Riding the New Wave: opportunities for innovation in design studio pedagogy

As the majority of UK HE institutions implemented a return to campus based delivery from Sept 2021 it was clear that some of the pragmatic approaches to teaching adopted through necessity over the previous two years due to covid19 restrictions held lasting value beyond crisis modes of teaching. Covid19 disrupted many established norms of design pedagogy, with the loss of the design studio as a focal point for engagement and learning on campus being a central challenge faced by many tutors.

As a signature pedagogy of design education, the studio provided an environment for mediated, sticky, social and habitual exchanges in supporting students learning. However, delivering teaching through an enforced period of separation from those environments proved that through adversity can come new insights. In this discussion we will reflect upon how the disruption to our established practices revealed a new wave of opportunities to consider in the development of what we knew as the design studio.

Futures of Design Education is a discussion series organised by the Design Research Society’s Education SIG. The series aims to raise awareness of the plurality of possible futures represented by our members and the wider design education community.

Anyone interested in design education is welcome to join these events. If anyone has any ideas for future presenters or topics then email derek.jone@open.ac.uk

You can find recordings of all past events here.

This brought together 16 articles from academics around the world to present articles, case studies and opinion pieces based on their experiences during the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020/21,

Over the next weeks we hope to feature some of the papers as blog posts.

But in the meantime, this post presents the Editorial text, which explored the themes that emerged from the articles. You can find the original Editorial and articles here.

Design Education: Teaching in Crisis 

Derek Jones, The Open University
Nicole Lotz, The Open University

It is very likely an understatement to look back and observe that the past year has been turbulent and uncertain. The Covid-19 pandemic forced changes in many areas across all parts of society and its effects continue today and will undoubtedly do so for many years to come.

In education the impacts were significant. Design education is usually taught in a design studio setting and relies heavily on physically proximate and social mechanisms of learning and teaching. Changes to proximate and physical modes of teaching had to be made at great speed, meaning the planning and preparation needed to successfully create learning materials was not possible. Contingency teaching methods and material quickly appeared and, for many, responding and reacting in what was effectively an emergency setting became the reality of teaching (Winters, 2021). 

There were exceptions, of course. Some institutions refused to abandon face to face methods: some on the basis of student expectation; others around beliefs about the purpose and politics of design education. Yet other institutions responded as they normally did, in the sense that emergency response teaching was already their way of working and the pandemic was just another disruption requiring an emergent teaching response.

Like privilege, the effects of the pandemic have not been evenly distributed.

For many design educators the shock of losing physically proximate and synchronous access to students removed what turned out to be a huge and taken for granted structural component of design pedagogy. This was more than a loss of space to teach or place to design; for some institutions it affected all aspects of the praxis and socio-complex that is studio based learning. Many educators quickly realised that the immediacy of constructivist, experiential and emergent learning in a co-located setting like studio cannot always be replaced immediately or simply in an online setting. Attempts to make up for the loss of spatial proximity with temporal (online) proximity didn’t seem to work as expected; orientation methods effective in studio, such as furniture layouts, activities and demonstrations, or informal breakout spaces etc., failed at a distance or were unable to be replaced easily. 

The single overarching lesson from emergency remote teaching has been that moving studio-based curricula online is a non-trivial exercise.

Distance Design Education

Of course, there are a few institutions already teaching at a distance and using online and blended methods. The Open University in the UK (OU) is one of these and has taught design remotely since its inception in the early 1970s. During this time it has developed many ways of approaching this mode of learning and teaching across a number of diverse subject domains, including design. 

It could be thought of as a relatively straightforward task to share this knowledge. But just as colleagues in traditional settings found, the full richness of praxis that exists in studio and the myriad of tacit and implicit knowledge it requires (regardless of mode) makes this a very difficult task. What is particularly hard to do is to simply transfer aspects of complexity and richness from traditional to online settings: what works in one may only do so depending on particular conditions in another, and these are not always obvious. 

The lesson for those of us already teaching at a distance was to realise just how much we, too, embody our own practice as tacit and implicit knowledge. Design is an inherently embodied practice where the unseen and hidden processes are just as important as the final proposal and this is just as true in design education. The unseen and hidden, the tacit and implicit, the informal and unplanned, all turned out to matter far more than anyone thought.

