The revisioning of ‘old normal’ face-to-face design education in an online environment in a short timeframe is a very wicked problem indeed. In our Faculty, ‘design’ has influenced the modes, the conceptualisation and the foci of this shift over the past semester, and our preparations for the next. 

This post has been prepared by members of the Built Environments Learning and Teaching (BEL+T) group at the University of Melbourne (UoM). In it, we unpack a relational framework for moving design learning and teaching online through a sequential presentation of our Guidance for Moving Online resources and described by our DIAgram. We outline how this approach has been applied in an Australian university context, and ask what it may offer other contexts. It may be useful to consider this post alongside DDE’s Creating Distance Design Courses guide available here, which provides a valuable and complementary approach.  

Institutional Context  

The BEL+T group, within the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP) is an academic group focussed on the sustained improvement of educational outcomes for built environment disciplines. BEL+T conducts research and consults with teaching staff in BE disciplines to this end.  We are also very lucky to draw on group members’ design expertise while responding to the changes of context experienced this year. 

ABP offered few online learning options until March of 2020. Fortunate to be located on a beautiful and historic campus, and to have access to workshops and contemporary making technologies, and to new studio spaces, the focus of design education was ‘hands on’ and ‘face-to-face’. Suddenly driven from the campus by COVID-19 and impacted by isolation and social distancing, we needed to develop ways to understand, communicate and inform new needs and approaches to this new world. This was made more complex as the same semester marked the introduction of a new LMS for the institution, challenging staff with a less familiar online environment, and further raising the difficulty level. In response, we developed and shared an initial framework on the BEL+T pages in the five-day space between the office and working from home(!). We looked for advice that would support teachers to deliver subject content, support interaction, and effectively assess online.  

We simplified some of the complexity we encountered in order to communicate to teachers in those early days. Over time, early dualisms comparing synchronous and asynchronous approaches were enriched by global discussions and shared publications (including DDE blog posts), as well as local testing and development, to enrich our understandings as well as their representations. As an action-tested consensus began to emerge around effective delivery methods for the built environment and design disciplines in our Faculty, more complex and nuanced questions arrived: How can I make online learning experiences more engaging? and I’m worried about my students being disconnected from each other and our faculty – What can I do?

As we prepared to support a (more) planned—but still surprising— second online semester, we needed to draw together what we had learned from the Faculty’s initial move to online teaching and learning, and to translate this across multiple cohorts and programs. We needed a diagram and the ‘spatialization of a selective abstraction’ (Garcia, 2010: p.18) it offered, and to use the development and application of this tool to help make sense of the new world, to guide our actions and to evaluate their impact. The DIAgram that we designed represents the elements, influences, aims and mechanisms we identified, and continues to challenge us to consider its application for the specifics of subject area, cohort and learning aims.

Learning Engagement and Belonging : Foundational Aims  

In our development of the DIAgram and the conceptual framework it represents, some foundational aims for good learning experiences, wherever they take place, remained crucial foci. These are Learning Engagement and Belonging. The significance of these is indicated by their central location in the DIAgram’s design. These foundational aims guided our daily discussions by reminding us and others that ‘what we are designing is not a product: it is the experience of that product and how that engages learning’ (Jones, 2020: p. 11).

A key prerequisite for academic achievement lies in students’ engagement with learning experiences, i.e. Learning Engagement (Kahu, 2013; van Uden et al., 2014), and the intellectual and/or emotional forms this may take (Macey and Schneider, 2008). This remains true in online environments, where ‘cognitive presence’ has been linked to academic performance (Galikyan & Admiraal, 2019). The close relationship between learning engagement, retention and motivation has been identified, and motivation highlighted as an ‘essential element to engage learners and thereby enhance students’ learning experiences’ (Gedera et al, 2015). In design, the intersection between project development and intrinsic motivation is described as ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996), a linking of aim and process through these design and design learning experiences. As such, rich, personal and effective engagement with ‘learning’ as a broad activity has great overlap with an individual design student’s learning, the possibilities of a given design challenge, and the navigation of these through design practices.

Belonging refers to the attachment, reciprocity and mutual support that students feel towards various scales of community, including to their peers, teachers, institution, profession, etc. As a key contributor to a student’s overall wellbeing and ability to learn, a sense of belonging and social integration has been shown to be vital to a successful educational experience (see Baik et al., 2017; Baik et al., 2019). As the significance of connectedness is increasingly recognised, academic roles are expanding to accommodate newer expectations for pastoral care and its relationship to learning and the student experience (Laws & Fielder, 2012).

In professional disciplines, Belonging is one of the fundamental dimensions comprising occupational engagement and the development of occupational identities (Wilcock, 1999). This helps explain why the notion of ‘studio culture’ is considered inseparable from design pedagogy: ‘[S]tudio culture is meant to engender a sense of belonging among students— a feeling that they are not alone in their struggles— and between students and tutors’(Thompson, 2019: p. 22). Furthermore, ‘students use the studio as a vehicle for developing a sense of belonging to the architectural community’ (Koch et al., 2002). In the shift away from a shared physical learning environment, the move online has prompted staff to implement creative ways of fostering a sense of belonging whilst providing support across members of studio cohorts and the wider university community. It is important to remember that, ‘Studio is far more than a physical space, and it is the non- (or meta-) physical aspects of it that are worth focusing on when designing online and distance learning: the cultural, professional, personal, social, affective, etc.’ (Jones, 2020: p. 49).

We should note that Learning Engagement and Belonging, as foundational and central aims in the DIAgram, should be understood as relational concepts in the spirit of John Dewey and feminist philosophies (see Bleazby, 2013). In other words, engagement should not be conceived in service of a sense of belonging any more than we should strive to foster a sense of belonging merely to achieve learning engagement. The first, central layer of the DIAgram reflects these foundational concepts.

Delivery + Interaction + Assessment 

Designing the second layer of the diagram identified a useful guide for decision-making during the 2020 COVID-19 move online. A triad of challenges for online teaching by ABP staff emerged during the move to this new environment: Delivery + Interaction + Assessment. Few academic staff of the Faculty had significant experience with teaching online. The natural tendency was for teachers to seek to replicate face-to-face practices via the virtual campus and to look for tools to do that most directly. We developed this triad model to challenge that tendency, opening initial discussions of tools and approaches to delivery, whilst integrating discussion of interaction and assessment activities. The model was initially presented in March 2020 through the BEL+T website to deliver tools for synchronous and asynchronous approaches to these activities. Subject consultations, and other global conversations, extended the approach to explore how these three factors interrelate to support and connect to the foundational aims above.

Presenting Delivery + Interaction + Assessment as an interrelated framework rather than independent parts helped to extend early lessons and developing practices, as we prepared for an anticipated (second) online semester. The intersecting representation through the DIAgram drew on early learning about changing expectations of time-planning across the week: from the relocation of a small number of ‘normal’ timetabled sessions in a Zoom environment, to more sophisticated consideration of activities and engagement that we described as a student-focused ‘workflow’ model, using the language of construction. In the DIAgram the elements are therefore overlapping, influencing and informing each other.

The term delivery refers to the learning ‘objects’ that teachers share with students. This element is represented as a ‘container’ of independent items. These might include video presentations, readings or references, studio project briefs and subject information or instructions. For many academics, Delivery of content to students was a primary early concern: How can I deliver my lectures? How can I post readings? (How) will students have access to physical sites or facilities for this subject? The DIAgram proved a useful tool to communicate that, although it may be an early concern and an easy focus for those newly ‘alone’ behind a computer screen, disseminating content to students is not an isolated or sufficient activity. Designing the links between these objects and their use online for student learning needed specific focus in the move online, and pairing delivered content and interactive activity was central to considering an overall assessment scheme. Delivery activity also aligned with the leadership or guidance role for teachers when the class was newly distributed; a brief message to students for an upcoming tutorial, whilst seemingly mundane, serves an essential role in this framework. This approach does stress, however, that delivery holds no inherent value as a teaching and learning activity. In an online space, this challenges some habits of a conventional, teacher-centred approach.

Interaction identifies the crucial opportunities for students to engage and connect with one another and/or their teachers. The DIAgram represents this as stylised figures in a circular connected group. In practice, academics explored Canvas discussion boards or Zoom meetings, and also cloud-based platforms for collaborative design projects or reviews.  We distinguish between Learning Engagement which can involve students interacting with learning objects and activities, and Interaction as a human-to-human exchange of ideas or co-production of artifacts. There are two primary reasons for focusing on student-to-teacher and student-to-student interaction—relating both to Learning Engagement and Belonging. Our disciplines, whether explicitly stated in learning outcomes or not, are heavily dependent on collaborative experiences for professional development. In other words, learning to become a built environment professional is not something that happens through independent scholarship but also involves enculturation into professional, industry-specific and student communities and their discourses, behaviours and structures (Gilbuena et al., 2015). It has been suggested that design studio offers both ‘the primary space where students explore their creative skills that are so prized by the profession’ and ‘the kiln where future…designers are molded’ (Salama & Wilkinson, 2007: p. 5). Interaction across the cohort in studio, therefore, becomes central to both the student experience and to professional development.

The third element of the DIA triad, assessment, also called for a review of ‘normal’ practices in the move to an online environment. Of course, this is an area in which institutional processes and requirements influence what, how and when students might undertake assessable activities and receive feedback for learning, thereby introducing further complexity as the shift online in Australia occurred mid-semester. The intersection of Assessment decisions across the realms of ‘policy, design and judgement’ (Bearman et al., 2016: p.7) called for clear communications and frequent updates, achieved via the BEL+T website, regarding institutional changes, tool availability and use, and disciplinary values and cultures. These complexities were nowhere more challenging than in design disciplines, in which the nature of studio learning and the centrality of the final ‘design crit’ performance was of great concern—not only to consider the quality of a design proposal but as a format for students to learn some of the elements of professional performance and collaborative creativity (Tucker & Beynon, 2012). Suggested platforms and processes, including synchronous and asynchronous elements, as well as the capacity to simultaneously review a submission and critically evaluate it against a student’s claims, were all important. Considering other ways that ‘low stakes’ assessment could be incorporated within a program aimed to minimise student stresses and technology demands. The multiple paths of the Assessment element in the DIAgram indicates the importance of aligned assessment actions in students’ learning experiences.

Organisation : enabling operator 

The final element of the DIAgram, Organised, refers to the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work required to coordinate and curate meaningful learning experiences for students. Effective organisation has been identified by both students and teachers as an essential foundation for valuable and meaningful learning experiences (Zehner et al., 2010), and the reduction of student attrition (Naylor et al., 2018). Again, the ultimate objective of a teacher’s organisational efforts is to enable Learning Engagement and sense of Belonging through the effective interrelation of Delivery + Interaction + Assessment activities. Our own review of student evaluations, prior to 2020, found high levels of satisfaction in subjects with strong organisational foundations, leading to a set of Tactics for Coordination that highlight the value of constructively aligned activities and assessments, clear and consistent lines of communication, and overt logistical preparations.

