Kolb and Graphic Design

[GraphDesProject]

•Reflect on whether you accommodate these learning styles in your teaching practice. Do the technologies you use help you achieve this? If so, how? Or do they hinder it?

 

In f2f and online teaching of graphic design there isn’t that much difference; both will use the design process that contains (in a nut shell and it isn’t as linear as this) analysis of the brief, research , analysis and conclusion-forming, ideas generation and development, evaluation, realisation, presentation and reflection. So this process seems to dart back and forth across the parts of Kolb’s learning styles. There is a heavy reliance on analysis/evaluation which relates to Abstract Conceptualism and Reflective Observation, but this is also based on Active Experimentation too, so what I do falls mostly in the Converging quadrant with activities also occurring in the Assimilating quadrant.

 

I suppose I sometimes discourage feeling, telling my design learners not to evaluate by what they like but by what is effective against the (client’s) brief. Yet I do encourage the use of inspiration and talk about “aesthetic experience” to get ideas going by foregrounding their experience and opinions and for the learners to enjoy the work of design. I also ask my learners to reflect on how they felt about their work and working practices in order to develop them. So I do use feeling in specific areas. For new learners or for those who find analysis difficult I encourage them to discuss what they like or how they experience something, say a researched piece of design, and then “progress” from that to more abstract analysis. Yes, put that in inverted commas because I’m aware of the ideological debates around the status of feeling versus the status of logic. I don’t think analysis is any more objective than concrete experience is, but it’s important for a designer to think like another person, ie members of the audience for their messages. What I mean is that you instantly feel your reaction to an experience but you have to work at it to make analysis and indeed learn how to do that.

 

•What tools relate to the quadrants of the diagram? Does the situation change if the activity is accessed from a mobile, or done ‘in the field’?

 

I don’t think technology makes much overall difference to the above, for either online or f2f design learners. They can both be engaged in a lot of “doing” which could be technical, such as working on design software, but might also be making a watercolour or lino print. They mostly use computers for research, but also use books and journals as well as fieldtrips. Online learners may be additionally getting their instruction via computer while f2f would only be getting part of it that way (VLEs, tutorials). Design has for many decades been based around technology, design software and of course, printing. So it’s possible that they have a higher proportion of doing/active experimentation around software than other disciplines might do (any thoughts here?).

 

Recently many of my f2f learners have switched to blogs as well as or instead of the traditional sketchbooks to record their processes, so they are now thinking and reflecting in a technical and indeed public domain. This has actually helped the design process and, as one of my learners pointed out, whereas in the past learners would write in a gap at the end of a sketchbook page and then leave off their analysis when the page ran out or gap was filled, they now write in blog posts that expand exponentially to fit what needs to be said. So this supports abstract conceptualisation as well as reflective observation.  My learners also find blogs convenient which attitude, I suppose, must occur in the feeling/concrete experience part of their practice.

 

Trying new things whether it is a new piece of software or dissertation writing often stimulates a very real fear in the concrete experience area, that then, as the learner gets more used to the concept and develops skills through active experimentation, becomes more of a felt competence. So the more back-up technology there is available, such as tutorials, screen-casts, even straightforward written guides and activities on the VLE, help this transition. But I don’t think any of it helps as much as encouragement from the tutor or peers.

 

•What other types of technology works well with activities in these quadrants? For example, where do classroom clickers (mentioned in the Eric Mazur story in Week 1) belong? What about social media?

 

The use of mobile phones for photography and note-taking and audio while researching and recording has helped learners gather more data more easily, so especially on fieldtrips and any event where recording lots of research takes place in the feel and watch/divergent quadrant, it can be stored and retrieved to be reviewed in the other quadrants. My learners also email the staff or Facebook peers very often for feedback on type and imagery they are creating, which I think must occur between the Active Experimentation and Abstract Conceptualisation quadrants.

 

The more of this I think about the more I can’t separate out what happens in any one quadrant as the design process darts between all of them all of the time. I think this must be good as it allows differing styles lots of opportunities, rather than being a bad thing that distracts the learners!!