Making Visible

Making the unseen and hidden properties of design education visible was a key motivation behind this Special Issue. The changes caused by emergency remote teaching meant that assumptions made in traditional studio settings had to be abandoned; invisible things had to be made real and tangible at a distance, or left behind. This need to ‘make visible’ has arguably been the greatest challenge for educators.

Having said that, design educators had several advantages in this challenge, all of which are evidenced in this special issue. Firstly, designers are used to working with uncertainty, complexity and the vagaries of real world settings where no perfect plan or design exists. Looking at the articles it is clear just how adaptive some of the teaching responses have been but also how aware of these complexities design educators were. There are probably greater connections between design and teaching practice than some realise.

Secondly, using creativity as a way of thinking and approaching challenges – not simply as a way of coming up with ideas. Inherent in designerly creativity is a depth of creative thinking that does not stop at one or two post it notes but engages in thinking through, and often by iteratively implementing and testing, the underlying value being created.

Finally, all design education is inherently and deeply emergent and constructivist: it is dependent on circumstances and contexts that change what we do as designers as well as how we do things. No design process or outcome is ever fixed beforehand and, as noted above, teachers are most aware of this contingency in studio: 

“…something that works well one time may be ineffective another, and each new class is a very different experience.”

(Rowland, 2016, p. 229)

It is these ‘different experiences’ we hope to capture in this Special Issue.

The experiences during the pandemic have forced us all to talk about our teaching and learning in ways that we would not normally do. The learning and experience that has emerged from this is critical to capture to inform current and future practice. As we transition from the pandemic setting there are a number of key lessons worth taking on board, some of which reflect deep problems in current studio praxis. As Gray asks in the special, “…what are we willing to replace, and with what justification?”

To replace any encultured practice is difficult in any setting and, even though design is inherently constructivist, the habits and praxis we form around uncertainty can often be very rigid and fixed. Hence, being able to make informed and effective change is important, as well as being able to articulate and support such change in education settings that might not fully understand the modes of learning and teaching required for design education.

Here, then, are a few lessons drawn from the case studies and articles in this special issue. This is by no means a definitive list but it certainly gives us, as a community, a few things to to think about as we move forward.

Lessons Learned

You Can’t Just Translate the ‘Surfaces’ of One Mode to Another 

The first instinct of many educators was to replace spatial proximity (studio) with synchronous online proximity. This was only partially successful in that real proximities are the connections made between students, tutors, artefacts, and ideas. What has to be transferred is the value of the experience underlying the surfaces of space and time. There are numerous examples of failed attempts to simply move a traditional curriculum online or to force a hybrid version and assume that these will work. David O’Brien’s case study, On country – off country  provides a good example of how an existing paradigm (on country discussion) is used to overcome technical challenges, where it is the underlying value (the act of specific and intentional forms of dialogue) that matters far more than simply the surface communication. 

Similarly, David O’Brien’s case highlights the successful adaptation of emergent conversations in client-led projects on country to the more structured modes of online technologies by anticipating these conversations through simulations, and allowing conversations to emerge in nimble online presentations. 

Similarly Miikka Lehtonnen,  Noorin Khamisani, and Gionata Gatto argue in their article Playful absence / absence of play that studio can be created, regardless of mode, as an act of play. Specific actionable examples like this offer important lessons for anyone transitioning back to prior modes of teaching – it’s the underlying value that has always mattered far more than surfaces in studio.

Who Gets to Speak – Who Takes Part

Different students (and even tutors) speak in different modes of interaction and many educators have reported being surprised by which students have been active in distance and online settings. As Colin Gray observes in the article “Scaling Up” and Adapting to Crisis: Shifting a Residential UX Studio Program Online:

“…more voices could be “heard” through Post-Its than would have been possible in the physical studio with verbal questions.”

