Educational Elements
Asynchronous Session
How First-year Design Students Explore and Share Their Cultural Diversity while Articulating and Using Design Principles to Interpret the Style of a Researched Graphic Designer View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Peggy Bloomer
The final project in my fundamental design course asks students to research a graphic designer, examine how that designer uses the principles of design, articulate the designer’s style, and use those criteria to create an original poster. To support the university's diversity and inclusion goals, this project has been expanded to foster an understanding of diverse cultures. Students choose a designer who relates to their heritage, neurodiversity, or gender orientation. In preparation, weekly presentations and discussions focus on famous twentieth- and twenty-first-century designers. Students evaluate not just what they like about the work but how these designers use design principles. Students also learn through various formative assignments how to create projects using raster and vector images with programs and technologies, employing design principles. This summative project includes research cataloged in an annotated bibliography and supported by a 20-slide Pecha Kucha presentation that reviews the work and use of the principles. Students summarize “the style of” the designer. Then each student creates a large format work “in the style of” their designer. The finished work is presented in class with a discussion about how their work relates to the designer’s style and work. In the past, this assignment has included a Filipino designer, an American black female, a Spaniard, a Hungarian, a Pakistani female, a Swiss designer, a Puerto Rican male, a Hispanic female dealing with femicide and body shaming, and a female designer with ADHD. The outcome is a project that helps students use their learning and share cultural perspectives.
Expectations towards Lecturing Designers: Aspiring the Forthcoming Class Theme View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Leonardo Springer
Future problems will be distinct, combining multiple areas of knowledge and requiring innovative stimulus, “always/never” dilemmas will rise, but also opportunities to design better solutions, using creativity, critical thinking, and intuitive problem-solving involving learning, dialogue, and collaboration towards flexible solutions. (Springer, 2022). Design is a human-centred solution-driven, problem-solving activity, devising tangible solutions to address specific problems. It outlines issues, researching related subjects, gaining specific expertise, towards creating a viable solution. Current design practice has evolved into a comprehensive interdisciplinary planning assignment, overcoming form and function, to develop economically viable sustainable human-centred solution. The purpose of any education is to stimulate perceptions, facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and develop specific proficiencies, and ultimately succeed. Teaching design in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) requires a broad skillset that includes pedagogy, design principles, understanding of individual and group cognition, sociocultural and socioeconomic affairs, problem-solving aptitudes, state of the art technology, processes and methods, innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and continuous doctrine adjustments. The tutors’ role is to empower students to acquire design skills, developing applied practice, discourse, and ethics regarding a career to create meaning in a global environment. The question that arises from this research is in what manner can design tutors proficiently coach and further inspire design students to adapt and overcome future issues that are not yet identified.
Sustainable Transformation of Textile and Fashion Design: Integrating Education for Sustainable Development as a Guiding Principle in Design Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anne-Marie Grundmeier
A strong demand for sustainable products and processes in the textile and fashion industry and its global markets imposes a continuous transformation by implementing the guiding principle Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in design education. The European project Fashion DIET developed teaching and learning materials as Open Educational Resources (OER) for the e-learning platform Glocal Campus. A further education module on ESD for higher education was elaborated with a three-part module comprising 42 lectures on didactic-methodical concepts, sustainable fashion design and production technologies as well as a sustainable orientation of the fashion market. The curricular implementation of ESD in all study programmes is demanded by the UNESCO. The promotion of the necessary skills of knowledge acquisition, critical reflection, autonomous decision-making, and action is also a task of design education and has been elaborated for the textile and fashion sector. A sustainability-oriented textile and fashion design is seen as the key to the sustainable transformation of this branch. Through educational processes, challenges of sustainable development in the textile and fashion design can be reflected upon. An understanding of the complex, multi-layered interrelationships between ecological, economic, social, cultural, and political conditions for sustainable development can be built up and deepened, and values and attitudes can be questioned in regard to design. This can initiate or deepen a change in consciousness of textile and fashion designers and contribute to the individual development of competencies that motivate them to get involved and enable them to responsibly shape the present and future.
The Virtual Asynchronous Round-Table Project: A Deep Dive into Its Learning Management System and Course Design Implications View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Spencer Hawkridge
The Virtual Asynchronous Round-Table (VART) project is a transformative teacher-training master program, shining a light on Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). This initiative challenges students to construct a corpus from interviews with TV series actors and creators, offering a unique paradigm in language education. This paper delves into the intricate dynamics between the outcomes of the VART project and its presentation on the in-house MOODLE-based Learning Management System (LMS). In the VART project, students embark on the creation of a corpus, synthesizing interview excerpts from online sources within a virtual asynchronous round-table. The synergy between the project's goals and student engagement is facilitated by a meticulously designed Learning Management System (LMS). Beyond facilitating corpus creation, the LMS fosters collaborative group work and incorporates a dashboard system providing insights and metrics, enriching the overall learning experience. The research objective is twofold: firstly, to highlight the benefits of the VART project, and secondly, to explore potential enhancements through the refinement of course design and the associated LMS. By probing into the symbiotic relationship between the VART project, the LMS, and course design, this study seeks to unravel the collective impact of these elements on student engagement, autonomy, and relatedness within the language learning journey.
