My First Six Months: Students’ Perceptions of Learner-Centred Design Studios

McLean, Helen; Varadarajan, Soumitri

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-5883-2_12

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The outcomes of the assessment surrounding student capacity, formed a progressive learner-centred pedagogical approach, across a series of foundation year courses titled My First Six Months (MF6M). The aim is to shift the delivery approach, by incorporating "learning and teaching practices that would encourage students to engage in learning that was personal and socially constructed through their interactions, negotiations and collaboration with peers and teachers, privileging the notion of 'students as partners'" [22]. These outcomes also drive how the pedagogy and assessment practices of the first-year courses within MF6M were designed.…”

Section: Response To Change -My First 6 Months (Mf6m)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our intention is to cultivate students' independence and self-regulation as learners [14], fostering their individual development and confidence "by shifting the locus of control from teacher to learner [23] rather than default to teaching as a performative representation of an assumed or unconscious habitus in design [24]." [22]. As a team, we acknowledge that there is no one specific way of 'doing' design.…”

Section: Response To Change -My First 6 Months (Mf6m)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By leveraging authentic tasks and scenarios [18] at the heart of "doing" the subject [15], projects are purposefully situated in ill-defined and ambiguous environments [16], which require an emphasis on multilateral integration of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, with a performance-oriented capability [17]. Power relations in the classroom are aligned to embody partnering dispositions, and the role of the educator is reimagined to work alongside students in supporting and prompting, but not leading their learning [22]. Then practically applying the approach, through the notion of Shulman's signature pedagogies, (Shreeve [19] lists as: studio, project, brief, materiality, dialogue, presentation and the crit.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Towards Re-Imagining Industrial Design Education for the Contemporary Period

Dim¹,

Vere²,

Sheahan³

2022

DS 117: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2022), London S

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It is proposed that a progressive Industrial Design education should focus on supporting students in learning to self-manage ambiguity and bolster their agile independence throughout the tentative undergraduate years of growth [1]. As the field of Industrial Design moves beyond its industrial manufacturing roots, exploration of curricula that anticipates contemporary issues such as decolonisation, diverse participation and complexity in creative innovation is still not prevalent in this contemporary period [2]. Such a context necessitates an accelerated disruption to traditional design pedagogical practices [3], as seen in the RMIT University Industrial Design programme My First Six Months (MF6M) -a first-year learner-centred initiative situated around capacity development, student agency, self-efficacy, and disruption of expectations about the power dynamics in learning and teaching. This paper outlines the adoption of the RMIT University, My First 6 Months (MF6M) first-year learnercentred pedagogical alignment into the 2 nd and 3 rd year vertically integrated studio environment, through the case study 'Safeness by Design (SbD)-Enabling an Ageing Workforce'a collaborative partnership with the Innovation Centre of WorkSafe Victoria, a state government safety regulatory body. In curating the studio's outcomes, it became evident that the embedded predispositions developed throughout their MF6M experience, activated the diversity of students' thinking and acting in situations resembling real-world design practice, which achieved our SbD studio's pedagogical ambitions. We found this model to be highly transferable, requiring less teaching staff intervention and giving more flexibility to students, by reinforcing notions of independence, trust and self-efficacy in learning. Students are scaffolded as they dynamically explore and frame their own inquiry questions and continue developing their professional identity throughout their studies. In doing so, the classroom is firmly situated as a safe and democratic creative space, whereby teaching staff adopt a coaching role to establish a collaborative partnership, to further support student capacity and confidence.

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Section: Response To Change -My First 6 Months (Mf6m)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Response To Change -My First 6 Months (Mf6m)mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards Re-Imagining Industrial Design Education for the Contemporary Period

Dim¹,

Vere²,

Sheahan³

2022

DS 117: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2022), London S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A purposeful shift in classroom power dynamics from the teacher to the learner (Goodyear & Dimitriadis, 2013) promoted personal and social construction of knowledge (Bandura, 1997). The 'students as partners' (Matthews, 2017) approach was employed from their first steps, to engage their independence as lifelong learners into these courses (McLean & Varadarajan, 2020) and its objective was to cultivate students' independence and selfregulation as learners (Bandura, 1997), fostering their individual development and confidence (Boud, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

My First Six Months: Industrial Design Students Perceptions of their First Semester Experience of Learner-Centred Design Studios

Dim,

McLean,

Varadarajan

et al. 2023

9th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'23)

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This paper reports on a learning and teaching project investigating the experience of Industrial Design students in their first semester of study in three initial courses that were reimagined to increase students’ agency in shaping their learning. In this five year project, My First Six Months (MF6M), teachers aimed to create a learner-centred environment by using facilitative, rather than directive, teaching strategies in a studio-based context.Students collaborated in small groups to investigate a project brief and produce an artefact outcome. They engaged in studio practices of research and prototyping, pinup presentations and peer review along with self-assessment. Most students had not experienced learning in these ways before. Focus groups with students explored their experience of the courses and unearthed valuable insight into students’ expectations about learning at university and the design discipline. Students were overwhelmingly positive about collaborating in their projects, while diverse expectations about learning and teaching roles and bemusement about the different emphasis on assessment featured prominently in students’ reflections. Recommendations arising from their perceptions include providing an ongoing narrative about independent learning throughout each course and ensuring support and expectations for independent learning are more explicitly designed into the course delivery.

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My First Six Months: Students’ Perceptions of Learner-Centred Design Studios

Cited by 2 publications

References 8 publications

Towards Re-Imagining Industrial Design Education for the Contemporary Period

Towards Re-Imagining Industrial Design Education for the Contemporary Period

My First Six Months: Industrial Design Students Perceptions of their First Semester Experience of Learner-Centred Design Studios

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