Abstract
Graphic Design is increasingly becoming an interdisciplinary practice where designers in the industry can expect to work on a variety of projects, some of which may require an array of disparate skill sets and tools. Given the difficulty of making fundamental changes to existing design curriculums, and the fact that programs cannot educate students to be ‘experts’ in every discipline they will encounter in professional practice, what changes can individual instructors make within their courses to address this situation? In response to this challenge the authors of this paper implemented a number of structural changes to two distinct courses in their graphic design curriculum in an attempt to decrease the ‘siloeffect’ between subjects and to provide students with situated learning experiences in a simulated interdisciplinary setting. These structural changes include creating conduits between courses as a way to decrease the ‘silo-effect’, implementing a ‘soft-structured’ group dynamic within one of the courses, and utilizing a generationally tiered project progression as a way to diffuse and share large amount of knowledge from multiple branches of study simultaneously. In this article the authors explain the models they implemented, examine those models based on existing theoretical frameworks, and review the effects these models had on the student experience, cooperation, and knowledge retention in relation to previous courses.
Keywords
graphic design pedagogy, multidisciplinary design, collaborative teaching, decentralized classroom, interactive design, interface design, systems design, dynamic critique models, cross-course registration
Citation
Hammett, L., and Hersrud, M. (2012) Decentralizing the Classroom: Utilizing network theory, collaborative teaching, and agile development to create a softstructured learning environment, in Israsena, P., Tangsantikul, J. and Durling, D. (eds.), Research: Uncertainty Contradiction Value - DRS International Conference 2012, 1-4 July, Bangkok, Thailand. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2012/researchpapers/48
Decentralizing the Classroom: Utilizing network theory, collaborative teaching, and agile development to create a softstructured learning environment
Graphic Design is increasingly becoming an interdisciplinary practice where designers in the industry can expect to work on a variety of projects, some of which may require an array of disparate skill sets and tools. Given the difficulty of making fundamental changes to existing design curriculums, and the fact that programs cannot educate students to be ‘experts’ in every discipline they will encounter in professional practice, what changes can individual instructors make within their courses to address this situation? In response to this challenge the authors of this paper implemented a number of structural changes to two distinct courses in their graphic design curriculum in an attempt to decrease the ‘siloeffect’ between subjects and to provide students with situated learning experiences in a simulated interdisciplinary setting. These structural changes include creating conduits between courses as a way to decrease the ‘silo-effect’, implementing a ‘soft-structured’ group dynamic within one of the courses, and utilizing a generationally tiered project progression as a way to diffuse and share large amount of knowledge from multiple branches of study simultaneously. In this article the authors explain the models they implemented, examine those models based on existing theoretical frameworks, and review the effects these models had on the student experience, cooperation, and knowledge retention in relation to previous courses.