This recipe comes from working with video in design research, participatory design and education for many years. While video is a powerful medium for documentation and communication of material practices of design, it can be extremely time-consuming to work with and the editing process gives the editor the last word on the content, rather than people in the video.
The one-shot video format changes the role of video-making and its productive value in collaborative activities, as well as when working collaboratively over distance. The technique has become an excellent medium for tutoring over a distance, allowing a student or student team to present their tutor an up close look at their work-in-progress, whether rough sketches, physical materials or a combination.
One-Shot Video is a technique where participants use a smartphone to create a short video that illustrates their work in detail. The participant(s) are challenged to present their thinking as the video rolls over the supporting content in a limited time frame. One-Shot Video not only captures scripted performances, but it can also push participants to produce their best thinking constrained by a specific timeframe.
Serve to:
Students and teachers needing to communicate a complex topic quickly
Time:
10-30 minutes
Cost:
Low (using smart phone)
Difficulty:
Easy (once you get used to it)
You can watch and One Shot Video of the method here: One-Shot Video. There’s an example One-Shot Video and further support materials at the end of this recipe.
Notes on ingredients:
1) Material + voice path: Works great for messy notes and chaotic work spaces, since the path of combination of video and your voice creates the structure. Try to choose a path before recording.
2) No talking heads: No need to show the person talking, other than during the introduction and/or finish, the visual material and your thoughts are the focus.
Cook’s tips:
As a teacher, try making a one-shot video in response to a student’s work.
When I worked at Interactive Institute in Sweden, I finally developed some support material for introducing one-shot video for practical purposes, both a video introduction and print material. This technique has been introduced and used by hundreds of students (Umeå Institute of Design, Konstfack, KADK, University of Southern Denmark), and professionals in a variety of projects and daily work practices over the years.
And finally, here’s an example One-Shot Video:
Clark, Brendon. “Generating Publics through Design Activity.” In Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice, edited by Wendy Gunn, Ton Otto, and Rachel Charlotte Smith, 199–215. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.
Clark, Brendon, and Melissa Caldwell L. “Design Anthropology On the Fly: Performative Spontaneity in Commercial Ethnographic Research.” In Design Anthropological Futures, 169–82. London ; New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Lilja, Niina, Arja Piirainen-Marsh, Brendon Clark, and Nicholas B. Torretta. “The Rally Course: Learners as Co-Designers of Out-of-Classroom Language Learning Tasks.” In Conversation Analytic Research on Learning-in-Action, edited by John Hellermann, Søren W. Eskildsen, Simona Pekarek Doehler, and Arja Piirainen-Marsh, 38:219–48. Educational Linguistics.
Lawrence, Jill, and Brendon Clark. “Building Alignment and Sparking Momentum with Tangible Future Scenarios – Dimensions.” Design Management Review 29, no. 2 (2018): 20–25.
]]>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.
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.
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:
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:
Access to these experiments is currently free, but is subject to availability. Access will be reviewed after 31st 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:
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:
]]>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:
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 …