Organised subject delivery, particularly online, could be understood as approaching the task ‘as a designer’ as opposed to an improvisor or a dictator. Whilst those who teach design may defend some pedagogical obscurity on the basis that the nature of design learning demands ‘trust’ and ‘tolerates, even revels in, ambiguity’ (Ochsner, 2000), we suggest this conflates the design process itself with its pedagogical context. Teaching design at a distance demands organising principles that target the invisible and uncertain nature of design. Jones’ (2020: pp. 44-46) suggestion of ‘chunking’ activities in assessment deliverables, such as concept maps or reflective journals, offers a specific and applicable example. 

Closing Thoughts 

What might this approach and DIAgram offer to others? Like any diagram, it aims to serve multiple functions—descriptive, analytical and propositional. First, it encapsulates what we have found to be an effective conceptualisation and approach to this wicked challenge. We have found it holistic enough to capture the range of technological and pedagogical concerns arising in the move to an online learning environment, while introducing these dimensions into a productive dialogue of shared foundational aims. Importantly however, as a guiding framework, it provides flexibility rather than prescription. It specifies no scale, no time and no age group. In this way, we trust it offers value to other institutional and geographic contexts, and we hope its adaptation through further testing and development might result in newer emergent approaches.

We welcome you to visit the BEL+T Guidance for Moving Online pages where we regularly update teacher-facing content informed by this work. We also invite your feedback on our framework and DIAgram in the comments section below. We are looking forward to your thoughts!

Contact us at: [email protected]  

Find us at: msd.unimelb.edu.au/belt  

REFERENCES 

Baik, C., Larcombe, W., & Brooker, A. (2019). How universities can enhance student mental wellbeing: the student perspective. Higher Education Research & Development, 38(4), 674-687.

Baik, C., Larcombe, W., Brooker, A., Wyn, J., Allen, L., Field, R., . . . James, R. (2017). Enhancing Student Mental Wellbeing: A Handbook for Academic Educators. The University of Melbourne: Australia.

Bearman, M., Dawson, P., Boud, D.J., Bennett, S., Hall, M.,and Molloy, E.K., (2016). Support for assessment practice: developing the Assessment Design Decisions Framework. Faculty of Social Sciences – Papers. 2378. Open access https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/2378

Bleazby, J. (2013). Social reconstruction learning: dualism, Dewey and philosophy in schools. Routledge.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.Galikyan, I. & Admiraal, W. (2019). Students’ engagement in asynchronous online discussion: The relationship between cognitive presence, learner prominence, and academic performance. The Internet and Higher Education, 43.

Garcia, M. ed (2010). The Diagrams of Architecture. John Wiley & Sons: West Sussex, UK.

Gedera, D., Williams, J., & Wright, N. (2015). Identifying Factors Influencing Students’ Motivation and Engagement in Online Courses. In C. Koh (Ed.), Motivation, Leadership and Curriculum Design: Engaging the Net Generation and 21st Century Learners. Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-230-2_2

Gilbuena, D. M., Sherrett, B. U., Gummer, E. S., Champagne, A. B., & Koretsky, M. D. (2015). Feedback on Professional Skills as Enculturation into Communities of Practice. Journal of Engineering Education, 104(1), 7–34. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20061

Jones, D. (2020). Creating Distance Design Courses: A guide for educators, Distance Design Education blog: https://distancedesigneducation.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/cddc_guide_0-9.pdf

Kahu, E. R. (2013). Framing Student Engagement in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education, 38(5), 758-773.

Koch, A., Schwennsen, K., Dutton, T. A., & Smith, D. (2002). The Redesign of Studio Culture: A report of the AIAS Studio Culture Task Force. Washington, DC: American Institute of Architecture Students.

Laws, T.A. & Fielder, B.A. (2012). Universities’ Expectations of Pastoral Care: Trends, stressors, resource gaps and support needs for teaching staff. Nurse Education Today, 32, 796-802.

Naylor, R., Baik, C., & Arkoudis, S. (2018). Identifying Attrition Risk Based on the First Year Experience. Higher Education Research & Development, 37(2), 328-342.

Ochsner, J. K. (2000). Behind the Mask: A psychoanalytic perspective on interaction in the design studio. Journal of Architectural Education, 53(4), 194– 206.

Salama, A. M., & Wilkinson, N. (2007). Legacies for the Future of Design Studio Pedagogy. In A. M. Salama & N. Wilkinson (Eds.), Design Studio Pedagogy: Horizons for the future. Gateshead: The Urban International Press.

Thompson, J. (2019). Narratives of Architectural Education: From student to architect. Routledge: Abingdon, UK.

Tucker, R., & Beynon, D. (2012). Crit Panel. In Askland, H.H., Ostwald, M.J., & Williams, A. (Eds.) Assessing Creativity, Supporting Learning in Architecture and Design (pp 133 – 156). Sydney: Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT).

van Uden, J. M., Ritzen, H., Allen, K. (2014). Engaging Students: The role of teacher beliefs and interpersonal teacher behaviour in fostering student engagement in vocational education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 37, 21-32.

Wilcock, A. A. (1999). Reflections on Doing, Being and Becoming. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 46(1), 1– 11.

Zehner, R., Forsyth, G., de la Harpe, B., Peterson, F., Musgrave, E., Neale, D., Watson, K. (2010). Optimising studio outcomes: Guidelines for curriculum development from the Australian studio teaching project. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Design Education, Sydney.

In this article I would like to discuss a few of these and reflect on particular experiences from distance learning that can be helpful in countering such deficits.

I’m sure you’ve experienced this too in these strange days – Staff and students are doubly tired:

First, the amount of video conferencing has become routine in this digital summer semester.

Further, the cognitive level, which is important in design, is suffering from this strain.

How can we, as teachers, react to this situation? What historical design references can we draw on to teach design today in a sophisticated and virtual manner?

These are two key questions, the first of which I would like to explore in greater depth from a practical teaching perspective. The second question is certainly also interesting but not necessarily to be answered in the current article. Nevertheless, I would like to start with it and hope that others may contribute.

Almost 100 years ago (in the winter semester of 1919/1920, to be exact), Johannes Itten had already envisaged three dimensions in his didactics: the sensual-experiential, objectifying, and formative study. Within the Bauhaus, the learning discourse moved between these three poles until the dissolution of the university (Buchholz et al. 2007, pp. 70-73).

This early framework of Johannes Itten’s work highlights the intertwining of intellectual, emotional aesthetic, and spiritual development. Each was intended as mutual conditions necessary to the practice of design and its teaching.

Owing to an increase in instrumentalization and even commoditisation of higher education since the 1970’s onwards, we have either lost, or had to fight to retain, the sensual-experiential element in schools and universities. In Itten’s teaching, for example, it was an important ritual to do gymnastics with the students as part of a holistic curriculum, not a separate subject to be studied in isolation.

In philosophy, a similar move to understanding the world as fully experienced emerged in Phenomenology, challenging the separation of thought and experience. It was arguably Merleau-Ponty who emphasised the need to see aspects of being as fully embodied and not independent of one another: the importance of wholeness of mind, soul, and body (cf. Waldenfels 2002, p. 174). We read the physical, sensually experienced subject in a concrete and spatial situation as the reference point of the process of cognition:

One should turn to the things themselves. Not constructs and models. Otherwise, you no longer have a body-phenomenology that allows this world to emerge anew in the senses […] and has a ‘strong’ concept of experience: there is nothing ‘given’ [in the sense of ‘data’]; [experience is] not only data, but experience is a process in which the experienced person changes and the world changes as well.

Metzger 2005, 4:00-6:00, emphasis and additions in the sense of readability A. L.

These two positions confirm that a person is far more than their intellect alone: certainly more than language. However, if we think of a classical digital lecture, we have exactly this. It is through language alone—not least through the inevitable monologs of teachers—that we act in digital lectures. Thus, we forget that ‘bodies also hang’ on the digitally connected intellects, to paraphrase Merleau-Ponty.

But, in this working note, I am not only interested in integrating additional gymnastics – in reconciling the mind and body. The spirit of a person is critical too and this is where language gets in the way a bit.

In German, the word ‘leib’ means ‘more than body’, a slightly tricky concept to properly convey through literal translation. The cultural connotations of the word ‘spirit’ have already been debated editorially!). But there is an importance and value to considering matters beyond only an intersection of mind and body.

There is no need to invoke magic or other epiphenomenal matters – consider this as a cognitive phenomena, process or entity: our thinking systems (brain, cognitive structures, central nervous system, all of it). We use this whole system to think, learn and (of course) to design. It’s a complex system.

But how often do we talk about it? How often do we tell students that thinking like a designer uses a lot of your body’s energy (20-40%)? And that this is often distributed across multiple cognitive areas and systems in our minds (a different type of fatigue)? Or that learning is actually a process of physically changing your mind (another type of fatigue)? Or that mental health is cognitive health, inseparable from the rest of you?

Better mental health and wellbeing leads to better designers.

I propose that we aim to instil, encourage and foster: deeper thinking and acting in design projects that makes use of our fully embodied thinking ‘systems’ – whilst at the same time recognising the importance of looking after and caring for these same systems.

This approach should be extended to all curricular areas and made explicit in each. This recognition of holistic embodiment (mind, body, spirit) and the constellation should drive us—design teachers—to do justice in this almost pastoral responsibility.

I would like to end the working note with some practical examples an suggestions:

• Let us explicitly and programmatically take up the current discussions about yoga, meditation, forest bathing, and other techniques of embodied cognitive self-care. I have had good experience with letting students do a warm-up themselves before the lecture. These can be small exercises in progressive muscle relaxation or very specific yoga exercises. These introductory exercises help us to switch from our family or professional environment to an online lecture. Of course you can’t do this spontaneously, but it is possible to set this task as a kind of homework and then prepare individual volunteers in a private conversation.
• Let us place the everyday practises of our students in a professional framework of digital design creation. The well-established project diary can help to shed light on this increasingly important intellectual aspect of creative work. Talk actively with the students about the emotional challenges of motivation that are necessary in this peculiar semester. Make it a criterion in the project diary so that students can exchange ideas about it. The protected space of a lecture is predestined for conversations like these.
• Let us invent formats that have a personality-building effect, ‘despite’ the digital summer semester. Remember why you became a teacher? We want to accompany people on an artistic path. On this path there is a lot to see right and left, which often makes a straight path impossible. Don’t you also think that online teachers often come out too straight on the result? That we do not stop too often to address interesting issues on the way? Here it depends on a harmonious rhythm to switch between sprinting and lingering skillfully.
• Let us consider this as a challenge to contrast and compliment to handicraft design competence with ‘spiritual’ competence. This complexity is a task that in art education is traditionally regulated via the space and the people in it. In didactics for distance learning in design, which have been developed over a decade, this connection is already well developed. Throughout the operational contexts of the Corona Semester we should not forget that it is this physical complexity in design learning that is at stake.

This should also be a task for teaching design after the digital semesters that may still follow.

