Studio Teaching in Higher Education

Selected Design Cases

Elizabeth Boling, Richard A. Schwier, Colin M. Gray, Kennon M. Smith, Katy Campbell, Elizabeth Boling, Richard A. Schwier, Colin M. Gray, Kennon M. Smith, Katy Campbell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138902411
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317449805
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Well-established in some fields and still emerging in others, the studio approach to design education is an increasingly attractive mode of teaching and learning, though its variety of definitions and its high demands can make this pedagogical form somewhat daunting. Studio Teaching in Higher Education provides narrative examples of studio education written by instructors who have engaged in it, both within and outside the instructional design field. These multidisciplinary design cases are enriched by the book's coverage of the studio concept in design education, heterogeneity of studio, commonalities in practice, and existing and emergent concerns about studio pedagogy. Prefaced by notes on how the design cases were curated and key perspectives from which the reader might view them, Studio Teaching in Higher Education is a supportive, exploratory resource for those considering or actively adapting a studio mode of teaching and learning to their own disciplines.

1
Introduction

Elizabeth Boling

Interest in studio forms of teaching and learning is growing outside the fields of design where it has traditionally been practiced, but studio can be challenging for those who have not previously taught in this mode or experienced it as a student. Instructors like these may be the majority of those either contemplating adaption of studio to their own courses, or facing the requirement to do so as programs shift focus. The editors of this volume saw the need to provide instructors who may be exploring studio pedagogy with a source for multiple and varied narratives describing studio courses and the experience of teaching them. Other readers who may find value in this volume include those with general interests in studio pedagogy, those studying this form of teaching and learning, and those studying design education.

Our intention from the beginning was to produce an integrated volume in which the chapters offered strongly individual stories but a similar level of detail and reflection. We feel we have accomplished this by using a process in which authors started their chapters in a similar way before taking them in the unique directions warranted by their individual practices of studio teaching.

The first group of eight authors invited to participate in writing design cases gathered on the campus of Indiana University to spend an intense day and a half hammering out first drafts of those cases. We worked in short bursts, 15–20 minutes, responding to a set of prompts covering the main elements of design cases and allowing the time pressure to promote a free flow of narrative onto the page. Between these short sessions we shared thoughts on how the writing was going and how our narratives might serve the purposes of the book. The prompts were as follows:

1. What is the context in which you have taught basic design? For how long? To what kind of students in what kind of program? Where did it come from? What is the general configuration of the “traditional” course you may have been teaching?
2. What is the genesis of any ideas you have had regarding problems, concerns, enthusiasms, and new directions in this teaching? When did you start thinking, “I want to change this”? What is your remembrance of steps you took to act on these ideas? What were those steps and how did they work out early on?
3. What are the specifics of the course you teach now? Time, interactions, activities, materials, physical facilities, technologies, experiences, grading? Tell this as if explaining how to teach it.
4. What is it critical to remember in teaching this way? Common reactions of students? Common difficulties? High points? What has to be different in you to teach this way? What concerns do you have throwing a colleague into this class?
5. How did you decide on the major features of the course? If theory – say so. If elsewhere – say so. What alternatives did you consider? Why did you reject them? What has just not worked?
6. What changes are you considering? Why? What stresses does this course cause for you? Colleagues? Administrators? Students? What do you want to be doing that you cannot? Which have been overcome? How?

Another six authors and four co-authors were subsequently recruited to contribute chapters. We asked them to choose a period of time during which the prompts could be sent to them via email, one at a time, and they could spend 15-20 minutes responding to each one via the same rapid writing technique. When all the draft chapters had been generated, authors revisited them to pull each one together into a coherent form. These revised drafts were distributed between the authors for an initial review focused on readability and clarity, as well as for suggestions regarding which parts of each case struck the reviewer as especially interesting and worth further elaboration. Authors revised their drafts accordingly.

Subsequently the co-editors reviewed each draft again, providing the authors with specific feedback on what seemed to be the “heart” of each design case. We encouraged the final revision of each chapter to emphasize these distinctive elements of their narratives. This process has resulted in a series of design cases that offer readers a consistent level of detail in the cases together with a variety of vicarious experiences in studio teaching.

As the design case chapters came together, subsets of co-editors also produced three chapters addressing studio from an academic perspective. These appear after the design cases. The first presents a model of studio focused on its core features rather than surface appearance, encouraging readers to see that there is no single template for what constitutes studio pedagogy and to consider what the distinguishing features of studio are. A chapter detailing critical views of studio is provided next, illuminating well-known and emerging concerns regarding studio pedagogy. These concerns do not undermine the studio form of teaching and learning, but serve to counteract the assumption that studio is a panacea for the known problems of teaching design via lectures, structured projects and fixed models. Finally, we present a chapter surveying emergent studio pedagogy, or studio as it is being adapted into fields of design where it has not previously been the norm in teaching and learning. This is the context in which a majority of the design cases are situated.

Near the end of the process, two of us collaborated on producing the Curator’s Notes. Of course you, the reader, can dive in and start reading anywhere you like, but this chapter is intended as a useful starting point, similar to the notes that may guide a viewer in a museum who are approaching a collection of artifacts. The notes only scratch the surface of how these design cases may be experienced, compared, mined for detail and simply enjoyed as experiences to be stored away until they surface later when you are designing or teaching a course yourself.

