It’s the mid-term break now, and I’m still marking papers. I’m helping to teach two modules this semester – Game Design, and Introduction to Interactive Media Design. It’s interesting (though challenging) to see the difference in the way the two modules are taught, as well as graded. As I continue to teach in design-related modules, I’m also starting to gather insights on best practices in teaching, and some of the difficulties and challenges of teaching design modules.
Something struck me today.
The process of design is often a very difficult one to grasp for students. It takes numerous examples and constant exposure to practice before they get it. Even for me, I’ve been doing design work for the last 4 years or so, and I’m only barely getting a glimpse into the methodology that goes behind the work. Almost nobody ‘gets’ it and is able to put it into practice after one exposure. It takes repeated exercises, repeated work, before the principles become habit.
And that is really the goal of any design teacher – to practise and train their students until the principles that they are taught manifest themselves in habits of behavior and thought. You don’t pass on knowledge, you pass on a skill… a pattern of doing things. And this must become tacit knowledge – must become ingrained into the student’s soul – before it is of any practical value.
The trouble is… these things take time. They take practice. You can’t teach a skill like piano-playing in a day. Similarly, you can’t teach a design methodology in a day, a week, or even a semester. It’s a very slow process. You have to practice and repeat, practice and repeat… expose them to the same skill and same principle operating in various circumstances, until they get it. But how can you do it in a classroom setting? And how can you successfully measure the outcome, if the learning objective is a process, not a product or a body of knowledge?
It’s a very difficult problem, and I’m not sure I know the answer.
Right now, I can see that the best way to teach a design habit is really through a mentoring / apprenticeship model, the way all other craft skills are taught. You have someone working on something, and a more experienced mentor working alongside, showing them how to do certain things, and evaluating their progress, on a one-to-one basis. You’ll have to structure the lessons in such a way that one aspect of the skill is taught at one time, and constantly reinforced throughout the course by subsequent lessons as well.
