Innovations in higher education teaching and learning, May 27, 2020
Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challe... more Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challenge internationally. This chapter shares insights from a 2016 attempt to establish a first-year undergraduate Design course with an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability education. A series of video dialogues between university and community-based sustainability experts was created to enable students to access understandings and research evidence about sustainability issues and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, through different disciplinary lenses. The video dialogues provided students with opportunities to learn reflexively through exposure to differing visions for sustainable development, including Indigenous perspectives. In doing so, the video dialogues provide material for critical, creative, and iterative design thinking. Drawing on feedback from students enrolled in the course, this chapter offers reflections about enhancing course design through using video dialogues to support students’ critical openness to addressing sustainability concerns.
Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challe... more Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challenge internationally. This chapter shares insights from a 2016 attempt to establish a first-year undergraduate Design course with an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability education. A series of video dialogues between university and community-based sustainability experts was created to enable students to access understandings and research evidence about sustainability issues and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, through different disciplinary lenses. The video dialogues provided students with opportunities to learn reflexively through exposure to differing visions for sustainable development, including Indigenous perspectives. In doing so, the video dialogues provide material for critical, creative, and iterative design thinking. Drawing on feedback from students enrolled in the course, this chapter offers reflections about enhancing course design through using vide...
As inhabitants of a rapidly evolving planet we are confronted with the impacts of change, includi... more As inhabitants of a rapidly evolving planet we are confronted with the impacts of change, including the intensification of natural disasters on the foreseeable horizon. With this awareness, our personal sense of vulnerability has increased and this, in turn, has exposed us to a uniquely contemporary breed of anxiety. As a pervasive condition, the growing apprehension experienced in the context of our precarious relationship within nature is understood to have potentially negative repercussions on our emotional well-being. While design works towards adapting to our contemporary ecological challenges, alternative approaches that prioritize the needs of our psychological condition require exploration. This paper outlines an inquiry into this subject, and introduces a case study that proposes the development of artefacts designed to foster psychological resilience in the context of pending disasters. Through rigorous engagement in practice-led research with the supportive application of...
Design educators have an enormous stake in the development of student’s identity as emerging desi... more Design educators have an enormous stake in the development of student’s identity as emerging designers. While beginning design entails a seemingly all-encompassing mission to introduce students to the fundamental principles, language, skills, and processes relative to design, and to prepare students to effectively negotiate the more complex issues that will inevitably arise through the progression of their education, it is at the start of a student’s academic career that they begin to cultivate an appreciation and an affinity for stylistic choices that, through a process of gradual evolution, define their design identities. However, academia is not solely responsible for the education of the design student. Their learning extends beyond the classroom where they are heavily influenced by the products and the built environment that surrounds them in their everyday lives. These “local models” provide students with a dominant source of education regarding perceived desirous qualities of design and, in the scope of our increasingly globalized design economy, this amounts to a largely ubiquitous landscape of designed objects and environments. For all of the benefits that globalization affords, there seem to be a decreasing number of exceptional design precedents readily available that elicit an appreciation for context enriched design outcomes and individuality. As the world has flattened, the conventional methods of beginning design education – methods that often rely solely on the introduction of formalist ideals that define universal design principles –require reassessment in their ability to adequately address the increasing need for contextual, culturally reflective design solutions.
In our increasingly globalized world, sustaining cultural identity in design has become a challen... more In our increasingly globalized world, sustaining cultural identity in design has become a challenge. While diversity is considered to be an attribute in the classroom, design education often relies on prescriptive and conventional approaches to the teaching of fundamental principles and skills that do not allow students to adequately express and develop their individual voices. The cultivation of a curriculum that nurtures cultural identities inclusive of student’s unique experiences, values, and aesthetic intentions is paramount to the task of instilling culturally sustainable and regionally conscientious design solutions in the future.