The editors recognize that contributing to this volume has been demanding for the authors who joined us in this project. We express our appreciation to them for all the work they have put in, for their willingness to tackle a somewhat unfamiliar form of representing knowledge, for their responsiveness to our feedback and for their patience with us as we have wound our way toward publication.

2
Curators’ Notes

Elizabeth Boling and Richard A. Schwier

This volume comprises 15 design cases describing the experiences and reflections of educators who use various forms of studio teaching in their secondary education courses. Some of the cases came out of disciplines with a long history of studio teaching, where this approach is the dominant and default pedagogy. Others came from programs taking early steps into the studio or operating some years into adaptation of studio; in these cases the potential of studio has been seen as worth the pedagogical risks they might incur while introducing a novel way of approaching teaching and learning.

These are not case studies. The aim of a case study would be to examine a course or teaching practice using a structured method and to arrive at conclusions that may be applied to other, similar, situations. The author of a case study decides where its value lies, and discusses where the knowledge generated by such a study might be applicable. In contrast, design cases are carried out to give, as well as the authors are able, a rich experiential view to their readers of something that has been designed – in this case, studio courses and the teaching of them. They are descriptive rather than analytical, and the value of a design case is realized by the reader at the time that the knowledge it contains is actually used. This use is seldom linear; design cases do not present object lessons, lessons learned or propositions in the form of principles, and they are not generally used as templates for future design actions.

What is the reader who may be unused to design cases to make of the chapters in this book when they do not offer any explicit advice and the reader does not know at the time of reading when the stories they tell might be of use? As editors, our intent is to assist such readers. However, we do not do so by conducting any type of cross-case analysis or by drawing principles out of the cases ourselves. Rather, we emphasize the tentative and experimental nature of applying design knowledge, and respect the readers’ role in drawing meaning from the work of these authors over time. We do so by adopting the role of curators.

A curator typically serves as an assembler, a caretaker and an interpreter of a collection of objects – in this situation, the design cases on studio teaching. A curator carefully selects or assembles related works, and organizes them appropriately to facilitate the reading of the viewer. Curators often provide narratives that help viewers understand themes that permeate a collection, as well as to envision the overarching view shown in the collection. A curator decides how to arrange the work so that commonality and contrast are heightened to the benefit of the viewer, with the aim of helping readers appreciate that work in more depth than would be possible when encountering each piece individually. This means the curator must appreciate the work and be immersed in it, and consider the work in relation to larger ideas.

This is a tall order, of course, but that’s what we intend to do here. As curators, we will draw out some themes, similarities and contrasts, observations and interpretations that may be helpful in deepening the potential value of readers’ investment of time and effort. But be warned: we cannot draw out everything to be found in the book. That is the job of the reader. Fortunately, it does not all have to be done at the time of reading. The nature of a design case is such that it will reveal its worth to you at an unspecified time in the future. We hope to help you engage with the cases deeply enough that they will be available to you effortlessly at the moment when you may need to draw upon them.

So, enough talk about it: let’s get on with the job.

Assembling and Arranging the Collection

This collection was assembled, as described in the introduction, by selecting authors known to be teaching in studio or proto-studio formats. Several of these were invited from disciplines where studio is the signature pedagogy (Smith, Pable and Duer). Several more represent situations in which the forms of studio being practiced are established in the programs but are significantly dissimilar to traditional studios (Hokanson and McCluske, Rowland, Wilson, and Rieber, Clinton and Kopcha). Lastly, the bulk of the cases we will term emergent; in these, studio is being introduced in a fluid manner - either because its form has not yet become stable or because it is not firmly established within a curriculum. An original core of chapters was augmented several times through invitations to additional authors as we identified those whose contributions would enrich the set. In addition to their individuality as persons and the differences in their programs, the authors speak from their own educational backgrounds and their experiences in teaching. Some of them bring to the courses they are describing what we can call received understanding of studio, meaning that they have studied in higher education studio environments themselves. Others have observed studio teaching, studied it as a form of pedagogy, read about it and imagined it, but have not experienced it as students or taught in an environment where it is the unexamined norm. A few have direct experience of studio and have also taught in programs where lecture and project-based courses dominate. The perspective of each author is a useful lens for readers to keep in mind.

Figure 2.1 Color-coded organization of design cases.