References:
Buchholz, Kai; Theinert, Justus; Ihden-Rothkirch, Silke (ed.) (2007): Designlehren. Wege deutscher Gestaltungsausbildung. Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publ.
Itten, Johannes (1978): Gestaltungs- und Formenlehre: Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus u. später. Ravensburg.
Metzger, Stephanie (2005): Interplay of senses and arts. Stephanie Metzger in conversation with Bernhard Waldenfels. artmix.conversation. Further participants: Stephanie Metzger. Thomas Gerwin (director): Bayerischer Rundfunk. Available online at http://www.br.de last reviewed on 24.07.2017.
Waldenfels, Bernhard (2002): Bruchlinien der Erfahrung. Phänomenologie, Psychoanalyse, Phänomenotechnik. 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (Suhrkamp paperback science, 1590)

This post started out as a few reflections on a few distance design education events I attended recently, where most of the discussions did not centre around online vs face-to-face or technology and IT services. Instead, discussion focused on learning and teaching – basic stuff, like ideas around how to make learning activities engaging (for staff as well as students…).

Because that’s a messy human problem, not a technical one, Gaston Bachelard and Christopher Alexander both came up in discussions a few times. What they both have in common is their attempt to make sense of the ‘messy space between people and things’ (Koskinen et al, 2011). In research, this is where there’s too much evidence to ignore the fact that there is something going on but it’s hard to really know what this is.

This ‘messy space’ is actually a really important type of thinking that we do as designers and that we encourage in our students. But because it’s vague, difficult and valued far less than the end product, we tend to talk a lot about it and then just hope that students ‘get it’ as they experience it through designing.

Of course, that’s not much use for education colleagues who are not learning to become designers… To respond to this challenge, I’m going to use bits of science and architectural philosophy together, and hope that the two don’t cancel each other out.

At the end, I’ll get back to how this relates to distance design education – so if you’re thinking “???”, feel free to skip to the end where there’s a list.

Ideas matter more than reality

First, the science bit.

Basically, we have a load of assumptions about how we relate to the world around us – many of them are completely wrong.

Firstly, we are not perceiving machines: for example, we don’t just ‘see’ whatever we perceive through our eyes. Our visual system is composed of a number of different cognitive systems: some dedicated to specific things (such as people’s faces) and others to more general cognition (such as our ability to use spatial thinking to more than just ‘see’). Basically, our visual system, like most of our other cognitive systems, is not a single, linear or simple process – it’s complex, convoluted and recursive (Dehaene, 2020).

Secondly, that recursive loop just mentioned is critical: what we have already perceived affects future perceptions. It’s a cognitive learning process and a deeply important part of being human (i.e. Homo Sapiens). For example, we don’t see colour until we are taught what colours is – there are no universal colours such as ‘red’; it all depends on how we learn what colour is (Lotto, 2004). And that’s before we even consider how such learning is affected by our own environment and behaviours (see The Dress for an example).

Thirdly, all of this is before we take into account even higher order cognitive biases and prejudices. The famous study by Hastorf and Cantrell (1954) identified that people at the same sporting event saw things differently depending on which team they supported. Pretty obvious, you may think, but how often do we take this seriously and realise that people really do see different realities based on their preferences. You will use your biases to conceive of the world around you in particular ways and, the more you do this, the more reinforced these ideas become.

The ideas (conceptions) we construct of reality are often far more important (or ‘real’) than reality itself.

Back to virtual reality

This is why we do see evidence of ‘physical’ things happening in ‘virtual’ environments – things you wouldn’t expect to see. For example, students can report feeling claustrophobic in some architecture in virtual environments (Minocha & Tungle 2008). This example has a physical analogy in the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation. In both cases, being able to only see the sky, but not the horizon, can lead to feelings of claustrophobia: in the second example this is deliberate; in the first example it was accidental.

In both, it is the conception, the idea in the mind of the person, that is common.

This is quite an extreme example of a conception in two very different environments. More usefully, conceptions can be understood as effective ways of transferring ideas. Cognitively, this is the process of thinking of a generalised version of particular things – that the word dog can refer to multiple concepts involving dog, from things with four legs to Snoopy (Dehaene, 2020): what our cognitive systems are good at is thinking at these scales of concept and then applying the most appropriate version for the given context.

But more generally, we can do this at even more abstract levels. In cognitive linguistics, these abstractions, referred to as conceptual metaphors, are where we apply some common cognition (like sense or meaning) from one concept to another. For example, we talk about ‘having’, ‘losing’, ‘keeping’ ideas even though we can’t see or touch them. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) famously constructed their embodied cognitive metaphors this way, arguing that even concepts like ‘in’ are conceptual metaphors that we transfer from one thinking domain to another. Hence, we can be ‘in’ a room but we can also be ‘in’ love or ‘in’ an organisation, or even ‘in’ trouble.

Each ‘in’ has to be understood as being related to each other. This makes it really easy to translate ideas: it’s how we can talk about really complex things, like ‘justice’, ‘home’, or ‘openness’. (This is also, potentially, one of the key ways that pluriversality can emerge, rather than the either-or of difference/universality in current dominant structures and narrative. But that’s another story…)

Making things harder

So far, we’ve mostly seen examples of transferring conceptions or using them to make complex things simple.

But sometimes we simplify things far too much:

“It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.”

Aristotle

Hence, using conceptual metaphors can be a useful way of making simple things more complex – not for the sake of making things difficult, but nuanced enough to be of utility in the design process. This might be: representative enough of complexities; open enough to allow creative divergence; communicable enough to work with others; etc.

What we’re looking for is the optimum conception for the activity at hand: not too complex and not too simple.

Any designers reading this will get it immediately: you don’t want to jump to solutions too soon; you don’t want to over-specify; you don’t want to make the problem too distributed and complex, but you don’t want it too simple either.

All good creative design processes operate in that Goldilocks space of it being not-too-simple / not-too-complex. And we (designers) have loads of tools we use to make things more or less complex depending on the circumstances and need. In doing so we are creating a space where things are both defined and not defined at the same time. Keeping this balance is really important: defined, but not too much. Undefined, but not too much.

This is not a contradiction or a fudging of what’s true: it’s a level of cognitive conception that allows contingent uncertainty (1). At some point this uncertainty will collapse (to some specific idea) but it’s a state of thinking that we can (mostly) return to at any point and rework.

In other words, our imagination is more valuable than other cognitive processes for some complex activities – we can use our imagination to define as well as create the world, not just to come up with ideas…

Back to Bachelard

Which is where Bachelard comes back in. He deliberately writes about architecture as poetry (or I should say, poetry as architecture!) because it allows the ideas he’s talking about to be both defined and not-defined at that same time. We all ‘know’ what home is; but we might not agree on what colour it should be.

Thinking like this can be exceptionally valuable because it moves from the very specific to the very general and understands how these relate, as well as their limitations. Have a read of Ritchey’s (1991) paper on how Riemann did this to understand the mathematics behind hearing.

Bachelard is using a mix of different scales of cognitive conception. In fact, much of his work could be thought of as a series of conceptual metaphors that try to communicate the human qualities of architecture: their experience and meaning (Bachelard was writing as a phenomenologist). Critically, he was conveying this as a writer so he was necessarily using cognitive linguistic metaphors.

Beyond the technical words there is a conceptual simplicity to his work. When Bachelard describes the porch, he describes the human experience of being on a porch: what it feels like; what people do (and can’t) on porches; what the world looks like from a porch. Critically, it’s not the porch itself that enables this experience: it’s the human doing the conceiving as a result of being-in the porch (non-attribution deliberate…).

That might make you wonder whether everyone, everywhere does indeed share a similar experience of porch. Christopher Alexander took this idea further but looked at it from the ground up: if we keep seeing the same shapes in architecture all over the world and across all cultures, then that suggests a deeper pattern in human behaviour. Alexander came up with a number of patterns from human settlements and the built environment and called it a Pattern Language (Alexander et al, 1977).

But, critically, Alexander recognised that these patterns needed to be defined at the right ‘scale’ – not too defined but not too vague either. In addition, he also introduced the idea of a ‘quality without name’ (2) to refer to the underlying human value of each pattern – what it is about the pattern that people value.

Teaching bit

This brings us back to teaching design at a distance. (you still here?)

The discussions I referred to at the start have done a similar thing. Firstly, they focused on the human value and purpose of what we intend by design education. Secondly, they use a range of scales of metaphor to discuss this, something designers are particularly good at (a two line sketch can represent The Infinite Void or a soap dispenser…).

So I suppose that what’s finally useful is to explicitly recognise and acknowledge the value of this type of thinking, knowledge and discussion. In fact, to promote its value beyond discipline conversations and use it actively to engage with others (we already do this, but perhaps don’t realise it). Especially when thinking about what you need to teach at a distance.

So here’s the List of Fun Things to Try with Conceptual Metaphors:

1. Start with conceptions, not solutions or tech. Instead of saying ‘I need a Virtual Design Studio’, ask yourself what the studio space should feel like (using conceptions). What is the ‘quality without name’ you’re looking for (just because you can’t name this it doesn’t mean you can’t describe it)? Have a look at the dimensions listed here for ideas and use these to brief, specify and discuss requirements with others. You do not have to fall into the trap of using reductive tech language to ask for what you need for your students.
2. Use conceptual metaphors, not tech names. Someone else mentioned this at the CHEAD event, but to call a lecture a ‘Webinar’ is to deliberately draw attention to the technical medium. We don’t call seminars ‘f2f-inars’ … (OK, clunky example…). If an event is a tutorial then it’s OK to call it a tutorial regardless of where and how it’s arranged – it’s the human value that’s more useful to communicate than the medium or mode.
3. Make some key things more complex, not less. If you need a particular atmosphere or feeling (a ‘quality without name’) in your studio or class then state that clearly. Be confident about your uncertainty – describe this as boundaries of knowledge rather than just ignorance (you’re technically an agnotologist). But don’t hide it either – be open about how we use uncertainty with colleagues and especially students (give them something solid if they need it).
4. Be critical and reflective when you do this. I haven’t touched on the dark side of this type of cognition (it can be very dark indeed) so make use of the other major tool in our design toolkits – our ability to evaluate the process at the same time as engaging in that process. Using some simple, critical frames to help you critique from other perspectives.

Anyway, I hope that made some sense. Not sure if it all got a bit out of hand at one point but it ended with a list, so maybe it’ll be fine…

Notes

(1) Cognitive uncertainty may have analogies to, or even be a form of, of cognition-as-optimisation theories (error reduction; reward optimisation; etc.), where the fuzziness of uncertainty is used in conjunction with other cognitive feedback processes to ‘get to’ some cognitive resolution.

(2) This ‘quality without a name’ has been thoroughly criticised for good (and bad) reasons, so to give it a bit of life here I’ll suggest that it is “an appropriately scaled cognitive conceptual gestalt (or conception) interrelated with human experiences and phenomena that operates with sufficient similarity across large numbers of peoples to be evidenced in their constructed artefacts and habits”. Gaston would be horrified.

References

Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I. and Angel, S. (1977) A Pattern Language, 1st edn, New York, Oxford University Press.

Hastorf, A. H. and Cantril, H. (1954) ‘Case reports. They saw a game: a case study’, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 129–134.

Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Redström, J. and Wensveen, S. (2011) Design Research Through Practice, 1st edn, Waltham, Elsevier Inc.

Lotto, R. B. (2004) ‘Visual Development: Experience Puts the Colour in Life’, Current Biology, vol. 14, pp. R619–R621.

Oldenburg, R. (1999) The Great Good Place: Cafaes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, Da Capo Press.

Ritchey, T. (1991) ‘Analysis and Synthesis On Scientific Method – Based on a Study by Bernhard Riemann’, Systems Research, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 21–41 [Online]. DOI: 10.1002/sres.3850080402.

This article is based on an online presentation delivered on 22 May 2020 for the Teaching Architecture Online: Methods and Outcomes seminar, organised by Curtin University and Özyeğin University, titled ‘Responsive Ecosystems for Architectural Education’ (Morkel & Delport, 2020). In this article, we propose that, rather than the on-ground-online binary, architectural education might be conceived as an ecosystem-of-learning. We further suggest that this ecosystem-of-learning can be explored through the testing of random concepts to prompt and provoke a shift in thinking. 

Introduction

Covid-19 exposed the fragility of schools of architecture, affecting carefully integrated curricula, student experiences and teaching methodologies. We position this integrated learning approach as an ecosystem-of-learning comprised of a number of elements including those shown in Figure 1. 

Social distancing forced some parts of the default ecosystem to change drastically and suddenly, and this impacted on the entire ecosystem-of-learning. Access to physical buildings, studios, and workshops was lost. The place dimension of the learning system changed (figure 2). Where, before, time was carefully divided into segments on a timetable, organising the occupation of physical space, suddenly the timetable itself became obsolete.

‘Higher education institutions must prepare for an intermediate period of transition and begin future-proofing for the long term’ proposed DeVaney et al. (2020). So we’re asking: how might we shift our gaze to the longer term, to move online architectural education beyond “emergency remote teaching” (Hodges et al., 2020), from ‘contingency to sustainability’ (Salmon, 2020)? 

Yet, what we’ve observed in webinars, blog posts, forums and research writings over the past number of weeks, are questions asked about the uncertainty and unpredictability of the situation. In the process of adapting to a new condition, there’s a degree of vulnerability, concerns arising over inequality and access, the loss of touching paper, building models, the physical making together, the incidental moments of discovery, the informal and social learning instances, the camaraderie and the fun – these experiences have been ‘lost’ through mandatory social distancing and the resultant altered dimensions of space and time.

Is a reset possible?

Darren Ockert (2020) writes that ‘(e)ach day during the pandemic, we are suddenly finding what was once impossible is now suddenly possible.’ He quotes  Thomas Friedman, who said of online learning in 2012 ‘Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary.’

We believe that a reset is possible, but through ‘step(ping) beyond the obvious and rethink(ing) how we think’ (Weyler, 2020).  

What next?

To use the crisis as a catalyst for innovation, as suggested by O’Reilly (2020), we turn to the ecosystem-of-learning as a metaphor. An environmental ecosystem is defined as a ‘complex of living organisms, their physical environment, and all their interrelationships (are) in a particular unit of space’ (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Considering learning as an intrinsically human activity that occurs in many places and in different ways (Rustici, 2018) we conceptualise an ecosystem-of-learning that involves the tools, technologies, resources, the people and the places where learning happens.We chose ecosystem over ecology as a framework because, compared to ecology which describes a universal idea, an ecosystem is associated with a specific context  (Merriam-Webster, n.d.).

A different way of thinking might embrace diversity in the way that Rex Weyler (2020) suggests: ‘Diversity remains a value in an ecosystem because diversity enhances stability.’ He further explains that ‘an ecosystem prospers if it is simultaneously stable and flexible, conservative and progressive’ (Weyler, 2020). 

To demonstrate how a shift in thinking might be prompted,  we draw on a range of random concepts to generate questions (Hitge, 2016; Kayton, 2011). These questions are borrowed from six domains, as thinking prompts, to reshape architectural education for the future. The selected domains are educational, economic, environmental, social, technological and political domains; each explored through three randomly selected conceptual question prompts.Of course the question prompts and resulting exploration will have varying results, depending on the participants. For example, some prompts may be more relevant to management, others to faculty or students. Furthermore, for each of the prompts (the list is not extensive), different viewpoints should be taken.

In a recent online lecture, entitled ‘How Limitations Boots Creativity’ Ingwio D’Hespeel from the LUCA School of Arts in Belgium, reimagined the traditional PowerPoint and presented his talk with a ‘paperpoint’. The low-tech, low-budget and low-resource paperpoint brings aspects of the interactive and the hand-made into the online space.

We hope that the thematic conceptual prompts that we introduce below, can trigger similar creative, relevant and realisable reactions to inspire the development of a responsive and resilient ecosystem-of-learning for architectural and design education.

Educational prompts

How might pedagogy of care, universal design for learning and flux pedagogy help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Pedagogy of care is a concept that stresses contribution and empathy. Cormier (2020) asks ‘how can we balance the care that we give our students and the care that we give to ourselves?’ He invites us to imagine the first five minutes of class – the smiles, the eye-rolls and the catch-ups,  and to think about ways to do that online.
• Universal design for learning, according to Morin (2020), ‘is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that gives students an equal opportunity to succeed’, through the flexible use of a variety of teaching methods to remove any barriers, and respond to every student’s strengths and needs.
• Flux pedagogy is a term recently coined by Sharon Ravitch (2020), and it integrates ‘relational and critical pedagogy frameworks into a transformative teaching approach in times of radical flux.’  She explains that it is ‘a humanizing pedagogy that examines the goals and processes of education in moments of uncertainty with a goal of mutual growth and transformation.’ Also, refer to Beatty’s (2019) Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) Course Design.

Economic prompts 

How might sharing economy, phygital marketing and the gig economy help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Sharing economy. The sharing economy or Uberfication marks a prominent ‘societal shift’ in which ‘state-regulated service providers like hotels and taxi companies, are replaced by information and data management intermediaries, like Airbnb… and  Uber’ (Hall, 2015).
• Phygital marketing. Phygital (also known as phygital) merges the ‘online and offline environments’, taking the ‘best aspects from each space to create an improved customer experience.’ For example, using technology on multiple platforms to build on the ‘immediacy, immersion, and interaction’ of the real bricks and mortar experience (Ames, 2019).
• Gig economy. The concept of the gig economy has been around for a while, with specific reference to the manner in which people work. It can be broadly defined as “a labour market made up of freelance, short-term and on-demand work…which…redefines the way companies hire and how individuals structure their careers (Investec, 2019).

Environmental prompts 

How might regenerative design, permaculture design and environmental sociology help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Regenerative design, which, as a general concept, is a ‘principle that calls for products or services to contribute to systems that renew or replenish themselves. This ultimately means the materials and energy that go into a product or process, can be reintroduced into the same process or system, requiring little to no inputs to maintain it’ (Wbcsd, 2020).
• Permaculture design, although far from a new concept, has 12 key principles that ‘opens into whole systems thinking’ and are ‘thinking tools, that when used together, allow us to creatively re-design our environment and our behavior in a world of less energy and resources’  (Holmgren and Telford, 2020).
• Environmental sociology is concerned with the ‘reciprocal relationships between environment and society.’ The concept acknowledges that ‘environmental issues (we could also read here educational issues) are socially constructed in ways that need to be understood if effective and just strategies for dealing with them are to be found’ (Lockie, 2015:139).

Social prompts 

How might fun theory, social presence theory and compassionate collaboration help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Fun Theory. If you want to get people to change their behaviour you must make what you want them to do, novel and fun, according to Wickes (2018). That’s Fun theory – it’s as simple as that.
• Social presence theory. Social presence theory (presence vs attention) is used to understand how people socially interact in online learning environments. Researchers like Whiteside, Dikkers and Swan (2017) define social presence in terms of being a “real” person, where others define it as feeling a connection or sense of belonging with others.
• Compassionate collaboration. Sir Ken Robinson refers to compassionate collaboration and he means compassion that is ‘fundamental to our ability to be together as communities, as the sort of cultural glue that holds us together …’ (Hall, 2017).

Technological prompts

How might human-computer interaction, bioinformatics and makification help us think about a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Human-computer interaction. Dickson (2017) posits that “(t)hanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, a slow but steady transformation is coming to education…’ and he says that it forces us to consider what it means to be human.
• Bioinformatics. Ben Williamsen (2020) references socio-genomics and geno-economics that link the study of genomics with predicted socio-economic outcomes through the power of big data and bioinformatics infrastructures.
• Makification. Cohen, Jones, Smith & Calandra, (2017:3)  writes that ‘simply put, we define makification as the process of taking characteristic elements from the maker movement and infusing them into formal educational activities in a variety of contexts.’

Political prompts 

How might cultural citizenship, development theory and the entrepreneurial state help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Cultural citizenship. According to Van Hensbroek, ’cultural citizenship, psychologically and ideologically connects members within a community, or members of different communities through a sense of common belonging, reciprocal recognition of belonging, and shared experiences of daily life’ (Van Hensbroek, 2010: 317).
• Development theory. ‘Development theory is a collection of theories about how desirable change in society is best achieved’ (Gallagher, 2016: 260).
• The Entrepreneurial State. In her controversial book, ‘The Entrepreneurial State’, Mariana Mazzucato reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator, e.g. in the pharmaceutical industry. Almost every medical breakthrough starts in publicly funded laboratories.

Conclusion

As the emergency subsides but normality fails to return, higher education institutions must consider a reset. There’s a good likelihood that virtual learning – in some form or another – will be part of education for the foreseeable future. Coalescent spaces for learning are inevitable (White, 2016), but exactly how this plays out, will depend on the degree to which we are able to rethink and reconceptualise the different elements of the ecosystem and how they relate.

We hope that our exploration will prompt further thinking and debate towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability. Considering architectural education as an ecosystem-of-learning can help us move beyond the on-ground-onsite binary towards a dynamic but balanced, ecosystem.

This is work in progress and we invite your comments and suggestions. 

Postscript

We both studied at a traditional University in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The University of Port Elizabeth was, at the time, operating very much like most universities today, although we graduated even before the computer made it into architecture as a tool for drawing. After a few years in practice, we both started teaching, almost at the same time, at the Cape Technikon. There, architecture was taught from a technological perspective, so, from the start of our academic careers, we taught differently to how we had been taught. We both started writing about our teaching practices when the Technikon became a University and formal research was introduced, focusing on alternative places of learning (other than the studio). We tested our respective research ideas in the second year studio, where students were involved in academic and work-based learning components. Starting in 2010, together with our students, we crafted this studio into an online and onsite model to expand the on-campus studio. The online explorations included learning through digital storytelling, wayfinding using QR codes, virtual tutors,  etcetera. During the block weeks, we met physically with our students, where they participated in interactive and hands-on exercises, such as experimenting with natural building methods, developing designs through physical model building and completing design-build projects in communities. In-between the block weeks, students were supported at their places of work, online, through various social media platforms, a course blog, feedback via podcasts and screencasts, reflection through blogging, and online desk crits using skype. These ideas led to other blended and online programmes, for example, the part-time BTech programme offered by the CPUT in collaboration with Open Architecture. 

