Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Sharing observations on design education / assessment

Use this blog to share your observations for next week - remember to tell us "what" you observed!

Working toward the final project!

Use this blog post to share your current thoughts on what you would like to do for your final project in this course.  Post this by next week so I can set up a process for providing feedback.

You may also use this post to tell me what kind of feedback you would like for this final project.  For example, it might be useful to bring an outline of your idea to class next week for peer feedback.  Or, you may want to send it to me to provide feedback.  Similarly, you may want to share a draft and get feedback.  Remember, though, if you want feedback on something more developed you need to provide time for someone to read it and respond :)

Week 14 - Nov 19 - learning trajectories

We're continuing the conversation from this week by looking at two papers.  We're also going to use these papers to connect to what we "observed" about design education and assessment (so don't forget to bring your notes!).

The paper by Crismond synthesizes research on design to identify learner differences and potential education remedies - with a particular focus on young learners. The paper by Dall'Alba and Sandberg is outside of the design research field but provides a view on learning trajectories - with a particular focus on learning professional practices. 

As you read these:
  • Connecting to "observations":  How do these readings relate to your "observations"?  
  • Working towards personas:  
    • How do these readings build on our work from this week on problem scoping, fixation, and process (e.g., new "dimensions" of design learning and how they develop or compare across differences in "expertise")?
    • Think of a "typical" engineering freshman during their fall term. Create a a story about this student (who they are, likes/dislikes, what they really like or hate about design, the kinds of design experiences they may have from the past, what they might believe about design, and what might be easy or difficult for them to learn about design). You can look at the examples here to think about the kinds of information you think is important to understand about this person. Come prepared to think about what "personas" are and how we can use them to synthesize and apply knowledge from this course to "design" design education.