However, the chapters are not arranged by the type of studio practice they describe. We have ordered them by looking across the many characteristics of the design cases and using those we saw as salient to sequence them. Using a small card for each case (Figure 2.1), we represented the multiple characteristics of each as colored squares. We organized them visually so that each shared at least three characteristics with its neighbors on the left and right, and each differed from those neighbors by at least three characteristics. We hope the similarities and contrasts between chapters will be appreciable to readers, even if they are not always obvious. As curators of the 15 works in this collection - narratives of the experience of studio teaching - we see our arrangement of those narratives as a sixteenth work. For readers who decide to peruse every chapter in order, we anticipate that these salient dimensions will provide a pull through the volume from one story to the next. As an example, consider the Tracey, Campbell and Rowland chapters. They share with their neighbors a narrative about transforming curriculum, but differ in the domains where they are situated. The outcomes of their efforts differ, as do the formats of the classes that they design, with Tracey establishing her approach essentially in one swift move, and Campbell evolving hers in multiple, painful steps. Campbell and Rowland’s stories share the dimension of struggle between institutional norms and their emerging course designs, whereas Rowland’s narrative ends with a course well established on his campus and Campbell’s does not. Tracey and Campbell’s voices share a comparatively “hot” tone in expressing their interactions with students; compared with Campbell, Rowland’s tone in describing interactions - while clearly involved and committed - is more “cool.” A reader attending to these and many more similarities and differences will find their appreciation of the cases enhanced.

Readers are welcome to jump around the chapters, of course. It may also be fruitful to read adjacent chapters and consider them in the light of one another, or to read them end to end and allow the composition of them all to form a single, textured vicarious experience of teaching in the studio.

Studio is Often Emotional, in Both Painful and Pleasurable Ways

We address first a pervasive emotional dimension in these narratives. The authors describe how their courses are constructed, the activities that take place, the knowledge, skills and attitudes they hope to impart. Beyond this, though, they discuss their own and their students’ feelings about the work, and their own feelings during teaching and learning, as an integral part of the studio experience - in some cases, as critical to both teaching and learning effectively. Readers may note this as a quality that sets these design cases apart from descriptions of courses and teaching approaches that consist primarily of lesson content or sequences of activities.

Almost every author talks about the deep immersion students experience in the studio. Such immersion is generally expressed as a positive feature of studio, and those in the field currently devoting themselves to creating immersive learning environments might attend to how often it seems to manifest in these settings. Readers should also note that this immersion is not necessarily pleasant. Pable’s students are exhausted from the experience of the studio, as they are challenged to complete five design projects, juggling and applying technical and creative content from a cluster of preliminary courses that add up to a “collective high-stress event.” Rieber explicitly encourages his students to create projects that follow their passions, and this fuels tension when students (and some faculty) question the legitimacy of studio learning compared with conventional classrooms. Students at the University of Saskatchewan have dubbed a studio class in ID “the widow(er) maker” because of its requirement that they deliver a completed team project “on time, on budget, and beyond expectations” to clients, regardless of the workload. More than one author describes acting as a counselor to students (wondering if it is appropriate to do so), or offering advice on balancing the work they are doing willingly in the studio with other school and life requirements – like sleep!

Some authors describe their own emotional investments as studio instructors as well, often those tied to their awareness of discomfort on the part of students in the studio. Studio instructors can be acutely aware of the discomfort they intentionally cause, and are sensitive to keeping it manageable for students. Boling feels doubts about herself as a teacher and she suspects her students do too, when she avoids giving her students the comfort of clarity as a core strategy in developing their faculties of judgment. Hokanson and McCluske talk about how comfort zones conflict with the creativity they’re trying to nurture, and they underscore the importance of trust to learning. Smith reminds us of how difficult it is to know when to step in and when to let students struggle, meeting this difficulty by being honest and transparent with students about why they can’t expect to have questions answered by the studio instructor.

Readers can consider the ways in which the authors express and resolve (or do not resolve) the question of causing anxiety, discomfort, confusion and even anger in students, and how most of them seem to consider this a necessary dilemma. Smith observes that students have become accustomed to the idea (almost a guarantee or social contract) that if they work hard they will be successful. This contract is often violated in studio, and that can cause some consternation. Far from being neutral, or even always nurturing, authors are intentionally causing their students pain and discomfort in these learning environments – at minimum these environments are not all completely comfortable places for their students. These narratives imply that the studio learning experience for students requires them to work at it and, while there are emotional and even social pressures to make the studio experience more comfortable, the studio instructor needs to balance the need for reassurance and clarity with the need to challenge students to learn by doing and struggle with messy challenges. Gray and Smith, in their Critical Views of Studio chapter (Chapter 19), raise the caution that the emotional dimension of studio can tip too far toward the negative if students’ discomfort becomes an outcome in its own right, or if it is not carefully weighed for its value in this form of experiential learning.

The emotional dimension of studio environments involves, for more than one author, the positive stress of staying on one’s toes. We hear Smith and Duer both talk about needing to respond differently in the moment to individual students depending on an appreciation of the students’ efforts and their needs, and Cennamo gauging success differently for each student depending on appreciation of where that individual starts out. Smith and Boling describe studio teaching as walking into a situation where they cannot predict what will be demanded of them, and where they may be called on to help students work through problems they, the instructors, do not know immediately how to solve themselves. Wilson has to be “on,” Tracey has to be “all in,” and Rowland works to be “present, engaged [and] observant” in order to stimulate, match and sustain the excitement and commitment their students put forth. We also hear about positive responses from the students – Hokanson’s colleagues ask whether he is teaching a class or leading a cult because of the enthusiasm his students dem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Curators’ Notes
• Studio Design Cases
• Studio Pedagogy
• About the Contributors
• Index