(Gray, 2021)

This matches findings in general distance education research and raises the uncomfortable fact that some voices have noft been prominent, or even present, in traditional studio settings in the past. Moving forward, it is not only important to make space for these ‘hidden’ voices once we return to ‘normal’, but to also ask what can we do to improve participation and representation for all voices in the studio? One example of a response to this is given in the case study “Here’s what we really want your class to be about!” from Lesley-Ann Noel, who explores and builds on the values that underpinned the work (relationality, community-centredness, and situatedness), to suggest transitions to alternative modes. Perhaps shifting attitudes to blending modes of studio will allow further responses to this question, helping it become a focused area of study and research over the coming years. 

Connections, Not Proximities, Matter Regardless of Mode of Teaching

This was one of the first lessons learned for many educators: without the orientation that studio and other norms afford, students had no immediate means of finding out where they were or where they needed to go. As Leigh-Anne Hepburn and Madeleine Borthwick observe in their case study, Synchronicity in the Online Design Studio: A Study of Two Cases, replicating even some of the synchronous and proximate signals and routines available in traditional studios, such as interactions and feedback between peers, can be a huge task in an online setting, and this is no less true in virtual studios designed to do this (Lotz et al., 2015, 2018). Similarly, the importance of interactions and praxis in a designer’s education identified by Virginie Tessier and Marie-Pier Aubrey-Boyer, in their article Turbulence in Crit Assessment: From the Design Workshop to Online Learning, has to be understood and provided in any and all modes of learning and teaching. This also highlights just how much ‘work’ studio has been doing – when it is lost, we lose far more than realised simply because the proximities we have relied on in traditional studios are far more than only spatial or temporal. And these can be replicated in other modes of studio if they are treated accordingly, such as visualising processes, establishing routines for communal working and fostering experimentation by giving learners ownership over shared online spaces, as outlined in the recommendations in the case study, From Sharing Screens to Sharing Spaces by Jon Spruce, Pete Thomas, and Sarah Moriarty.

Studio Depends on Habits of Practice – But Is Also Adaptable and Changeable

The results outlined in Katja Fleishmann’s article, Is the Design Studio Dead? – An International Perspective on the Changing Shape of the Physical Studio across Design Domains, demonstrates just how important studio remains to design educators as a core part of practice and teaching. But this study also demonstrated the subject domain’s ability to adapt and learn as shown in the significant shift in attitudes to blended modes of studio. This finding is extended in the case study, The ones who have never been physically in a studio, by Berrak Karaca-Salgamcioglu and İrem Genç, who demonstrate that the ‘myth’ of studio is also constituted (maintained and constructed) by students themselves, in this case hacking the studio to suit their needs. Both examples highlight the need to have better methods and approaches to research and scholarship across modes of studio learning, and, in particular, that moving beyond simplistic dualities of online vs offline, or face to face vs distance, can allow us to work with underlying patterns and values. In questioning the role of studio in Making the Studio Smaller, James Brown forces us to examine what it is that truly matters about studio and this is perhaps a more useful reflection point when considering adaption: not what we think matters, or what we’d like to matter, or even what we have relied on mattering historically. 

New Words to Describe and Conceptualise In-between Experiences 

We might need some new words (or better ones anyway) for concepts like hybrid; blended; synchronous; asynchronous; zoom fatigue; semi-synchronous learning and teaching. Even the phrase ‘face-to-face’ has been challenged – by students themselves – in terms of its underlying assumption. Being online does not mean a face is not present and this challenges what we assume ‘being present’ means in any setting. The value we give to different modes of learning and therefore the value we place on certain activities and actions, has to be questioned as we transition away from emergency teaching. ‘Being’ in studio means far more than simply a body located in space and time, as is clearly demonstrated in the examples of studio being in the article Everyday Routines and Material Practices in the Design Studio, by James Corazzo and Layla Gharib. The sub-title to this article, Why Informal Pedagogy Matters, highlights a critical lesson for all educators to take from the last year.