 

Sancha (@GraphDesProject)

[ElizabethECharl]

Sancha, It was interesting and informative to see how your subject is taught and how that maps onto differnet facets of Kolb’s learning styles. I do not know why I imagined as your subject is creative that the role of feeling would be more important, but I can see now that is not the case. I too found in trying to classify the process that it felt somewhat forced and artificial. As most of my teaching is delivered F2F how the use of mobile devices etc may impact searching is not clear as the process is very much the same irrespective of the technology used.

[GraphDesProject]

Elizabeth,

Yes, it was quite an eye-opener for me about the feeling aspect, when I came to think of it. I found the activity quite a challenge as, though not new to me, I hadn’t really thought if it in this way and it was alsmost impossible to divide it up across the quadrants.

 

I also noted that my f2f learners used mobiles to upload work to their blogs and that’s partly why they found them so convenient. I was asked the other day if convenience was a good enough criteria to use a piece of technology but I’d say hell yeah it is! So this must be impacting the way learners (and staff) feel about their concrete experiences with the tech.

Sancha

[imogenbertin]

Hi Sancha

Very interesting! I learned design “on the job” 25 years ago and there was a lot of magpie and monkey involved – magpie, find something glittering and hoard it for later. Monkey – see something clever someone else did, copy it. I think that’s not just true of design but many skills and professions but we like to dress these activities up in suitable terminology…

Mobile allows us to make the things we want to hoard or copy so much easier and faster… if you know how to find it again… Do you find it hard to get across why tagging with search terms is important to students? If there is an “aha!” moment in what I teach, I think it’s probably tagging/refinding but I don’t really believe in those moments…

[James Kerr]

Once one masters the tools and theories of graphic design, can it then show more emphasis on the feeling aspect?

[philtubman]

Hi Sancha,

What i found interesting about your post was the way in which the assimilation and convergence aspects (the ‘think’) have moved into a social domain (I guess the ‘feeling’ has always had a foot in ‘social’), and that technology has facilitated this, specifically social media and mobile.

Given that Kolb maps these quadrants and preferences on individual learning styles, and taking into account the statement above about social media, do you think certain learners are better at certain bits of the design process than others, or are these skills now part of ‘digital literacy’ that every learner needs to possess in equal measure??

I also find it interesting that teaching graphic design is the same whether its done f2f or using eLearning technologies. I would be interested to know how you ‘map’ the f2f teaching activities online, and what technologies afford this?

 

 

[GraphDesProject]

That’s a good question! I’m not aginst feeling per se! I think that if a learner or professional designer is able to work out analytically what works and what is effective against the brief then there is no harm in allowing some feeling into it – after all I doubt a robot could design as well as a creative person. The trouble is, design learners all too often want to evaluate against their feelings, being very subjective. This might be OK for art (howls of disagreement??). Pehaps the feeling, the concrete experience of seeing, feeling and understanding a piece of design is more important in the area of audience reception, so a design learner must be able to design something to activate this. So in that sense they need to be overtly aware of it. Enigma adverts, where the product is hidden or where the viewer has to work it out are usually succesful because of the viewer enagement.

The debate seems to be veering more towards the “affective” domain and I’m all for using this in any way necessary. I heard a quote recently that said learners don’t remember what was taught to them but they do remember how the teacher made them feel. I don’t think a person can avoid feelings when learning – whether these are negative or positive – and especially if they are doing hands-on skills I think there will be a huge amount fo feeling going on. But how useful is this without reflection too?

[GraphDesProject]

Phil,

Yes, I do think that some learners are better at certain aspects and always will be. Many young designers, for example, are really good at using online or peer-led tutorials and developing software skills. They “like” these because they are glossy and contemporary. If they cannot also make analysis and talk about meaning these are what the industry calls “Mac Monkeys”! But it takes hard work to begin to understand what this “means” (if anything, apart from style) and how it could communicate better. The internet is absolutely full of “inspiring  design” and this is great. But it also means that everyone sees the same old same old new stuff and repeats these styles. It is harder to find design with depth. So in this sense the magpie data collection is upped but the originality/communcation aspect is dumbed down. And quite a lot of internet sources are not very detailed, just posted for eye candy. When we challenge learners they occasionally make comments about us being old fogeys who don’t understand contemporary design…..!

