Educational Links
Twenty-first Century of Graphic Design Learning with Thinking Skills Infusion
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Su Cheong Wong
Graphic design is a well-established, and popular education pathway in Malaysia. Nevertheless, teaching and learning have little research. Perhaps, an analysis of current instructional approaches to match P21’s Framework for Twenty-first Century Learning could provide enlightenment towards new teaching and learning methods. Therefore, the key assessment on teaching graphic design should take into consideration learners’ creativity and innovation; critical thinking and problem-solving skill; as well as ability to communicate and collaborate. It is important to integrate critical and creative thinking skills across the subject matters. Creative thinking skills are highly recommended to integrate into practical modules so that learners can be encouraged to think differently or out of the box. However, most institutions gave short shift to critical and creative thinking skills and hardly incorporate with theoretical and practical teaching of Graphic Design. As a result, the curriculum does not prepare the learners to meet the demands of real-world practice. These demands presuppose that graduates in Graphic Design do possess the necessary faculty of creative thinking to originate ideas and connect learned knowledge into project-based applications. It is imperative to implement a better and practical pedagogy that infuses CCT into the program curricula to produce graduate outcomes that are in line with industry and professional demands. This research aims to develop a new Integrated Creative Activity Instruction (ICAI), which infuses thinking skill to improve graphic design learning. The instruction framework is mainly derived from Affordance Theory of Gibson (1986) and Marzano New Taxonomy (2000).
Design Team Cooperation with Students and Professionals : The Effect of a Morphological Approach
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wim Zeiler
The problems with the high energy use of the buildings calls for an integrated design approach at the initial conceptual design phase. In order to support this process, a design method based on the use of morphological charts and a morphological overview was developed in cooperation with the Dutch professional organizations of architects and consulting engineers. The morphological charts and morphological overview can be used to analyse and evaluate the impact of different interventions during the conceptual phase of the building design process. The outcomes show that the design support tool used by during the workshop, facilitates a significant increase in the number of possible solutions generated by design teams. A detailed discussion of the design support tool itself, and how the tool was utilized in workshops for students to determine the impact of various interventions is investigated. One of these interventions included the adding of an experienced professional designer to a students’ team.
Cross-Disciplinary Design Education: Current Trends
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mike Oustamanolakis
Cross-disciplinary education is increasing in popularity. According to the World Economic Forum report “The Future of Jobs”, the top skills in the future will be complex problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity. (World Economic Forum, 2016). Universities expect graduates to be leaders and innovators in the workplace and in society at large (Gross, 2009). What kind of Design Education is needed to meet the future demands? Are Design Schools currently offering the above-mentioned skills? Attempting to answer this question requires to examine the design education at the present time and identify what are the current trends. This presentation illustrates the context of cross-disciplinary design education, as presented through the websites of the world’s top design schools (by QS World University Rankings). The main purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between the cross-disciplinary design education and the current design education trends. This work contributes an understanding on the world’s top design schools' pedagogy as communicated through publicly accessible online prospectuses.