New Opportunities Beyond ‘Normal’ Boundaries

Several of the case studies present creative and innovative responses to the crisis. As some boundaries closed, yet others were made possible, such as collaborations between colleagues around the world. When you read examples such as the case study, Global Design Studio: Advancing Cross-Disciplinary Experiential Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic, by Shtial Desa, Ingrid Stahl, and Marianella Chamorro-Koc, what becomes clear is that we still have much to learn about international collaborations especially in terms of managing asynchronicity and local activity coordination. This is explored by Ibrahim Delen, Fatma Özüdoğru, and Burak Yavaş, in the article Designing During the Pandemic: Understanding Teachers’ Challenges in eTwinning Projects, and, in particular, how global working might be supported, sustained, and developed beyond an individual project by building interdisciplinary communities of practice and the challenges faced in achieving this. What we have as a community of design educators is a rare opportunity to reform the boundaries of participation, agency, emancipation and belonging to better respond to existing problems and challenges, such as representation and inclusion. Such opportunities not only explore who can design and where design might take place but, as with the examples in Noel and O’Brien, actively question the methods and structures of designing itself. 

We All Need Support

It can be difficult to be a design educator in emergency educational settings, particularly if you are also a practitioner. The reflective study, An Administrative and Faculty Autoethnographic Analysis of Shifting Modalities of Pre-service Technology Education Programming During the Onset of COVID-19, by David Gill and Thomas Kennedy examines the challenges in maintaining hands-on and constructivist education in contemporary education. Importantly, it recognises the extent to which many educators went in supporting students during the emergency teaching response, observing there is a limit to what can be done without tailored institutional, technical and collegiate support. A positive example of such support is provided by James Thompson, Kate Tregloan, Phillipa Soccio, and Huiseung Song in their case study, Dual Delivery Design Studios, which outlines the strategic and operational approaches they took to ensure a blend of different modes of course delivery to suit individual needs. This also highlighted the personal, professional and pastoral support we all needed as design educators, and another exemplar of collegiate practice through team teaching is given in the case study Teaching Design Thinking in a Research-Intensive University at a Time of Rapid Change, by Robert O’Toole and Bo Kelestyn, who also allude to how they maintained connections to the wider community beyond their institution. As we look forward, this community will become critical as we all make decisions about future curricula and, perhaps, come under another wave of pressure to change modes of design education for reasons that are not necessarily pedagogically motivated, for example in response to the Climate Change emergency.

Making Things Visible

Finally, and returning to one of the motivations for the special issue, it is clear that the transition has made a lot of things visible that previously have not been noticed (Jones, 2021). The issues faced by many of us may have felt like large problems: loss of studio, technology not working, lack of support. In online learning research the theory of learning hygiene argues that students rarely notice when things go well online but immediately notice when they go wrong. Each little ‘wrong’ thing contributes to an overall loss of confidence in material and an erosion in motivation and engagement. In distance design education this is a daily battle as technology, demographics and contexts shift. 

But perhaps we also need to recognise the inverse of this – the ‘little good things’ that contribute to quality design education hygiene and experiences. Whether these little things are obvious little things, such as dialogic methods that help “focus the architecture student’s attention towards the community’s voices and aspirations” (O’Brien), or hidden little things that “reminds you that you’re an art and design student” (Corazzo and Gahrib), they all matter; they all need to be recognised.

It may even be that the size of studio (Brown) is really a problem of scale, not volume – that the importance of studio lies in the quality of all the little things in a space, not the size of the space itself.

Acknowledgements

We thank all the reviewers who supported this Special Issue. We deliberately took a peer review approach to reflect the shared (and divergent) nature of the context design educators faced in 2020. In doing so, the nature of the peer review comments genuinely helped to further shape a real snapshot of practice, scholarship and thinking during this period. 

Thank you, too, to the Design and Technology Education Editorial team, Kay Stables and Lyndon Buck, for their frequent and flexible support. The journal remains an Open Journal, accessible to anyone, anywhere, and this is ‘paid for’ by their personal time, effort and passion. 

We would finally also acknowledge and thank the less visible contributors: the students, teachers, managers, publics, co-design partners, parents, wise people, communities, friends, family, that all allow us as researchers to write our material. Without them we would have blank paper. Thank you.

We are delighted to announce the publication of a Special Issue of the Journal of Design and Technology Education (DATE): Design Education: Teaching in Crisis

The Special Issue contains 16 articles, case studies and reflection pieces from a range of educators around the world. They share some important lessons and experiences from the past year, all worth considering as we transition to whatever new normal will be created.

You can read a summary of the articles in the editorial.