*Dr Hermie Delport is the Programme Leader: Architecture and Spatial Design at STADIO Holdings

The diagrams

In our search for literature on ecosystems, after we had formulated the ecosystem diagrams (figures 1, 3 and 4), we serendipitously found the Sacramento startup and innovation ecosystem diagrams (Bennett, 2016). The potential of this ‘circuit board diagram, aka subway map’ diagramming method to describe and compare ecosystems-of-learning, should be further explored.  

References

Ames, C. 2019. Blurring the line between Physical and Digital. https://www.emotivebrand.com/phygital/

Beatty, B. J. (2019). Hybrid-Flexible Course Design: Implementing student-directed hybrid classes (1st ed.). EdTech Books. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/hyflex

Bennet, J. 2016. Sacramento startup and innovation ecosystem diagram update. [online]. Accessed via https://startupsac.com/sacramento-startup-and-innovation-ecosystem-diagram-update/

Bregman, R. 2020. The neoliberal era is ending. What comes next? https://thecorrespondent.com/466/the-neoliberal-era-is-ending-what-comes-next/61655148676-a00ee89a

Cohen, J., Jones, W.M., Smith, S. & Calandra, B. 2017. Makification: Towards a framework for leveraging the maker movement in formal education. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. 26(3):217–229

Collins Z., Holum A., Seely Brown J. 1991 Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible http://www.21learn.org/archive/cognitive-apprenticeship-making-thinking-visible/

Cormier, D. 2020. Move to Online Learning: 12 Key ideas.  Move to Online Learning: 12 Key Ideas – Dave’s Educational Blog http://davecormier.com/edblog/2020/05/17/move-to-online-learning-12-key-ideas/

Costanza, R., Mageau, M. 1999. What is a healthy ecosystem?. Aquatic Ecology 33, 105–115 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009930313242

DeKay, M. 1996. Systems thinking as the basis for an ecological design education.  Proceedings of the 21st National Passive Solar Conference. Systems Thinking as the Basis for an Ecological Design Education. School of Architecture Washington University St. Louis.  

DeVaney, J. Shimson, G. Rascoff, M. and Maggioncalda, J. 2020. Higher Ed Needs a Long-Term Plan for Virtual Learning. Harvard Business Review. [online]. Available at: https://hbr.org/2020/05/higher-ed-needs-a-long-term-plan-for-virtual-learning

D’Hespeel, I. 2020. How Limitations Boots Creativity. Online presentation on 20 April 2020, Greenside Design Centre Lockdown lecture series. 

Dickson, B. 2017. How Artificial Intelligence Is Shaping the Future of Education. https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-artificial-intelligence-is-shaping-the-future-of-education

Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/ecosystem

Gallagher, S. 2019. Banking Performance and Socio Economic Development. ED – Tech Press, Essex. 

Hall, G. 2015. Post-Welfare Capitalism and the Uberfication of the University II: Platform Capitalism. http://www.garyhall.info/journal/2015/4/28/post-welfare-capitalism-and-the-uberfication-of-the-universi.html

Hall, R. 2017. Surviving in the Modern World: In conversation with Sir Ken Robinson. https://www.ashoka.org/en-gb/story/surviving-modern-world-conversation-sir-ken-robinson

Hitge, L. 2016. Cognitive apprenticeship in architecture education: using a scaffolding tool to support conceptual design. University of Cape Town.

HMC Architects, 2020 https://hmcarchitects.com/news/regenerative-architecture-principles-a-departure-from-modern-sustainable-design-2019-04-12/  

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

Holmgren and Telford. 2020. Permaculture Principle [online] Available at: https://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/

Investec. 2019. Rocking the gig economy [online] Available at: https://www.investec.com/en_za/focus/economy/rocking-the-gig-economy.html

Lederman, D. 2020. The HyFlex OPtion for Instruction if Campuses Open This Fall. [online] Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/05/13/one-option-delivering-instruction-if-campuses-open-fall-hyflex

Lockie, S. 2015. What is environmental sociology?. Environmental Sociology 1:3, pages 139-142.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2015.1066084

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Ecosystem. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved June 1, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ecosystem

Morin, A. 2020. What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/treatments-approaches/educational-strategies/universal-design-for-learning-what-it-is-and-how-it-works

Morkel, J. and Delport, H. (2020). Responsive Ecosystems for Architectural Education. Online presentation for the Seminar Teaching architecture online 2. Methods and outcomes, 22 May 2020. [online]. Available at: https://youtu.be/q5y6puwYFng [31 May 2020].

Ockert, D. 2020. What Coronavirus can Teach Architecture Schools about Virtual Learning. https://www.archdaily.com/938784/what-coronavirus-can-teach-architecture-schools-about-virtual-learning

O’Reilly. 2020. Don’t let a good Crisis go to waste. Instead use it as a catalyst for innovation. https://singularityhub.com/2020/05/03/dont-let-a-good-crisis-go-to-waste-instead-use-it-as-a-catalyst-for-innovation/

Patrick Kayton – Going With The Flow (2011) YouTube video added by TEDxCapeTown Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8T7FYTiXKI [Accessed 1 June 2020].

Ravitch, S. 2020. Flux pedagogy. Transformative Teaching in the time of Corona. [online] Available at: https://www.methodspace.com/flux-pedagogy-transforming-teaching-learning-during-coronavirus/

Rustici, M. 2018. An Introduction to Modern Learning Ecosystems. https://www.watershedlrs.com/blog/learning-data-ecosystems/what-is-a-modern-learning-ecosystem

Salmon, G. 2020. Covid-19 is the pivot point for online learning. Whonke. [online] Available at: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/covid-19-is-the-pivot-point-for-online-learning/?fbclid=IwAR3vxMkUXrOTwqqE2aVdeJghoNb3PIyGLVT2UsqBMS4heNUs8SFY5cQAiq4

Steward, S. 2020. Five Myths about the Gig Economy. The Washington Post [online]. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-the-gig-economy/2020/04/24/852023e4-8577-11ea-ae26-989cfce1c7c7_story.html

Tomboc, K. 2019. What is Information Design. https://www.easel.ly/blog/what-is-information-design/

Van Hensbroek, PB. 2010. Cultural citizenship as a normative notion for activist practices, Citizenship Studies, 14:3, 317-330, DOI: 10.1080/13621021003731880

Wbcsd. 2020. Circular Economy Programme. [online] Available at: https://www.ceguide.org/Strategies-and-examples/Design/Regenerative-design

Weyler, R. 2020. Ecological imperatives – we can’t keep growing like this, [online] Available at: https:www.greenpeace.org/international/story/43513/ecological-imperatives-growth-economics-coronavirus-pandemic/

White, D. 2016. Coalescent spaces http://daveowhite.com/coalescent/

Wickes, S. 2018. https://www.familyadventureproject.org/fun-theory/

Williamsen, B. 2020. Datafication and automation in higher education during and after the Covid-19 crisis  https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/

It took a bit longer than expected (it started out as a blog post but ended up being a 20k word monster!), so there’s a few ways you can use it set out below.

Over the next few weeks I’ll think about other ways to make expand on it and make it more widely available – so any suggestions on this would be welcomed (e.g. blog posts on topics; videos; discussions/debates; workshop sessions; ? ). Just let us know ([email protected]).

Ways to use the guide.

If you already have a course ready for online and distance delivery, you might simply use this guide as a check or list of things to think about. Here’s a map of the contents:

If you have an existing blended course or are experienced and confident in blending modes of learning, you might simply want ideas and ways of thinking about parts of your course. In this case you can refer to individual sections based on what interests you (see map above).

If you need to re-plan an existing course, the chances are your overall structure and direction are fine but that you might need to focus on the transition (or transposition) to online and distance. Focusing on sections 0 Priors and 1 Spine and 2 Induction will likely be of most use to you here).

If you’re needing to start from scratch then, by all means, use the guide to do this (as a structure or as some way to begin the design process). But think about connecting with someone or a community to support you in doing this.

As always, if anyone has any feedback on the Guide or any suggestions of what else would be of help then please just get in touch ([email protected]).

At the time of writing, in early May 2020, most architecture educators have passed through all five stages of the Kübler-Ross model of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance (Kübler-Ross, 1969). We spent the first two months of the year in a politically-sanctioned period of denial. When it became apparent that the virus was not contained to a specific geographic region or demographic, our governments instigated restrictions and our universities closed. At that point, we entered the phase of anger. Some made it to bargaining and then depression. Those who made it out the other side are emerging with a lukewarm glow of acceptance: we are all distance educators now.

Researchers at Imperial College London have argued that we need two different but interdependent strategies to manage the effects of the virus: mitigation (slowing epidemic spread while protecting those most at risk) and suppression (reversing epidemic growth and maintaining that situation indefinitely) (Ferguson et al, 2020). If followed, the Imperial College model is sobering for teachers. We can expect at least three, perhaps four, periods of social distancing during the northern hemisphere’s 2020/21 academic year – and that’s assuming we return to campus at all.

As we approach the busiest days of the academic year in the northern hemisphere, we have to recognise a fundamental fact: “we’re not going back to normal” (Lichfield, 2020).

The shift to distance education presents a particular challenge for architecture education. Our discipline has been one of the most resistant to fundamental pedagogical change. With fairly dramatic change now imposed upon us, and as our focus shifts from just surviving this year to actively planning next year, there is an opportunity to critically engage with the widely held assumptions of how we teach design in architecture.

Our signature pedagogy

In the United Kingdom, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Architects Registration Board (ARB) administer the discipline’s professional accreditation. The RIBA Procedures for Validation and Validation Criteria have, since their revision in 2011, explicitly prescribed that the assessed work of undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses in architecture “should consist of at least 50% design studio projects” (RIBA, 2014, p. 5). Not design projects, but design studio projects. The gatekeepers of the profession in the UK specify not only a minimum quota of design education but also an inconsistently interpreted method of delivery.

