The “R” word and related work

With all of this reflection going on I have been increasingly been subjected to the “R” word. Since the GRC two colleagues and I have been piecing together a proposal for a new research and participatory learning course hopefully to be implemented into the 3rd year of undergraduate (communication design) studies in the following year. [...]

What am I doing?

I feel stuck. I can’t think or express anything right now and feel like my research is standing still or even moving backwards. I’m not sure where all this reflection is going even though I feel I have made some good progress in the identification of the “forces at play” in my past curriculum design. [...]

Reflection and Research Integration 2

This thought came up after reading a little of Paul Ramsden’s book “Learning to Teach in Higher Education” (2003)
How do we change the students’ learning approaches to graphic design subjects thus improving the learning and integration of research?
Does that make sense?
1) I think one point to make on this topic is getting students at an [...]

Reflection and Research Integration

This thought came up after reading a little of Paul Ramsden’s book “Learning to Teach in Higher Education” (2003)
How do we change the students’ learning approaches to graphic design subjects thus improving the learning and integration of research?
Does that make sense?

1) I think one point to make on this topic is getting students at [...]

Solutions of reflected curriculum design

In my assessment post I made some huge revelations towards the importance of assessment and how it can be used to encourage a deeper learning environment. I also discovered some large holes in the designed curriculum one of which was that the program I built was not suitable for graphic design majors coming from North [...]

Graphic design and the learning of technical computer skills

Someone once told me “where would graphic design be now, without the use of the computer.” I think this is something very important to talk about because of its relationship with my topic. I think throughout history, the designer has used the tools around them to use for the communication of the message. [...]

Florence and Design

In my opinion, simply, Florence does not engage in design for such as cultural city. Discussing this is quite important for my research because it relates to how I virtually ignored any integration of Florence’s design community (practicing studios, relevant research, history) in my curriculum design.
I was living in Florence for about five years. For [...]

Levels of thinking about teaching (Part 2)

Biggs, j. Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 1999 The Society for Research into Higher Education.Levels of Thinking about Teaching
In this chapter Biggs explains three levels of teaching ‘theories’ that a teacher tends to go through in their careers.
Level 2:
John Biggs explains in this section that the teacher often looks at obtaining themselves with as [...]

Levels of thinking about teaching (Part 1)

 Biggs, j. Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 1999 The Society for Research into Higher Education.
Levels of Thinking about Teaching
In this chapter Biggs explains three levels of teaching ‘theories’ that a teacher tends to go through in their careers.
Level 1: Level one, is a time where the focus is “what the student is” therefore giving [...]

The Studio

In one of my past reflection exercises, I mentioned that I thought students would be more interested in learning about different ways of communicating in design and that the focus of the learning would be through a “studio-like” working environment. What I was trying to put through was to get the students working through a [...]

Graphic Design program models

This entry will be quite short. Not because I’m tired of writing or have blanked out, but because this is an area that I really need to discover more. When I was designing the GD curriculum I was barely aware of different models used in graphic design programs. At that time I didn’t spend a [...]

Realizations: Graphic Design Program design

As I was going through all this reflection and trying to dig really deep in what I did in my design I came to point where I realized that the actual program that I had put together was not built for the type of students enrolling at the school. Because of the variety in the [...]

Assessment in Graphic Design Learning Experiences

Reflections from the conference paper “Using Assessment to Engage Graphic design Students in their Learning Experience”, Debra Ehmann, Swinburne University of Technology.
This paper generally discusses how the use of assessment in graphic design pedagogy can help create a link between a students engagement in their learning activities and the goals of the learning outcomes of [...]

Educational Concepts for Design Lecturers

In this paper Darrall Thompson from UTS, Sydney discusses the design of learning environments for design courses. It is particularly interesting to me in this stage of my research because it touches on some approaches to learning which might have been helpful when I was designing a graphic design curriculum in 2006.
Thompson first argues the [...]

Why? do I believe these are essential ingredients to the program

Thinking about the courses now, maybe they were too heavily based on North American graphic design courses. I was trying to essentially build a four year program in a private study-abroad college where students enrolled for usually not more than one semester. Why would a student coming from an art college or university in their [...]

This is Killing me

At the start of this process, I thought I was doing fine, reflecting, writing, thinking. At this stage I think I have only completed three or four blog posts and have spent most of the time starring at the blogger window. I have been think too but for some reason, this is getting more an [...]

The Essential Ingredients of a Graphic Design Program

During the planning of the graphic design program I tried to condense as much as I could from what knowledge I had of a four year North American program to a one year study abroad program. I decided on courses that I thought where essential in the learning process of a design student.
Ingredients #1 (the [...]

Surface and Deep learning Environments

Paul Ramsden in his research on Learning to teach in Higher education explored the relationships between the engagement of students learning experiences and those providing the experience in an educational context. What is meant by this is there are two levels of engagement with the leaning and thinking of students, surface and deep learning. Prof. [...]

Curriculum Research

In the midst of my proposal for the new graphic design program one of my main ideas was to introduce an element of research into the curriculum. Thinking back now, at the time I really threw myself into research and especially design research. I was at the time discovering myself what it all meant and [...]

Protected: Private study-abroad art colleges

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.