Over the next few months we hope to blog about some of articles to keep the discussions going about what we need to change in design education practices in response to the challenges and issues raised during the emergency teaching period.

At some point in 2022 we also hope to arrange an event to bring these discussion together again. Watch this space!

In the meantime, please have a look at the Special Issue – we know that there will be many things you might recognise from your own experiences in there! If you do, let us know (derek.jones@open.ac.uk)

Derek and Nicole
Guest Editors, DATE Special Issue: Design Education: Teaching in Crisis

SUBMISSION LINK: https://www.conftool.pro/drs2022/index.php?page=newPaper&form_contributiontypeID=86&newpaper=true 

CONFERENCE WEBSITE: https://www.drs2022.org/ 

FORMAT DETAILS: Articles of (5000 words). Template: https://www.drs2022.org/papers/  

CALL DETAILS:

A DRS PluriSIG and EdSIG joint track proposal. 

The effects of dominant curricula in design education are now being recognised in education practice and research, in particular global approaches to design education that demonstrate a displacing effect on other forms and modes of learning (Šobánnovái 2019; Al-Amri, 2019; Cornú, 2020). As we continue to face local and global challenges of unprecedented scale and complexity, disciplined-bounded design curricula demonstrate certain limitations in developing students’ needs for emerging contexts (Pontis and van der Waarde, 2020). 

These challenges force us to ask what the future of design education should be. This can be problematic since it is often only a trivial exercise of speculation (Swanson, 2020), and, critically, it avoids questioning how change to design education takes place (Noel, 2020). In particular, future speculation often misses the opportunity to recognise the plurality of current practices.

The Futures of Design Education discussion series started in 2021 to highlight and share the plurality of contemporary practices in design education and this call continues the invitation to explore alternative and diverse design education presents and futures. We particularly welcome articles that outline current practices and cases outside dominant paradigms of design education, as well as high-quality critical analyses exploring current and future thinking in design education, such as:

• Work adding to the contributions already made to the Futures of Design Education series by presenting current practice that would benefit from wider recognition 
• Critical studies and work work exploring design education past and present with a view to informing future practices
• Cases and reviews exploring structural, systemic, and/or wider scale changes to existing curricula or in response to contextual change
• Articles exploring particular directions or themes of inquiry to bring together contemporary thinking and critique, such as Where design education should take place? Who are the designers we are educating? 

Sub-chairs and reviewers:
Lesley-Ann Noel, North Carolina State University, USA
Renata Marques Leitao, Cornell University, USA
Derek Jones, The Open University (UK)
Nicole Lotz, The Open University (UK)
Liv Merete Nielsen, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
Ingvild Digranes, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway
Naz Börekçi, Middle East Technical University, Turkey

References

Al‐Amri, M. (2019) ‘Art and Design Education in the Middle East and North Africa: A Brief Historical Overview’, in The International Encyclopedia of Art and Design Education, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., pp. 1–8 [Online]. DOI: 10.1002/9781118978061.ead116 (Accessed 24 February 2020).

Cornú, L.(2020) (De)institution Design: decolonizing design discourse in Uruguay, in Leitão, R., Noel, L. and Murphy, L. (eds.), Pivot 2020: Designing a World of Many Centers – DRS Pluriversal Design SIG Conference, 4 June, held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.022

Noel, G. (2020) ‘We All Want High-Quality Design Education: But What Might That Mean?’, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, Design Education. Part I, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 5–12 [Online]. DOI: 10.1016/j.sheji.2020.02.003.

Pontis, S. and van der Waarde, K. (2020) ‘Looking for Alternatives: Challenging Assumptions in Design Education’, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, Design Education. Part II, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 228–253 [Online]. DOI: 10.1016/j.sheji.2020.05.005.

Šobáňová, P. (2019) ‘Czech Art Education through the Lens of Empirical Research’, in The International Encyclopedia of Art and Design Education, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., pp. 1–16 [Online]. DOI: 10.1002/9781118978061.ead054 (Accessed 24 February 2020).

Swanson, G. (2020) ‘Educating the Designer of 2025’, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, Design Education. Part I, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 101–105 [Online]. DOI: 10.1016/j.sheji.2020.01.001.