A survey of the 63 validation reports of UK architecture schools published by RIBA between 2014 and 2019 finds 25 instances of references to “studio culture”, either in the commendations by the board that visited the school of the academic position statements written by the heads of schools.[1]

These academic position statements include phrases such as “central to our programmes is a strong and vibrant studio culture,” (RIBA, 2017a, p.4) and “in our studio culture we experiment playfully, analyse thoughtfully, apply rigorously and reflect critically… Studio culture provides the safe, inclusive environment in which students can take risks and increase in confidence.” (RIBA, 2020, p.4)

Another statement reads that “central to the ethos of the school is the vibrant studio culture, which is the foundation of the student experience and emphasises a culture of the craft of making integrated with digital design … Design studio is seen as a place for the exchange of ideas where students learn from each other as well as staff and visiting scholars and practitioners.” (RIBA, 2016, p.3)

The design studio is clearly a pervasive learning environment. It is also one that absorbs students far beyond their scheduled contact hours. One school writes how “the 24-hour access to these studios plus the open kitchens has engendered a strong connection between students on all programmes.” (RIBA, 2017b, p.4) Likewise, the commendations of another report congratulate a programme team for inculcating students to treat the studio not just as a place of study, but a place of continuous occupation, where (with my emphasis) “students in the school had unselfconsciously created a genuine live-in studio culture in their main building.” (RIBA, 2017c, p.6)

In these documents we can see how the design studio can be variously celebrated as “a place to study and work in a highly creative multi-disciplinary environment alongside dance, art, design and music studios” (RIBA, 2018, p.3) or criticised as a dangerous site of intermingling with non-architects. The action point of a report observes (with my emphasis) “that the social and cultural environment of architecture in the studios needed to be carefully nurtured, and that too much diffusion of the subject area across the campus might have unintended consequences.” (RIBA, 2017c, p.6)

The design studio is architecture’s signature pedagogy. Lee Shulman defined the concept of signature pedagogy as “types of teaching that organize the fundamental ways in which future practitioners are educated for their new professions.” The design studio in the architecture school is a perfect example of how, Shulman writes, signature pedagogies “even determine the architectural design of educational institutions, which in turn serves to perpetuate these approaches.” (Shulman, 2005, p.54)

Yet the design studio is a complex and multi-dimensional thing. It is the site of both innovation and uncritical replication. It is home to both critical pedagogies that liberate students and uncritical teaching methods which demand their submission to old fashioned ways.

The four dimensions of the design studio

One way to understand the design studio, it is necessary to comprehend what I call its four characteristic dimensions. These dimensions are related to but distinct from the four learning constructs of studio education that Donald Schön described in Educating the Reflective Practitioner (1987): a physical space or constructed environment for learning and teaching; a mode of teaching and learning; a program of activity; and a culture, created by students and studio teachers working together. Schön writes how the design studio is defined by any one-or-more of these constructs, but I would argue that the four cannot be considered in isolation.

Firstly, the design studio is a physical space in the now-shuttered campuses of higher education. How many other disciplines continue to defend the right of an undergraduate student to be provided with their own desk and a working environment on campus, twenty-four-seven for the duration of their studies? In many institutions, therefore, it is the site of a conflict between the traditions of the discipline and the economic pressures of the contemporary university.

Many recent reactions to the shutdown of higher education have come from those educators who regard the space of the architecture design studio as fundamental to the “slightly odd” teaching methods of architecture education. Published in the weeks immediately following the lockdown, one architecture educator writes that “our students rely on having physical and intellectual spaces on campus in which to work. They need access to a well-lit, well-resourced model-making workshop. They require computers they cannot afford themselves. They need each other — students need to be able to rely on their peers if their home environments don’t support our much-loved but slightly odd pedagogical methods.” (Lappin in Sadler et al, 2020)

Secondly, the design studio is a period of time in the teaching calendar. With continuous access to their own learning space, the timetable of an architecture student before the coronavirus pandemic will have also included one or maybe two days per week that were simply ascribed to “studio” – the indeterminate catchall for the time when a student is expected to be present and engaging in either self-directed or directed learning. Many schools of architecture have interpreted the RIBA validation condition of fifty per cent of the curriculum being delivered through design studio to mean that fifty per cent of a student’s schedule must be designated as “studio” time.

In recent weeks, architecture educators who have described their adaptation to “pandemic teaching” have mourned the loss of this collective time. Despite invoking Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth-century prison one educator writes:

The design studio, however panoptical, offers more than a physical infrastructure that allocates equal desktop space. It offers common hours through which skills sets, expertise, energy, motivation and/or inspiration are in constant flux and are thereby permanently redistributed. A shared studio impedes sorting into the haves and have nots … The very physicality of studio space enables regulation of common standards against the logic of competition … just as the fixed parameter of 12 studio-hours per week can help level the ground between those rich in hours and those disadvantaged by day-jobs or dependents. (Roddier in Pries et al, 2020) [2]

Thirdly, the design studio can be understood as a large field of both teaching method and pedagogies. These are not the same thing. Within the indeterminate time ascribed to “studio” in the calendar, anything goes. The more creative and critical architecture educators deliver radical pedagogical activities, teaching that is informed by educational theory and political agenda. These include collaborative workshops, peer-to-peer learning, blends of asynchronous and synchronous teaching, flipped classroom exercises, experiential learning or live projects with real clients to name just a few. Yet in the darker corners survives the studio where students endure the same old corrupt banking model of education that the tutor learned about as a student. This approach relies on repetition, replication and duplication, and I would argue this distinguishes it as a teaching method rather than a pedagogical approach.

The fourth and final characteristic dimension of the design studio is its culture. When he proposed at is a learning construct, Schön was referring to the ideas, customs and behaviour that occurs in design studio. We should not forget the other meaning of culture: the cultivation of things like bacteria or cells in an artificial medium. Things grow, both good and bad.

The prejudices of architecture education

Architecture education has long been criticised for the ways in which the design studio is the site par excellence for the perpetuation of a hidden curriculum that prejudices certain individuals and groups, inculcating behaviours, attitudes and value systems (Dutton, 1987; Ward, 1990; Banham, 1996; Groat and Ahrentzen, 1996; Stevens, 1998; Webster, 2006 & 2008; Datta, 2007; Salama, 2010; Brown, 2012; Stratigakos, 2016). Jeremy Till writes that “the world of architectural education is obsessed with what it produces, and in this forgets to examine how it produces.” (Till, 2005, p.166)

More than 30 years ago, Karen Kingsley identified the tendencies of bias against women and exclusion of women’s contribution in the popular architectural history texts (Kingsley, 1988). Around the same time, Sherry Ahrentzen and Linda Groat published the findings of a nationwide survey of architecture educators in the USA. Ahrentzen and Groat identified three characteristics of the climate which was prejudiced against female teachers: the dominance of the star system and gendering of genius; the hidden curriculum of rituals that supported power and hierarchy; the isolationism engendered by the myopic attitude of the architectural act (Ahrentzen and Groat, 1992). Design studios have long been known to “exhibit a well-known academic syndrome, in which students believe that mystery – or the neglect of rational teaching methods – is an indication of the mastery of the instructor.” (Fowler and Wilson, 2004, p. 106)

For many architecture educators the path to revealing and subverting the mechanisms of reproduction of architecture education has been to adopt the philosophies and methods of critical pedagogy, including theorists of educational resistance. Architectural education routinely privileges that which Bourdieu and Passeron first christened cultural capital: the educational or intellectual assets which promote social mobility (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990 [1973]). Peter McLaren explains:

Students from the dominant culture inherit substantially different cultural capital than do economically disadvantaged students, and schools generally value and reward those who exhibit that dominant cultural capital (which is also usually exhibited by the teacher). Schools systematically devalue the cultural capital of students who occupy subordinate class positions. (McLaren, 2009, p. 81)

Acceptance

In the weeks and months after the closure of the physical spaces of higher education, architecture educators are expressing nostalgia for our signature pedagogy. One writes: “Our experiences with remote learning may prove to be a positive experiment, and we may gain new appreciation for digital tools which can support our regular pedagogies. But there is no place like studio” (Donovan in Baxi et al, 2020).

Comparing how a postgraduate seminar course and an undergraduate design studio had transitioned to online teaching, another writes that “the pivot to online teaching was pretty smooth for the seminar… dare I say, it’s actually working quite well. But for the design studio, the transition has been trickier; for students and faculty it can feel challenging and lonely. We all miss the collective camaraderie, the companionship of the shared space.” (Lyster in Sadler et al, 2020).

We should not presume that just by moving the space of architecture education online it will become more egalitarian. Harriet Harriss warns us that:

If [Massive Online Open Courses] have taught us anything, it’s that online learning environments are not democratic spaces by default. These platforms may allocate each user equal inches of screen space, but simultaneously surrender a window into our otherwise private domestic interiors, revealing often staggering economic differentials between students, while also rendering them vulnerable to racist and other discriminatory attacks (Harriss in Martin et al, 2020).

Frank Weine observed that “traditionally, design has been taught in a studio setting and history has been taught in a lecture room. If we accept that this approach has become ineffectual, how could one conceptualize a new model that is more efficacious? One could propose a reversal, so that history is taught in the studio and design in the lecture room.” (Weiner, 2005, 31). Until now, such opinions have been peripheral to the discourse around architecture education. The idea that we might do it differently have been purely speculative. But today, the world over, architecture educators are actively planning curricula without the design studio.

What the four characteristic dimensions of the design studio in architecture education described above have in common is that none of them are consistently defined. Our discipline has, at its heart, a multi-dimensional thing that is defined in space, time, pedagogy and culture. The physical space of the design studio is generally an open-plan room or sequence of rooms, into which independent study, formal teaching, informal teaching, socialising, eating, drinking, bullying, and even harassment or abuse occurs. The temporal dimension of the studio is likewise a curtain behind which lurks a panoply of teaching and learning: sometimes it’s ground-breaking and creative, often it is derivative and even destructive. The pedagogical dimension of the design studio is equally wide and diverse. The cultural dimension of the design studio is something that is often celebrated but rarely defined, and when it is, it is usually in terms that are as exclusive (of women, minorities, mature students, people of different abilities) as they are inclusive.

The question for the coming autumn is resolutely not how can we recreate the architecture studio online. It is how we can liberate our discipline from the assumption that an ill-defined space, time, pedagogy and culture is the only way to teach design. It is an opportunity to re-construct architecture education in a more critical, inclusive and democratic way.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to James Corazzo, Sarah Kettley, Peter Lloyd, Amanda Monfrooe and Ruth Morrow for their suggestions and guidance.

Notes

[1] Accessed via https://www.architecture.com/education-cpd-and-careers/riba-validation/riba-validated-schools-uk on 5 May 2020.

[2] I note here my strong objection to the presumption that scheduling 12 studio-hours per week is all it takes to correct the academic prejudices faced by students ”disadvantaged by day-jobs or dependents.”

References

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It seems the technological campuses of tomorrow have manifested today as an essential and spontaneous response to the COVID-19 world outbreak. This article briefly discusses the current pivot from an on-campus physical design studio curriculum towards a distance learning and online delivery model in higher education. 

Many universities have quickly re-focused their learning and teaching of design education towards virtual community building, remote distance learning and teaching and alternative assessment outcomes via digital portals. As an educator who teaches physical design studio learning within a College of Art, housed within a parent university in Australia, the transition has been swift and relatively painless. Our university already has five physical campuses and one digital campus, and a highly successful learning management system (LMS) already fluently embedded. Yet, in my own creative institution, I have been surprised in our ability to quickly transition our curriculum, resources and staffing from a physical to a distance mode of studio learning. Indeed, when the severity of the COVID-19 became clear to our university, this switch occurred in a matter of days.

However, not all art schools and design institutions who deliver a conventional and valued face-to-face design studio education have been able to adapt so easily.

