Pedagogical Pathways
Design Thinking Study Abroad: Exercises and Prototypes in Material Culture
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shelley F. Martin
Design thinking exercises and practices provide a primary multidisciplinary framework for engaging, representing, and establishing dialogs for individuals working within new contexts and cultures. This paper reports on a Design Thinking Study Abroad academic program that offers specific scenarios for exploring material culture, comprehending cross-cultural experiences and collaborations, and developing the global citizen. It inculcates design thinking strategies as an initial course offering in a multi-disciplinary travel program in order to help engage, record, and study the examples of other culture’s complex social, political, economic, and environmental productions, and material artefacts. The course is based on three propositions. Design is ambiguous and can have multiple outcomes. Visually based design thinking practices regard reflexive thinking in situation and alternative as primary and seek to establish multiple viewpoints as a prime constituent in active decision making. Design thinking is not automatic is requires agency. It defines contexts that inculcate direct material and tactile pedagogical practices as modes of heuristic models of thinking, problem-seeking, and proposal. Design demands empathy. It requires the ability change the constitute frames of reference and develop contextual understandings as an initial operational part of any proposal. By introducing means and methods of problem definition, material ideation, and the discussion and testing of possible outcomes in situ; the course serves as a creative catalyst that builds transferable cultural capacities in research partnerships, develops methodologies of addressing complex global problems, and acts as a model or prism for understanding future collaborations and studies.
Control, Shift, Exhale: A Case Study in Workshop-Based Learning
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rab McClure
This paper explores the VCUarts Qatar MFA in Design program field study workshop. We travel, as a group, to produce a tailored project, collaborating with experts in an immersive learning experience. Each year, the trip is planned to leverage students’ existing abilities, while providing exposure to fabrication methods and technology that expand our core offerings. By design, each trip produces a tangible outcome of cultural relevance to our home in Qatar and its region. In 2018, our field study re-examined the traditional Arabic lantern, or Fanoos—a symbol of festive welcome and safe haven. To make our contemporary lanterns, we traveled to The Glass Hub, in Southwest England, to learn in a workshop setting from practicing glass artists. Prior to departure, MFA students and faculty each designed a light source: programmable, rechargeable, and controlled via smartphone app. Also prior to departure, we each designed two-part, 3d-printed steel molds. Onsite in England, with the help of workshop leaders, we blew molten glass into the hinged molds. This fusion of traditional process and modern technology leveraged our students’ creative capacity, providing control in a medium that otherwise takes years to master. The fusion of old and new reflects our affinity for Qatar’s rich cultural heritage, and demonstrates our belief in the power of design to shape the future.