SUBMISSION LINK: https://www.conftool.pro/drs2022/index.php?page=newPaper&form_contributiontypeID=84&newpaper=true 

CONFERENCE WEBSITE: https://www.drs2022.org/ 

FORMAT DETAILS: Articles of (5000 words). Template: https://www.drs2022.org/papers/ 

CALL DETAILS:

The centrality of studio to design education has been challenged during the pandemic as educators have adopted distance and online learning and teaching methods (Marshalsey and Sclater, 2020). Change to studio practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the affordances of proximity (being near each other), synchronicity (happening at the same time), and presence (being with each other) have made visible and explicit many aspects of learning that were previously implicit and hidden (Jones, 2021). 

How do these aspects of studio, when made visible, enable us to re-describe, re-imagine, re-distribute, and revoke the necessary conditions for what constitutes, defines or bounds ‘studio’ in contemporary design education? Pragmatically, what should contribute to studio as a future learning environment?

What does this tell us about what matters with studio and what is the matter with studio? We invite you to ask—what matters? How does it matter?

This call for papers solicits work that explores the nature, makeup, properties and boundaries of contemporary studio learning and teaching in a diverse range of design education contexts. Potential contributions may include:

• Exploration of characteristics, properties and realities of the studio across multiple modes and conceptions;
• Consideration of structural or thematic aspects of studio, such as cultures, praxis, activity, contexts, etc., reviewing and critically exploring literature and concepts;
• Studies that describe alternative and non-traditional studios as related to discipline;
• The use of space and place in a studio context;
• The liminal boundaries of what it means for a learning environment to be called ‘studio’;
• Critical reviews of established literatures and theories of studio or studio pedagogy, with a view to informing future practices. 

Sub-chairs / Reviewers:
Derek Jones, The Open University (UK); DRS EdSIG Convenor
Colin M. Gray, Purdue University (USA)
Lorraine Marshalsey, University of South Australia (Australia)
Elizabeth Boling, Indiana University (USA)
Nicole Lotz, The Open University (UK); DRS EdSIG Convenor
James Corazzo, Sheffield Hallam University (UK)
James Benedict Brown, Umeå University (Sweden)

References

Beck, J. and Chiapello, L. (2018) ‘Schön’s intellectual legacy: A citation analysis of DRS publications (2010–2016)’, Design Studies, Elsevier, vol. 56, pp. 205–224 [Online]. DOI: 10.1016/j.destud.2017.10.005.

Boling, E., Schwier, R. A., Gray, C. M., Smith, K. M. and Campbell, K. (eds.) (2016) Studio Teaching in Higher Education: Selected Design Cases, 1st edn, New York, Routledge.

Jones, D. (2021) ‘Making little things visible’, Design and Technology Education: an International Journal, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 8–11.

Marshalsey, L. and Sclater, M. (2020) ‘Together but Apart: Creating and Supporting Online Learning Communities in an Era of Distributed Studio Education’, International Journal of Art & Design Education, vol. n/a, no. n/a [Online]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12331 (Accessed 15 December 2020).

Orr, S. and Shreeve, A. (2018) Art and design pedagogy in higher education: knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum, Routledge research in education, London ; New York, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Audio feedback helps bridge the gap between student and tutor by simply giving a (human) voice to the feedback, increasing your presence and reducing distance. Using your voice allows you to mediate your comments, inflect your thinking in what you say, as well as provide a critical human connection with your students.

A key to this recipe is the written feedback sheet – this is the blended part. Research shows that, whilst students prefer audio feedback, they may use it immediately (on receipt) to get a sense of the feedback but they can find it difficult to use at a later date (and retrospectively as they work). Having a summary sheet they can quickly refer to and make use of helps with this.

Ingredients

• Student work that can be assessed at a distance
• Good feedback practice and framework(s)
• Audio recording software
• Summary feedback pro-forma

Method

From our experience and research we have found that the following method works well to organise your feedback and make sure you do everything: Start with the assessment and written summary; move on to the audio feedback itself; package it all up with an overall summary.

