_i exist by implication_

The way the semester’s work was structured, we worked on smaller segmented explorations which lead to the final piece of interaction leading to learning. Depending on how we worked during the semester, we each ended with a complete project or with various smaller projects. In my case, I redesigned the earlier explorations to make them fit under the same umbrella. I realize that it is hard to understand what I did without undergoing the user interactions, but here I made some screenshots of the overall system which show the general aesthetics and parts.

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After spending some time with the community and the information derived from the concept map, it was the moment to understand how to define an exchange of information between some of the members. This insight lead to a crucial part of the semester’s design work.

Concept Map of Play by Hugh Dubberly.

My concept map of undergraduate students engaged in software learning.

As each of us began to research into our chosen communities, Meredith and Amber introduced us to concept mapping. We read Joseph Novak, D. Bob Gowin and Hugh Dubberly, all proponents of using this strategy as a mean to create understanding between members engaged in performing a common task.

In order to carry out the projects of the semester, we were advised to select a group or community with which we would want to work all semester long. Since I am currently a co-instructor at the sophomore level of the undergraduate program, I am particularly interested in the student’s software learning curve. Illustrated here is the charter that I devised after spending some time trying to understand this group. I found it interesting that one could look at the group solely based on the physical interactions between the members or take their online interactions into account and experience a completely different audience.

This semester is about learning communities. It’s about using interaction to bring together a group of people performing a common task.

To kick start the creative insights and interactive explorations, Meredith invited the design anthropologist Elizabeth —Dori— Tunstall to make a presentation on her work on communitas. As part of her visit, we had to select an online community that we thought could be analyzed thru the lens of the various aspects of what makes up a communitas: historical consciousness, life goals, organizational structure, agency and relationships. I chose facebook, and what follows is my study of some of the key features which bring the community together.

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This semester is different, quantitatively different. The 5 month experience of spending every class with 11 other points of view now mutates into a 6 person interactive boot camp with Meredith Davis and Amber Howard as our drill sergeants. As the first activity of our new found family, we had to clean the room and rearrange the furniture. This was our initial render of what the room should come to. We tried it for a few weeks and then decided to change it again. Santiago then came to the rescue with a new whiteboard to help us in our creative transition into the world of interaction and learning communities.
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The current undergraduate graphic design curriculum at the College of Design, like others in the country, introduces its students to the field through a fundamental year of art, form, rules, exploration, and little or basic software use. As the pedagogical experience progresses into sophomore year, students move, within the timeframe of 2 months, from custom methodological ways of working within a handmade environment into an automatized, software dependent sterile digital scenario.

Design concepts are still explored through the making of artifacts, yet this very process now relies on the manipulation of software tools for their very execution. Previous experience on creative software platforms shapes many of the student’s individual experiences, some having an easier time than others. No matter the case, the commonality between all levels of expertise becomes them having to learn it.

Learning software moves to the forefront of the student’s interests. Pressure is exerted on the professors to teach the various platforms required for successful execution. Teaching strategies, ranging from in-class demos, to online tutorials, and even reference books, become a hindrance to the students, while one-to-one gesture based exchanges between them seem to provide a more stable source of growth and understanding. How can online digital tools help with this learning process? Could such tools offer a possible platform for pedagogical reinterpretation? Would a grassroots approach to software instruction lead to a flourishing of its understanding?

The last few months I’ve working around these issues. All of my projects have concentrated around the struggles of sophomore graphic design students at the College of Design as they experience the initial steps of learning software. Community, values, needs and outcomes have been studied, tested… and hopefully address. As final review gets near, now its time to polish the projects into presentable shape. More to come…

What the point of having a blog if I am not going to post on it? Furthermore, what is the point of researching blogs and not embracing my own?

I know. I’ve been bad. I have no excuse, other than to say that the semester has been a busy one. Final review is already near (3 weeks down the road) and preparations for it have already begun.

Click image for high resolution.

I’ve began mapping back the work done so that I can prepare for the final event (which will become bearable if denise brings donuts ;)

Soon detailed posts of my work in the past few months will come.

ps. Marty… I promise to get this on the road again :)

It’s here, the end of the semester is here. Contrary to undergraduate times, (when this was a time of exams, final projects and memorization as premonition of Christmas partying) graduate school’s end of semester calls out for (and brings about) reflection, introspection and self-evaluation.

Interestingly enough, I find myself in a sort of academic déjá vu.
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It is 32 MB. Please be patient. It’s worth the wait.

Project
The best way to shape the future is to…

Created for
Option Shift Control Symposium
North Carolina State University
College of Design

Executed by
Gretchen Rinnert, Bryan Rinnert, Marty Lane, Alberto Rigau

November 30th 2007