Pedagogically, a culturally sustainable design curriculum supports students in their exploration and discovery of the communicative potential of imagery, materiality, form, compositional arrangement, and making processes as they relate to their personal and cultural aesthetics and values. Students are urged to draw inspiration from internal sources as well as external sources, to think critically and conceptually, and to celebrate their regional histories and their individual values within the parameters of designated projects. While the appropriation of cultural symbols is a common initial response, beginning design students are urged to formulate unique imagery that reflects their identities within a current context; this formulation entails the development of new perspectives that often speak to the many ways in which cultures have been affected by globalism.
This paper demonstrates the successes achieved and considerations for improvement within the curriculum noted above as it was taught at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The curriculum is multidisciplinary in nature and encompasses first and second-year studio courses for a culturally diverse body of students pursuing undergraduate degrees in architecture, interior design, and visual communication.
Digital fabrication practices have allowed for a level of exactitude and precision unattainable b... more Digital fabrication practices have allowed for a level of exactitude and precision unattainable by the designer's hand. While the design community has benefited tremendously from developments in technology, certain qualities reflective of craft have been lost as a result of the overwhelming dependency on computer-based processes. In order to reinvigorate a sense of craftsmanship and personal expression in design, modalities
Innovations in higher education teaching and learning, May 27, 2020
Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challe... more Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challenge internationally. This chapter shares insights from a 2016 attempt to establish a first-year undergraduate Design course with an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability education. A series of video dialogues between university and community-based sustainability experts was created to enable students to access understandings and research evidence about sustainability issues and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, through different disciplinary lenses. The video dialogues provided students with opportunities to learn reflexively through exposure to differing visions for sustainable development, including Indigenous perspectives. In doing so, the video dialogues provide material for critical, creative, and iterative design thinking. Drawing on feedback from students enrolled in the course, this chapter offers reflections about enhancing course design through using video dialogues to support students’ critical openness to addressing sustainability concerns.
Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challe... more Interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability curriculum and pedagogy remain a particular challenge internationally. This chapter shares insights from a 2016 attempt to establish a first-year undergraduate Design course with an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability education. A series of video dialogues between university and community-based sustainability experts was created to enable students to access understandings and research evidence about sustainability issues and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, through different disciplinary lenses. The video dialogues provided students with opportunities to learn reflexively through exposure to differing visions for sustainable development, including Indigenous perspectives. In doing so, the video dialogues provide material for critical, creative, and iterative design thinking. Drawing on feedback from students enrolled in the course, this chapter offers reflections about enhancing course design through using vide...
As inhabitants of a rapidly evolving planet we are confronted with the impacts of change, includi... more As inhabitants of a rapidly evolving planet we are confronted with the impacts of change, including the intensification of natural disasters on the foreseeable horizon. With this awareness, our personal sense of vulnerability has increased and this, in turn, has exposed us to a uniquely contemporary breed of anxiety. As a pervasive condition, the growing apprehension experienced in the context of our precarious relationship within nature is understood to have potentially negative repercussions on our emotional well-being. While design works towards adapting to our contemporary ecological challenges, alternative approaches that prioritize the needs of our psychological condition require exploration. This paper outlines an inquiry into this subject, and introduces a case study that proposes the development of artefacts designed to foster psychological resilience in the context of pending disasters. Through rigorous engagement in practice-led research with the supportive application of...
Design educators have an enormous stake in the development of student’s identity as emerging desi... more Design educators have an enormous stake in the development of student’s identity as emerging designers. While beginning design entails a seemingly all-encompassing mission to introduce students to the fundamental principles, language, skills, and processes relative to design, and to prepare students to effectively negotiate the more complex issues that will inevitably arise through the progression of their education, it is at the start of a student’s academic career that they begin to cultivate an appreciation and an affinity for stylistic choices that, through a process of gradual evolution, define their design identities. However, academia is not solely responsible for the education of the design student. Their learning extends beyond the classroom where they are heavily influenced by the products and the built environment that surrounds them in their everyday lives. These “local models” provide students with a dominant source of education regarding perceived desirous qualities of design and, in the scope of our increasingly globalized design economy, this amounts to a largely ubiquitous landscape of designed objects and environments. For all of the benefits that globalization affords, there seem to be a decreasing number of exceptional design precedents readily available that elicit an appreciation for context enriched design outcomes and individuality. As the world has flattened, the conventional methods of beginning design education – methods that often rely solely on the introduction of formalist ideals that define universal design principles –require reassessment in their ability to adequately address the increasing need for contextual, culturally reflective design solutions.