Summary feedback sheet

1. Assess the student work as you normally would, using whatever frame / rubric / marking guide to support this. As you do, make a particular note of any critical issues that must be resolved urgently and that will require more attention than other, less important issues.
2. Complete the summary feedback sheet writing summary points that are short, relate to feedback, and give clear direction or actions that the student should take or might consider.
3. Make a note of any general or overriding design process issues (e.g. “Good overall creative design ideas; more time on working out detail was needed”)

(You can see an example of the feedback sheet we use at the bottom of this recipe)

Audio feedback

Your audio feedback should be based on the summary points from the

1. Record your audio feedback:
   • Have a starting phrase you use each time: “This is feedback on Project X, Phase Y for [STUDENT]. Hello [STUDENT], this was a good attempt at this stage…”
   • Keep the tone semi-formal: you should be informative and authoritative about those things you can be; you should ask questions and offer thoughts on things you don’t know about.
   • Make your thinking audible: audio that genuinely considers the student’s work will automatically sound more genuine. If you’re unsure about something, say so and explain how you decided to assess that.
   • It’s fine to include ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and all the other sounds that make us human (mostly…).
2. Your feedback comments should expand on the written summary points and should, where possible, follow the classic modified feedback pattern:
   1. State the expected (reference) level of work
   2. State the achieved level of work
   3. Outline the difference and what led to this
   4. Outline the changes necessary to affect this difference in future work (<this is the key one!)
3. Aim for audio feedback of around 3-5 minutes. As a rule of thumb, 1 minute = 1MB file size.

Overall Feedback Summary

• Check over your feedback and package it up.
• Return your feeback to student(s) with an overall written summary that captures the general feedback. Include in this feedforward – try to give students:
  • Two things to avoid doing in future or keep working on
  • Two things they could do more of
  • (Optional, depending on assessment type) Ask your students to respond to your feedback by asking any questions or summarising their own list of things they will do next.

Example written and summary feedback document:

Call for abstracts deadline: 28 February 2021
Full paper deadline: 30 April
Publication: June or October 2021 (dependant on submissions)
Guest Editors:
Derek Jones, The Open University (UK)
Nicole Lotz, The Open University (UK)

Alternative Studios: Design Education Changes in 2020 

2020 saw some of the most radical and rapid changes to design education in decades. In response to the Coronavirus global pandemic, moves from physical to distanced modes of education have challenged even the most experienced educators (Green et al., 2020). Design and especially studio-based education are still very much physically located events and practices and the removal of such central elements of teaching practice have inevitably led to difficulties, negative reactions and even, some would argue, responses of grief (Brown, 2020).

In this changing context there have also been many examples of positive change and outcomes: students who might not contribute in a traditional setting are finding their voices and new confidences; alternative ways of teaching have also inspired alternative ways of learning ; design educators have generally re-engaged with reflecting on how it is they teach design and, especially, how their students experience learning. But the pedagogical consequences and boundaries of online and distance education are still not well understood (Jones, 2020; Marshalsey and Sclater, 2020).

Of course, not all institutions have experienced the same disruption. The effects of the last year have not been distributed evenly globally, economically, or socially. In some contexts, the business of dealing with crisis is a regular part of education curricula; in others, the disruption has led to near-collapse of teaching programs. Some of the divisions and dualities that have emerged are perhaps unhelpful: when presented as an ‘either-or’ of physical versus online, for example, we frame our inquiries and understandings in a similar way and fail to look beyond the duality into underlying causes and matters (Hodges et al., 2020).

What has started to emerge in some research is a recognition of the underlying properties and affordances of design education independent of mode of learning. The circumstances of 2020 have offered a unique and invaluable insight to what really matters in design education. The overriding aim of this Special Issue is to offer the design education community a chance to reflect and record what has been an exceptional event.

We seek scholarship and research that responds to the changes that have taken place in design education in 2020. Case studies are welcome but these should be more than descriptive reporting and contain, for example, some theoretical, critical, or reflective aspect to the work. The following outline questions are presented as potential starting points but work that develops other lines of inquiry, or critical reflection, are welcome.

