Reframing Faculty and Technology

Draft

A common objective of all teachers is to train their students to achieve learning objectives. From the early education, to primary and secondary school, and through higher education, professional training, and graduate school, the learning objective is the main interface between the instructor and the student. With objectives, a course plan can be laid out, examination criteria can be prescribed, and students can be fairly assessed for their capacity to achieve a performance of understanding that validates their mastery of the course content. On a larger scale, learning objectives frame a curriculum of study and prescribe attributes of a successful graduate of a degree program. These objectives don’t replace the pedagogy of a given instructor but they provide a common framework where a group of instructors with similar skill sets can train a given student cohort. There is little doubt that instructors are masters of organizing domain-particular information in support of the acquisition of knowledge.

Paradoxically, a common problem in learning communities is the organization of information about themselves and how to approach technology. This tender subject is often made visible in times of transition and during discussions of technology use and adoption. It may be that instructors can rely on themselves for the focus and attention required to organize domain information but the kind of insight required for a community to “know” itself must be commonly understood, collaboratively developed, and irreverent of discipline. As this relates to the adoption of new technologies and their use – the 21st century institution needs everyone to have a common desire to share information and to learn from it. Once common desires are established, communities can begin developing practices that promote a healthy relationship with technology and build rapport in a growing learning community.

Support Services in Academia and Technology

Draft

21st Century learning communities must implement technology as a means to communicate information and balance a constantly evolving skill-set and knowledge base. Though faculty members often stand at the threshold to content-based experience, support staff, administrators, and advisors are a critical part of fulfilling the contemporary academic experience. The 21st Century learner has access to more raw information than can ever be coherently presented in a course of study. So much information, in fact, that it is often difficult to separate meaningful online activity from pointless wandering. Much like the impromptu meeting with a colleague, instructor, advisor, or friend however, the right information at the right time can significantly change a person’s outlook and the way in which they approach the trials of adult and post-secondary education.

The 21st Century institution can only take advantage of “just-in-time” information by having a proactive and innovative group of support and administrative stakeholders to create these opportunities. Rather than the support team that waits for relevance to arrive, institutions of 21st century caliber are able to help students to integrate informal learning with formal lessons by providing relevant information to each student when they need it. The challenge for learning support specialists is to understand what role they can play in the learning experience, what information they need from instructors, what information they can provide to students, when they can provide this information, and how they can best do these tasks. As this relates to the adoption of new technologies and their use ¬– the 21st century institution needs everyone to have a common desire to share information and to learn from it. Once common desires are established, communities can begin developing practices that promote a healthy relationship with technology and build rapport in a growing learning community.

Philips has long been recognized for bravery, introducing innovative and cutting edge, but also unproven, products. Some have fallen flat but overall, the Philips approach has given it front-runner status in some of the newest and most cutting edge markets in recent history. Healthcare, personal computing, e-paper - the list goes on.

Many of the innovative concepts that led to success were generated in labs, with small teams who were bound by their contracts to keep some of their ideas secret. Keeping secrets is the competitive edge right? Proprietary information and processes are the benchmark of success for many companies - particularly in high-tech industries. Apple's ho-hum new iPhone (3gSPEED) has an entire add campaign built around the 'secret-lab-in-a-mountain' idea (they should have gotten Tom Cruise to hang from the ceiling).

But what about how to generate that information and those processes? Should that be a trade secret?

I think that someone at Philips Design has the right idea and they are introducing it in a safe way. Their new game, 'Spark', is masted as a 'board game that stimulates creativity and innovative thinking'. Of course, their are plenty of games and products that claim this but the takeaway here is that Philips is an innovation company, it has success and innovation in its DNA, so I think that they are warranted to teach others to look at problems the way they do.

In 'Spark', Philips Design has created a product that teaches people to share a successful approach to new ideas (and maybe to recognizing good one's - their good ones :) ). As my colleagues Colleen Macklin and Katie Salen will surely tell you - games and play is how to induce learning.

So, imagine if all of the amazing (or amazingly successful) companies in the world dedicated just a small fraction of their resources to teaching people how they solve problems? Companies could compete on a completely new field of play (no pun intended). At the core of this new competitive landscape? Education of course!

I believe in the free market, but I also believe that sometimes companies need to seek sustainable and useful markets to be free in. Education - innovation, design, and strategic thinking - is that new landscape. I firmly believe that there is an untapped market for education but companies need to shed the mantle of lifestyle design and product delivery and focus on real consumer education. More than ever we need people to START THINKING FOR THEMSELVES AND FOR EACH OTHER!

Just ask Shoshana Zuboff who wrote an article in BW this week that should indicate fairly clearly where she stands on the need for change. I share Shoshana's perspective and am happy this article was published now, when people will hopefully pay some attention. It is critical that we find 'the useful market' in new places, on the ground, and hear about it from new voices, but it is equally important that the useful market be addressed in the exact same places from which the great ideas of our history were framed. Some great ideas and huge successes cause huge problems that we now face - big ideas will always do that. The solutions of the past century have caused problems that will challenge us for at least the next 100 years so we need to be sure that the world is ready to deal with the problems we cause today - time to play!! *knock* *knock* *knock*

Bruce,

Before I tell you whether 'design' will happen without 'designers', you've got to tell me what a 'designer' is.

I find it frustrating that anyone would point a finger at 'MIT Physics' as being a group of 'non-designers'. Aside from the fact that the example is low-hanging fruit, a pure physics student is relatively hard to find amongst the staggering array of disciplines on campus there. Moreover, the physics department has happily co-existed with MIT's very successful design and design-focused programs longer than many school's of design have existed.

MIT and schools like it have been home to strategists, scientists, and and general 'makers of things' since long before any of the proponents of design-geist were born.
But rather than wax further about how MIT is a Design School (I actually attended Harvard so color me green with envy), I would like to argue that the distinction of 'designer' is doing more to hurt the future of the global Academy of Design than any copyist or opportunist ever could.

As this regards theory, I would imagine that there is something to be said for the prolific discourse occurring in the practices, but I think that it is a dangerous and all-together limiting assumption that practitioners who own firms and publish books have anything more than the capacity and means to make and sell products. If we buy these products, does that make them 'good' {designers, theorists, teachers, even writers}? ... and is the future of 'good' design about making more products or limiting the impact of the products we've already made?

For anyone to suggest that 'designers' don't participate in the 'design process', and won't in the future, reveals a rather limited understanding of what Design is and a myopic sense of what it will be. I would be suspect of any practitioner who claims to have enough time to run a successful firm of any kind while also writing and publishing the last words on design - most of all architects. Unless, we assume that they are not that involved in either A. their writing or B. their practice. Most troubling about this discussion though is the willful disregard of the role that pedagogy has to play in the development of a thoughtful practitioner of anything. Are we to think that the superstars of the world will actually open their doors (jet, limo, or pied-a-terre) to masses of would-be students? That vision of the great-one teaching and fostering their apprentices was always a fairy-tale - one that has crushed many an intern into submission and a fallacy even when it was assumed to be a rite of passage in ancient greece.

I would hope that the future is not manifest by mere self-validation. Though sometimes an aggressive and messy transaction, discourse between those who 'make things' and those who discuss that which is made is a necessary part of society. Every evening and Sunday morning we have a slew of people who are paid quite well to do so.

But it is fun to imagine - next we should discuss journalism without journalists, law without legislators, governing without government, medicine without doctors, and of course - utopia without utopians. Thanks for keeping us on our toes Bruce.

Respectfully,

Scott G. Pobiner
Assistant Professor
Parsons The New School for Design