Discussions

See the blog here.

Posted by Design Educators in FYI | November 17, 2009

The AIGA Design Educators Community Steering Committee is very pleased to announce the award of our second annual design research grant, determined through a competitive, peer-review process. This grant of $5000 includes scholarship that generates new knowledge, integrates design knowledge into other disciplines as an influential force, or explores new pedagogies through the teaching of design and evaluation of learning outcomes. This year's grant has been awarded to Deborah Littlejohn and Meredith Davis, North Carolina State University, for the project which they describe below:

Pedagogy, Culture and Change in Graphic Design Education

Design is a profoundly changing field of practice and discipline of study. One of the most important issues for design education today is how to develop instructional strategies that are reflective of the opportunities and sensitive to the challenges of an expanding role for design. The proposed study examines the shifts underway in the design field to explore academic culture in graduate design programs. It will focus on curricular and pedagogic practices to build a theoretical understanding of the relationships between academic design culture, curricular innovation and the particular circumstances of the teaching environment in which instruction takes place. Transformative shifts related to social, economic and technological trends have given rise to a new set of competencies for designers that bring much to bear on the field's traditional knowledge and skills. Three themes were identified in a previous investigation of the different competencies transforming contemporary design practice, including: the ability of designers to understand people and contexts for design through evidence-based research and other empirical-analytic methods; the ability of designers to interpret and utilize interdisciplinary knowledge; and the ability of designers to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams. This study seeks to understand how design programs anticipate, define and meet the demands of preparing students for changing conditions of practice.

Several U.S. design programs that represent a broad range of institutional diversity will be selected to take part in this study. Drawing on data from the AIGA Survey of Design Education Programs Results (2008) these programs represent:

• different structural contexts (private and public colleges and universities)
  
• diverse geographic locales
  
• years of establishment (newer programs and well established programs)
  
• different orientations to practice as defined in the AIGA survey
  

The outcome of this study will go beyond documentation to provide in-depth analytic descriptions of pedagogic strategies emerging in graphic and interactive media design. Although there is a tradition of writing about design education, what is lacking is evidence-based investigations for enhancing the curriculum through empirical research. With few exceptions, mainly outside of the U.S., graphic design remains a generally neglected topic of investigation by U.S. scholars in higher education who, when they do study design disciplines, focus on architecture or interaction design as it is taught in computer science and engineering programs. The proposed study seeks to fill this gap by contributing original knowledge that describes frameworks for curricular innovation at a particularly crucial moment for graphic design practice and pedagogy--one where pressure to change is coming from outside the discipline as much as from within it. Data yielded from this project will contribute new knowledge in pedagogic theory in design and connect the graphic design field to valuable literatures pertaining to curricular innovation.

Posted by Design Educators in Events, News | November 15, 2009

David Barringer offers 21 writing prompts for design students.

Posted by Design Educators in FYI | November 12, 2009

While the promotion and tenure (P&T) process plays a significant role in the professional life of many design educators, the topic is often ignored in our typical discourse, possibly due to its sensitive nature. We may occasionally hear from colleagues concerning their particular experiences with P&T processes, but little formal discussion has occurred concerning the need for more consistent P&T standards across US institutions of higher learning.

Current P&T processes for design educators appear to vary widely from institution to institution. This situation is appropriate to a certain extent, as there are many kinds of schools with contrasting goals and mandates. State universities typically have different missions compared to private art and design schools, or community colleges. Some schools emphasize productivity in research, scholarship and/or creative work, while others stress teaching effectiveness as the main criteria for evaluating faculty.

In almost all cases some combination of a design educator's contributions in teaching, research, and professional and/or institutional service are assessed in a P&T process. Yet the details of exactly how a faculty member will be evaluated by their institution are often vague, or in some cases, clearly inappropriate.

The AIGA educators e-mail forum often includes messages from colleagues seeking clarification on issues arising from P&T processes. In some instances requests for basic P&T standards appropriate to design educators are made, as none exist in their schools. This situation clearly calls for recommendations on how institutions of higher learning might more effectively evaluate design faculty.

The AIGA Design Educators Community (DEC) Steering Committee has undertaken a Promotion and Tenure initiative to address issues and problems typically experienced by design educators. A series of statements addressing best-practices for common P&T processes has been drafted, and will soon appear on-line. A number of other helpful resources related to promotion and tenure issues will also be provided.

All members of the Design Educators Community are invited to participate in this initiative by submitting the following items:

1) Samples of institutional and program-level promotion and tenure guidelines:
We are looking for good examples of policies concerning promotion and tenure processes used institution-wide, as well as policies and processes specific to promotion and tenure of communication design faculty at the program-level.

2) Samples of faculty promotion and tenure dossiers:
We also wish to supply design educators with good examples of past communication design faculty promotion and tenure dossiers used for review by peers internally and/or externally. Dossiers coming from institutions that have also provided the items would be especially helpful, but all are welcome.

3) Web-articles:
Finally, any links to articles concerning current promotion and tenure issues, emerging models of faculty evaluation, etc. are requested. Any other helpful resources concerning these general subjects are also welcomed.

Please email PDFs and MSWord files pertaining to items one and two, as well as any web-links for item three, to Paul Nini, via nini [dot] 1 [at] osu [dot] edu. Thank you for your involvement in this important initiative.

Posted by Design Educators in Discussion, News | September 10, 2009

Post a comment

Tidbits from interaction design school

Posted by Design Educators in FYI | September 1, 2009