• What have we learned from 2020? What does it say about the past state of design education? How will this inform future thinking and teaching practice(s)?
• Or has the pandemic simply reinforced existing and historical practices of design education? Has anything really changed in our institutional perspectives? Or have we simply taken existing practices into different modes without really asking about their suitability?
• What have been the real challenges and problems; the underlying issues? What have been the emergent benefits? Have the benefits and problems been ‘evenly distributed’?
• What changes have taken place in education contexts, beyond only curricular or institutional impacts? What socio-cultural shifts, if any, have emerged? Have students’ attitudes, expectations, and hopes changed?
• What has changed in the last year that will not go back? What have we learned that has given us cause to change? What has been changed in this way and why? What might it suggest of other aspects of design education?

Call for abstracts / Call for Papers

Call for abstracts deadline: 28 February 2021
Full paper deadline: 30 April
Publication: June or October 2021 (dependant on submissions)

This an open call for abstracts and full papers.

The Call for Abstracts is for anyone wishing to test an idea or to get early feedback on a paper proposal. Abstracts should be not more than 200 words and submitted directly to the Guest Editors (derek.jones@open.ac.uk) by 28 February 2021. 

If you intend to submit a paper but not an abstract then please let us know (derek.jones@open.ac.uk).

The general Call for Papers is for the following types of work:

• Articles: (6000 words) reporting research, results and analysis, including critical theory and reflective pieces.
• Case studies: (4000 words) reporting and describing specific cases and activities with suitable reflective scholarship.
• Opinion and reflective pieces: (2-4000 words) reporting well-considered reflection and ideas arising from events of the past year.

Full papers should be submitted using the DTEIJ Journal website: https://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/DATE/about/submissions

References

Brown, J. B. (2020) ‘From denial to acceptance: a turning point for design studio in architecture education’, Distance Design Education [Online]. Available at https://distancedesigneducation.com/2020/05/11/from-denial-to-acceptance-a-turning-point-for-design-studio-in-architecture-education/ (Accessed 10 December 2020).

Green, J. K., Burrow, M. S. and Carvalho, L. (2020) ‘Designing for Transition: Supporting Teachers and Students Cope with Emergency Remote Education’, Postdigital Science and Education, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 906–922 [Online]. DOI: 10.1007/s42438-020-00185-6.

Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T. and Bond, A. (2020) The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning [Online]. Available at https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning (Accessed 15 December 2020).

Jones, D. (2020) ‘Creating Distance Design Courses’, [Online]. Available at https://distancedesigneducation.com/creating-distance-design-courses/

Marshalsey, L. and Sclater, M. (2020) ‘Together but Apart: Creating and Supporting Online Learning Communities in an Era of Distributed Studio Education’, International Journal of Art & Design Education, vol. n/a, no. n/a [Online]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12331 (Accessed 15 December 2020).

Distance Design Education Meetup 8 sought to expand Till’s claim by questioning the appropriateness of the one-to-one, Master and Apprentice model of desk crits. Numerous design education researchers (Goldschmidt, Webster, and maybe even yourself!) have recognised the shortcomings of such siloed reviews.

Yet, little has been expounded on how alternative mechanisms and pedagogical frameworks can be utilised in our formative design studios. Ping presented a concise history of architectural education from the medieval job sites, the Beaux-Arts on to the Bauhaus and ultimately to the Unit Systems of UK’s Architectural Association in questioning the relevancies of such siloed teaching practices predicated on authoritative Master and Apprentice pedagogy. He also shared some of the mechanisms and the outcomes of an alternative non-hierarchical studio pedagogy framework used in Singapore Polytechnic, that oscillates between the baggage of traditions and the precarious jobscapes of the future. 

Catch the recording below and If you might have some thoughts, Zhengping Liow can be contacted on Twitter – https://twitter.com/zhengpingliow and his works can be found on https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zhengping_Liow. 

The meetup notes are here and you can watch the recording below:

The presentation was based on the work presented in the article BEL+T designs a DIAgram … a relational framework for teaching online, outlining both the vision of the team as well as the tactics they used to support change in practice and thinking about supporting student learning.

Well worth a watch and the full recording is here:

The next Meetup will be on 27 October 2020, Atlantic Time (ics file), when Robert O’Toole will talk about Warwick University’s move to online and distance learning using online design tools.

See you then!