In our increasingly globalized world, sustaining cultural identity in design has become a challen... more In our increasingly globalized world, sustaining cultural identity in design has become a challenge. While diversity is considered to be an attribute in the classroom, design education often relies on prescriptive and conventional approaches to the teaching of fundamental principles and skills that do not allow students to adequately express and develop their individual voices. The cultivation of a curriculum that nurtures cultural identities inclusive of student’s unique experiences, values, and aesthetic intentions is paramount to the task of instilling culturally sustainable and regionally conscientious design solutions in the future.
Pedagogically, a culturally sustainable design curriculum supports students in their exploration and discovery of the communicative potential of imagery, materiality, form, compositional arrangement, and making processes as they relate to their personal and cultural aesthetics and values. Students are urged to draw inspiration from internal sources as well as external sources, to think critically and conceptually, and to celebrate their regional histories and their individual values within the parameters of designated projects. While the appropriation of cultural symbols is a common initial response, beginning design students are urged to formulate unique imagery that reflects their identities within a current context; this formulation entails the development of new perspectives that often speak to the many ways in which cultures have been affected by globalism.
This paper demonstrates the successes achieved and considerations for improvement within the curriculum noted above as it was taught at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The curriculum is multidisciplinary in nature and encompasses first and second-year studio courses for a culturally diverse body of students pursuing undergraduate degrees in architecture, interior design, and visual communication.
Digital fabrication practices have allowed for a level of exactitude and precision unattainable b... more Digital fabrication practices have allowed for a level of exactitude and precision unattainable by the designer's hand. While the design community has benefited tremendously from developments in technology, certain qualities reflective of craft have been lost as a result of the overwhelming dependency on computer-based processes. In order to reinvigorate a sense of craftsmanship and personal expression in design, modalities
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Pedagogically, a culturally sustainable design curriculum supports students in their exploration and discovery of the communicative potential of imagery, materiality, form, compositional arrangement, and making processes as they relate to their personal and cultural aesthetics and values. Students are urged to draw inspiration from internal sources as well as external sources, to think critically and conceptually, and to celebrate their regional histories and their individual values within the parameters of designated projects. While the appropriation of cultural symbols is a common initial response, beginning design students are urged to formulate unique imagery that reflects their identities within a current context; this formulation entails the development of new perspectives that often speak to the many ways in which cultures have been affected by globalism.
This paper demonstrates the successes achieved and considerations for improvement within the curriculum noted above as it was taught at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The curriculum is multidisciplinary in nature and encompasses first and second-year studio courses for a culturally diverse body of students pursuing undergraduate degrees in architecture, interior design, and visual communication.
Pedagogically, a culturally sustainable design curriculum supports students in their exploration and discovery of the communicative potential of imagery, materiality, form, compositional arrangement, and making processes as they relate to their personal and cultural aesthetics and values. Students are urged to draw inspiration from internal sources as well as external sources, to think critically and conceptually, and to celebrate their regional histories and their individual values within the parameters of designated projects. While the appropriation of cultural symbols is a common initial response, beginning design students are urged to formulate unique imagery that reflects their identities within a current context; this formulation entails the development of new perspectives that often speak to the many ways in which cultures have been affected by globalism.
This paper demonstrates the successes achieved and considerations for improvement within the curriculum noted above as it was taught at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The curriculum is multidisciplinary in nature and encompasses first and second-year studio courses for a culturally diverse body of students pursuing undergraduate degrees in architecture, interior design, and visual communication.