As a researcher of studio learning, my field of research has always championed the physical studio as a site for learning. Preceding 2020, my research investigated the shift from specialised studio educational environments to standardized and augmented digital classroom learning and how this has changed the shape of design education. I examined how networked learning continued to dominate higher education (HE) and institutional preference was for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). Uniform learning spaces to accommodate higher student numbers were widespread and as a result, studio education combined copious physical interactions and digital platforms.

A great deal of previous research into learning spaces and student engagement has focused on self-regulated design learning, the physical environments that impede or support learning, designing and making creative spaces, creating authentic learning encounters and the studio as a setting for production (Davies and Gannon, 2009; Doorley and Witthoft, 2012; Thornburg, 2013; Farías and Wilkie, 2016; Marshalsey 2017; Powers, 2017; Nair and Doctori, 2019). In recent years, the notion of the sticky campus emerged with the aim of encouraging students to stay, study, work, create and socialise actively on university-governed grounds, in buildings and with faculty (Warren and Mahony Architects, 2017; Orr and Shreeve, 2018). Orr and Shreeve (2018) presented the idea of the sticky curriculum for contemporary art and design education. They argue a complex ‘stickiness’ is the posing of uncertain, diverse and thought-provoking opportunities for learners, which may be found external to formal, assessed curriculum (Marshalsey et al. 2020).

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, my research examined the relationship between space and learning in higher design education, and specifically, in the use of specialised ‘sticky studio’ learning spaces located within a wider university context. I attempt to address the pedagogical gap that exists between broader university learning structures and spaces, and the requirements of specialist design education. Wider university systems place pressure on space and time for exploratory learning and practice across the creative disciplines. Often there is no space or time for the necessary self-directed ‘diverse wanderings’ of messy, creative experimentation in studio learning today. Austerlitz et al. (2008, p.6) refers to this “ability to operate in the complexities of uncertainty” as the core of art and design studio education. If educators lose power over a practical curriculum then students may fail to perform, and to the depth and rigour required for creative design practice (Giroux and Aronowitz, 1986). 

It is clear moving assessment and engagement online has consequences and repercussions for practice-based art and design courses in higher education today. For these reasons, and as a reflective design educator and researcher, I was reluctant to fully embrace online studio delivery. Surely, the distinct signature style and values of a hands-on, dynamic studio education would be lost?

Yet, I and my colleagues rode the wave of the physical-to-distance/online delivery shift with little argument or obstacle. I now find myself in a position of being compelled to address what a distance and online ‘sticky studio’ delivery might comprise of and what that might mean as an educator of design students and as a researcher of physical, blended and virtual studio learning. I am now duty-bound to confront and address my assumptions of a non-physical studio delivery much quicker than I had anticipated.

Distance learning in design changes how, what and why we teach and how our students learn. What are the practical implications of design studio education in a time of distance learning? What are the drawbacks and successes of the technological platforms, digital tools and techniques essential for student engagement in distance studio education? Many have embraced this shift so far, yet I am still in the initial stages of understanding the enormous range and diversity of the platforms, workspaces and tools available online to support my teaching practice. I believe we, as creative educators, are situated at the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding distance and online delivery for studio education.

The preliminary successes and drawbacks of a turn to distance studio learning

In terms of preliminary successes in my institution, students seem to have greater contact with educators via the university-supported online platforms teaching staff now use in our institution (BlackBoard Collaborate and Microsoft Teams). The feedback from students is positive – they feel they have more one-on-one time with key staff and peers. Voting polls, breakout tasks, interactive hand raising features, chat rooms and shared screen access supports the teaching and learning approach. In relation to the drawbacks, block learning does not work online.

For my own 4th year Honours students, the previously timetabled 4-hour seminar is not feasible to sustain online. It is exhausting for educators to maintain online presence and a challenge for students to stay engaged for so long. Instead, I find myself dispersing the 4-hour block over the entire week. I host the main class on BlackBoard Collaborate for a 2-hour block, where we reflect work to each other, discuss design thinking and strategies for the students’ individual projects with peer feedback. I then set them tasks as homework, and we stay in contact frequently via Teams and email during the rest of the week.

My colleagues also say Miro and Padlet are key platforms for creative engagement and collaboration online, and as a means to display creative work-in-progress. Despite the absence of the daily commute to university, the students (particularly the first-year students who only began their academic experience here in Australia at the end of February) do struggle to remain motivated when isolated at home with little resources other than a computer and internet connection. They miss the evolving interactions with staff and peers in a shared, physical environment. 

As a design educator, I do miss using the floors and walls of my educational environment as a blank canvas to draw ideas and connections with my students, to visually explain concepts and to teach face-to-face. I find it difficult to measure the students’ comprehension via body language and facial expressions as they are essentially invisible to me online and vice versa. Digital Post-it notes are no match for the real thing.

Yet, my attitude as an advocate of studio learning is softening, although I am not entirely convinced the key values and properties of studio can exist online – the creative messiness, the situational responsiveness to student engagement, the visibility of critical play, materiality and the support of the community of practice and discovery. Virtual breakout rooms do not have the same appeal as a group table or studio sofa and demonstrating hands-on drawing, techniques and prototyping via webcam does not have the same attraction.

Yet, in these early days of a changed studio delivery, it is forecast art and design institutions will not fully return to the way we taught the design curriculum before. There are many points for consideration and discussion as we move forward to embrace the future of design studio learning within an emerging, blended sticky studio model in higher education. Who knows what that will look like?

As many Universities need to quickly move their learning online during the current coronavirus crisis, we have received many questions about our remote and virtual laboratories. This blog collects together useful information about our OpenSTEM Labs and provides links to online resources.

This blog post is a working document – check back here for updates.

What are the OpenSTEM Labs?

The OpenSTEM Labs are the Open University’s remote and virtual laboratories that we use to deliver practical, hands-on learning to our distance learning students.  The mission of the OpenSTEM Labs is to give students access to real experiments, using real data and in real time, wherever they are. We provide a mix of remote experiments that allow students to control real equipment remotely, and onscreen (or virtual) experiments where students engage with real data in a simulated environment. Students interact with the all experiments via a web browser. The OpenSTEM Labs have been developed over the last 10 years with support from the Wolfson Foundation and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. We have developed more than 100 experiments in subjects from life sciences and chemistry, to physics, astronomy and engineering.

You can read more about the OpenSTEM Labs here.

Can I use OpenSTEM Labs activities with my students?

Onscreen activities:

We provide free access to some of our onscreen activities. These activities allow students to engage with real data, but do not rely on physical equipment and are scalable to large numbers of users. Click on this link to register for a free account that will allow you to try the activities.

Free activities include:

• virtual microscopes (with slide collections for histology and histopathology, earth sciences, ‘A’ level students, and a variety of slides available at virtualmicroscope.org).
• Flame test – a simple demonstration of the characteristic colours produced by metallic salts in flames
• Spirometer –  investigate the impact of smoking on lung function
• Hominoid Skull Evolution – explore the features of a collection of hominoid skulls
• Variations in vegetation – part of a virtual environmental field trip to the River Teign
• iSpot – identify anything in nature – a guide to help you develop your skills and interest in nature
• treezilla – map and record Britain’s trees using Citizen Science

Remote Laboratories:

We are currently offering free access to some of our remote laboratory experiments.  These experiments use real equipment located in our labs, and therefore have limited capacity that is managed using a booking system. You can visit a showcase page to access our free remote laboratory experiments here. The showcase page provides short taster exercises and instructions on how to register for a free account to try the experiments for yourself.  The experiments available on the showcase page are:

• Pendulum exercise – take control of a pendulum and capture its motion on a graph
• Fourier exercise – switch on a “light beam chopper” and analyse the rectangular wave it produces
• Radio telescope – scan the galaxy

Access to these experiments is currently free, but is subject to availability. Access will be reviewed after 31^st July 2020.

Working with us

If you are interested in using any of our remote laboratories or associated teaching materials in your courses in the future, please get in touch at [email protected].

Remote facilities include:

• Remote Observatories
• Mars yard for mars rover testing
• Scanning electron microscopes
• Electronics experiments
• Pressure Vessel experiment
• Wind tunnels (under development)
• Thermodynamics ideal gas law (under development)

Further information

You can find more detailed information about our pedagogy and the development of some of the OpenSTEM Labs activities in the following papers:

Brodeur, Marcus; Minocha, Shailey; Kolb, Ulrich and Braithwaite, Nicholas (2015). Designing online laboratories for optimal effectiveness: undergraduate priorities for authenticity, sociability and metafunctionality. In: 15th International Conference on Technology, Policy and Innovation, 17-19 Jun 2015, The Open University, Milton Keynes.

Drysdale, Timothy D. and Braithwaite, N. St.J. (2017). An internet of laboratory things. In: 2017 4th Experiment@International Conference (exp.at’17), pp. 236–240.

Kolb, Ulrich; Brodeur, Marcus; Braithwaite, N St.J and Minocha, Shailey (2018). A robotic telescope for university-level distance teaching. Robotic Telescopes, Student Research and Education Proceedings,, 1(1) pp. 127–136.

I’ll shortly have to add a whole list of other technologies, services and ed-tech that are emerging as “class leaders” (That was a satirical pun, by the way).

This tech changes how we teach. But I’d argue that it also changes what we teach – and sometimes even why.

If every tool is a hammer …

Martin Weller has written about the tendency of ed tech to infer a crisis only they can solve and has already got his predictions in of what that might lead to. And the individual technologies and services are not all we have to worry about – global education is a huge economic chunk of what humanity does. All the big players are getting involved.

This is not to repeat those concerns or to dismiss what could be genuinely altruistic activity on the part of some ed tech. It’s simply that technology is neither bad or good: it is always both bad and good.

Always.

This is true of blackboards and chalk too, by the way: bad teaching is bad teaching. But having a blackboard lets you concentrate the minds of many on that bad teaching. And, with hyper-scalable, centralised tech systems it’s far easier to distribute bad teaching to millions. Even worse, if the tech is itself based on poor (or even just limited) pedagogical models then it distributes (massively) those limitations.

Technologies affect the way we teach and (as some forget) how our students learn. In some subject areas that might be OK (or more OK) but in design education it can be a disaster. This is simply because few other subject areas require the degree of tool use and embodied learning as design does. It’s not that other subject areas need less attention to ed tech, simply that it’s just more utterly obvious (visible) in design education.

Designers cannot be designers without tools – whether this is pencil and paper or the latest digital design environment. The tool influences the designer and vice versa. In fact, part of the difficulty of working in design education research is precisely that interrelationship between what is done and what is know. Without getting into the theory: it’s a bit tricky to separate what a designer does from, why they do it, and how they go about that doing in order to make progress in a project (which is yet another activity at another scale of doing).

Let me be a bit more explicit – it’s hard to separate these easily and evenly, such that we can see how ALL the parts contribute to the whole. This is (hopefully) what is valuable and purposeful in design education – that facility of tutors and students to explore these parts and then change them for personal improvement.

This is one of the reasons that studio remains a signature pedagogy – it’s a single place where tutors and students can ‘see’ all of these together.

