ________________________________
>
> (04) 801 5799 ext 62461
> (04 027 357 8799
>
-------------
from:
Chris Heape PhD
tel:
+45 2620 0385
e.mail:
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