I think it might be true that design students are aleady geared towards technology and the next new thing. I can certainly think of a few of my learners who are almost obessively like that. But we do still have many, especially illustrator pathway learners, who are quite afraid of the software and prefer to work by hand. I think one drawback of software as a tool of the trade is that some learners tend to rely on what the software can do to make a design look more “professional” (or jazzed up somehow) and we still try to get them to visualise ideas and concepts by hand so that it is them in control of the process,  not a type menu or Photoshop effect.

As for graphic design being the same online or f2f; this is what I have pretty much found. Of course, if you are in a studio with a real person you can see their work over their shoulder and comment and help develop it, whereas with online students you just wait for them to upload something and then comment, so you could miss part of their process ( I mean activity per activity in the process, not just set them a project and wait for the final!!). I guess that the concrete experience of Kolb’s learning styles, might be different at the start of a course for an online learner, expecially if they feel a bit lost (we all hark back to our first MOOCs!). But the overall delivery I think is quite similar, which is maybe why design courses are quite popular online. But colleagues who also teach both may disagree (I feel compelled to ask them now). It may also be simply that the online courses I have written and delivered – both HE and below –  have been based on the f2f courses and translated to online format. Perhaps this is a fundamental issue. However, they seem to be working OK.

Sancha

[MariusJugariu]

Sancha,

“I think it might be true that design students are aleady geared towards technology and the next new thing.”

Some studies suggest that students with dyslexia tend to be attracted more towards art/design/performing arts courses. I would argue that for some, technology is a way of coping with difficulties they face.

How do you see this related to Kolb’s learning styles?

[GraphDesProject]

I’ve had a thought while writing my forum post for Course Dimensions, that one of the  main things I do throughout my f2f and online teaching is to try to develop learners’ identities from being “passive” students to being “active” professionals. Keeping a blog and a portfolio helps this, as does working more and more into the skills of a community of practice. But surely identity is felt in the concrete experience realm and is a feeling. So to become professionalised is really to have developed enough skills and knowledge to make a learner feel that they have joined the community of practice. So I can gladly say that I am not trying to create a race of automatons, but I do use experience and feeling after all!! (Yes, that clearly worried me!)

Sancha

[GraphDesProject]

Marius,

I totally agree. We have had so many dyslexic students that a non-dyslexic learner actually asked a colleague of mine if you had to be dyslexic to be good at design. One of the reasons that we encouraged blogging with our f2f learners was that this helped the dyslexic ones prepare and reflect on their processes much better than hand-writing into a sketchbook did. Many learners with writing difficulties or sheer dislike of writing have done much better by making small blog posts, or sometimes keeping InDesign documents (not “amateur” Word, you’ll note!). So typing can be much better for them and indeed working into the blogs etc at the time of actually doing the practical work is helpful to the design process and thinking more deeply (by having several windows open at once and just dropping screen-shots and notes in).

Blogging generally helps writing skills and we have had very good success with dissertations which many or may not have something to do with overcoming the fear of writing per se.

So, judging by survey results I have collated, I think that this does help not only watching and reflecting, but the ease or enjoyment of doing is felt as a positive. One learner wrote that she “loved” her blog and the fact that they can take ownership and include non-uni work in them or links to their personal blogs makes them feel that they are enjoying parts of the process other than simply making design.

I think the same can be said of Wacom tablets for drawing and even Instragram for photos (though I know there’ll be arguments against that). My point is yours, for some learners technology is very helpful in areas that they percieve themselves to need a prop, even though they would probably be able to come to do just as well without it. So again something in the concrete experience/feeling section!!

Sancha

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