That’s from the teaching point of view. From the student point of view, getting to this point is harder. Many of us will be familiar with our eager students’ desires to get in there and start with Photoshop without first taking a bit of time to think about what and why. This is not a student deficit – I get exactly the same feeling as a professional designer (I want to play with shiny new tools!).

But I am also very aware of how those tools shape my doing and, hence, my thinking.

Here’s three examples:

• The Sketchup building. I love Sketchup. It’s fast, easy, great to communicate things quickly. But it really, really, really really, dedicated to modernism of the 90 degree variety. Some really bad buildings have been designed in Sketchup simply because it’s really fast at drawing rectangles and extruding them. Great if you live in Milton Keynes; not so great if you live in Barcelona. (Mind you, this is being reset by the current wave of procedural modelling…)
• Nearly every website since the mid 2010s. I love/hate Google and I admit to being a huge fan of their approach to interface and information design – some of it is delightfully simple and utterly clear in terms of calls to action and response. But does everything have to look like this? Do we have to see such a globalisation of style and approach? (I can feel the burning eyes of UI/UX colleagues…).
• Every photo since social media was invented. Hang on – a filter to make your photo look like the 70’s, you say? Do all my photos have to look like I’m a smiling hipster who travels the world instead of a vitamin-challenged Scotsman with just over 50% of my own teeth? If I took a picture of my coffee cup the police would want to ‘eliminate me from their inquiries’…

OK, OK – I’m being harsh here. Design is particularly susceptible to style and fashion. It has always been like this. And style, fashion and zeitgeist are important parts of designing. But with modern technology the link between style and technical process is often clearer (conflating the two) and very shareable, often leading to the style being replicated without context, meaning or purpose.

The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem

(Charles Eames)

Basically, the tools we use affect the way we think: how we think; what we think. It’s really easy to get stuck in only doing a task instead of stepping back to see what that task is contributing. Sometimes, however, it’s great to get lost in a task – ask Csikszentmihalyi (2014).

But an experience designer knows how to bounce in and out of these ‘scales’ of working. A good grounding through design education aims to get past such fixations and always has done.

But what happens when that education take place inside into its own fixation? Will teaching using Zoom affect how it is we collaborate? Or will Trello, Slack, and Monday affect what we learn about design process? Or will Mural help IDEO completely re-define design thinking forever…

I have some answers to questions like these – but I have far more thoughts and opinions and not enough knowledge. We know relatively little, still, about how designers are educated well. More accurately – we all know how this happens; but we can’t describe it fully.

So, who’s going to start the discussion …

References

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Wolfe, R. (2014) ‘New Conceptions and Research Approaches to Creativity: Implications of a Systems Perspective for Creativity in Education’, in The Systems Model of Creativity, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, pp. 161–184 [Online]. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-9085-7_10.

Meetup 02 focused on assessment and in particular on what changes design educators are considering in response to current crises.

You can find the live notes from the session here.

If anyone from the session spots anything we’ve missed or wishes to edit anything then please let me know and we’ll update this post ([email protected]).

Overriding values

There was a general sense in the meetup that we are no longer in ‘business as usual’ and that this inevitably requires a response in terms of assessment: what we do; how much we do; when we do it; the conditions under which it should now take place, etc.

But it was also recognised that this might be difficult in terms of Institutional Policies, which may not be entirely appropriate for current circumstances and that certain explicit criteria of assessment may not be particularly appropriate right now.

At the same time, quality of some kind must be maintained if we are to respect our students and their achievements. The discussion tended towards recognition of individual development and achievement in students, rather than any particular extrinsic measure of success. But it was also acknowledged that this can be further complicated by professional or even legal requirements in some disciplines (e.g. architecture).

Basically, some negotiation between the absolutes of assessment, policy and regulations, and the recognition of individual learning, development and capability is required.

And on a practical note, we’re design educators – we’re used to this tension between transactional outcomes and the underlying value of a design education! (PS – See Orr and Shreeve (2018) for a really good book on exactly this!).

So this post focuses on things we might consider and can do as design educators in this space between formal structures and what’s actually happening.

Before we start, a couple of linked pieces well worth reading to get some more context on how assessment is being approached: Inside Higher Ed piece on assessment and from that article, Laura Gibbs’ (@OnlineCrsLady) list of HE policy and operational responses to assessment is worth having a read.

And a mini list of assessment forms, types and modes (well worth looking through for alternatives – even in design education):

• From Higher Education Academy (UK)
• From University of Reading (UK)
• Phil Race’s draft table of Assessment Methods

Strategy and policy in assessment

A few top-level considerations first:

• Purpose of assessment: it’s worth doing the basics here and simply (re)stating as clearly as you can what the point of your assessment is – and more importantly what it doesn’t need to be for, or do. Things are no longer normal so with curriculum changes should come assessment changes too.
  • Try making a diagram to help prioritise assessment criteria: absolutely required; ideally required; nice to have. What can you get rid of? What can you assess in other ways?
  • Use these priorities to form the basis of summative and formative assessment returns themselves (e.g. pass/fail grade; negotiated summary sheet with learning summary)
• Hidden Curriculum: There is a significant amount of hidden curriculum in design education – implicit behaviours; practitioner knowledge; apprenticeship learning. Some of it is hidden because (some would argue) it’s impossible to make explicit (e.g. embodied practice; qualities of aesthetics). Regardless of your position on such implicit matters, it might now be harder than ever to demonstrate these (at a distance) and make them suitable for assessment.
  • Consider the assumptions in your assessment and try to make them visible. Ask whether they are really necessary for assessing your students.
  • Try to make your implicit assessment explicit to students (or at least describe what it is about) or consider removing it if it’s not absolutely necessary.
  • If it has to stay, consider adding conditions to any grades – an asterisk* to denote the exceptional circumstances under which the assessment took place (see the importance of doing this in this article).
• Invisible learning: A lot of learning does take place without a teacher being present! Like the hidden curriculum, a lot of this learning is often not recognised or acknowledged. Of course, much of this is a summative or implicit part of the curriculum (e.g. that time working with student peers leads to far more learning than just a ‘working with others’ learning outcome).
  • Another way of considering alternative assessment is to take account of what else is being learned (especially in the current context). When you look at student work and ignore what was supposed to be learned, what else is demonstrated in their work? Can you offer acknowledgement of this? For example, managing a design workload effectively at a distance is quite a useful ability (particularly when there are other pressures).

When designing and creating assessment

• Redesign your assessment: even if you have to keep the same assessment, you should go through a redesign to understand the consequences of it in the current context. Even if you decide to make no changes, you will still be more aware of the implications. Even at the OU, where we are set up to: 1) do assessment at a distance and still support individual student needs and 2) scale this reasonably readily (not easily – a lot of people are working really hard behind the scenes to make this work), we are still having to do this to make sure we consider our students.
• Consider your students’ circumstances: If you are unsure, design for the worst imagined case (e.g. time-deprived student; caring responsibilities; poor internet connection (low bandwidth; low connectivity; intermittent connection); higher degrees of uncertainty)
• Test and prototype your assignments: Work through the assessment yourself (as much as you can) to prototype and test it (and see tech testing using older tech below). If you can’t do it, maybe you shouldn’t expect students to…
• Re-test and re-prototype your assignments: If you are planning on keeping your existing assessment strategy, form and mode, then it’s still worth testing. In particular, test any tech-dependent activity on older equipment, operating systems, browsers etc.
• Be responsive to students feeding back on instructions: if a student is having problems understanding what is required, chances are other students are also having problems.
• Avoid high intensity, high workload, longitudinal, high stakes assessments. For example, large-scale, long-term projects with little feedback and single point of assessment is a pretty toxic combination just now in terms of having multiple failure points.
  • If any of these conditions are a necessary assessment criterion then perhaps isolate them and support and assess them appropriately (e.g. long project – set up appropriate tuition points with good feedback points that are assessed and can be used later if circumstances change).

The object(s) of assessment

• Flexible timings of assessment: Many institutions already support flexible deadlines to allow for unpredictable context changes to student circumstances. But also consider when (and for how long) students will carry out work to complete assessment and adjust it appropriately to contexts. How far can your institutional policies and procedures be stretched to accommodate an increase in requests?
• Flexible modes of assessment: a few attendees noted that their modes of assessment would probably have to change (e.g. face to face jury crits are unlikely).
  • Consider possible online modes to assess design process and outputs. For example, synchronous (in realtime) or asynchronous (over time) modes are possible online. The webinar or online conference is an example of a synchronous mode, through which live online crits can be conducted. Asynchronous modes include, for example, online journals, video recordings and narrated presentations. 
  • The choice of mode will depend on what is appropriate for the discipline/ study area, the level of study, available tools and internet access, as well as the students’ circumstances etc. (see the list of forms, modes and types of assessment above).
• Elective assessment: a few attendees noted that they made use of elective components of assessment. Whilst this will very often depend on the existing curriculum and how far along with this the students are, there may still be an opportunity to create elective options around assessment (modes, content, forms etc.).
• Differentiated assessment: the idea of allowing students to elect different levels of assessment was raised, for example, a student wishing to pass only, undertaking assessment appropriate to that level of outcome. [REQUEST: Does anyone have any models of this they could share?]

Parameters of assessment

• Consider open deadlines: Common in Sweden are fully open deadlines, where students submit their work at any point in time.
  • This can make it difficult to plan time and resources far in advance for assessment but the group did generally feel that this was inevitable and part of what we would have to deal with. But, if we are negotiating assessment, is there an opportunity to negotiate both submission and return?
  • Perhaps more important is having checks in place to ensure that students can develop their work to a suitable level ready to be assessed – that they are aware of the expectations and assessment levels (regardless of deadline openness).
  • A Cape Town (CPUT) model allows students to submit work up to the last day of the assessment cycle. Should students have no valid reason for the late submissions, a maximum of 50% can be obtained. However, if they have extenuating circumstances, a maximum of 100% will be allowed.
• Consider extenuating and special circumstances: Again, most participants noted their institutions allowed for special and mitigating circumstances. It was acknowledged that the use of these was likely to rise.
  • Consider ways to make decisions around circumstance easier, such as deciding upfront how you will assess the most likely circumstances or scenarios that may arise.
• Consider summative assessment forms: a few participants discussed a range of measures used in their institutions
  • Consider a simplified pass/fail approach to summative assessment rather than ranking, banding or grading. If this aligns with good interim feedback and formative assessment, it should mean that very few students get to the assessment point and then fail.
  • Consider using weighted assessment if appropriate. For example, can work completed to date be re-weighted to still meet the quality of assessment? Can some types of assessment be (re)weighted to suit student circumstances?
  • Consider using substitution of components of work or assessment, either by lowest summative contribution or by agreement with students (qualitative).
• Consider negotiated assessment: Assessment strategies can be co-designed by and negotiated with your students. This is a student-centred approach that may improve buy-in and student commitment, through empowering the student (and lecturer). [REQUEST: Does anyone have any models of this they could share?]

 As a final thought, the meetup was a really useful reminder of how valuable it is to share ideas and practice with colleagues: perhaps a reminder that designing assessment should not be an isolated or solitary activity.

References

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.