Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2006

There can be little argument that the design jury features as a key symbolic event in the education of the architect. However, whilst the centrality of the design jury is widely acknowledged there continues to be considerable disagreement about exactly what students learn and how. This paper, inspired by Michel Foucault's genealogical studies of relationship between knowledge, power and the formation of the modern subject, reports on the findings of a year-long ethnographic study carried out in a British school of architecture that sought to explicate the workings of the design jury as specific form of pedagogic practice. The study uncovered a considerable misalignment between the espoused aims of the design jury and the effects of the jury in practice. Given the widespread use of the design jury these findings suggest that it is time for schools to review, modify or even abandon the design jury.

In the discipline of architecture, images are central in the development of ideas and the communication of designs. This article focuses on the role of visual communication in a spoken academic genre the architecture presentation. A set of analytical techniques drawn from linguistics (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) was used to investigate ten first-year architecture presentations in an attempt to understand first, the role of images and second, how novice students cope with the demands of a multimodal semiosis, namely the integrating of images, words and actions into a unified speech. The analysis was focused on three areas: the conventions and rhetorical effects of individual images; the composition of simultaneously displayed images; and the interaction between speakers and their images. The third stage was pivotal in distinguishing successful from unsuccessful presentations. It is argued that a semiotic analysis of architectural presentations can contribute to improved pedagogical practice in the architecture studio, and has broader implications for an understanding of visual-oriented discourses.

Despite the recent expansion of places on foundation degree courses in art and design, its significance to art and design education is under-researched. This article considers how non-traditional students negotiate the uneasy relationship between theory and practice in art and design education by exploring their experience of cultural studies. Using responses from a small group of foundation degree students and BA students at London College of Fashion, qualitative differences were identified in student perceptions of cultural studies tasks and their role in the curriculum.

This article reflects on research into student and tutor experiences of learning and teaching via work-based, online learning contracts. The contract augments the possibility of widening participation, which brings with it a close and careful consideration of the traditional values of scholarship within the value systems that define art and design education. The design of the electronic version of the contract prompted research into the nature of the learning and teaching that was taking place. Evaluations centred on the students' and tutors' experience indicated that contracts provide an effective and stimulating mode of study, and a return to one-to-one experience, more individually focused, with an emphasis on independent learning.

Drawing-The Process

Digital Art History (Computers and the History of Art, Vol. 1), Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, Trish Cashen and Hazel Gardiner (eds.) (2005), Bristol: Intellect Books, ISBN 1-84150-116-6; ISSN 1743-3959