Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2010

This article explores connoisseurship in the context of fine art undergraduate assessment practice. I interviewed twelve fine art lecturers in order to explore and unpack the concept of connoisseurship in relation to subjectivity, objectivity and tacit practice. Building on the work of Bourdieu (1973, 1977, 1986) and Shay (2003, 2005), both of whom problematize the view that subjectivity and objectivity are binary opposites, my research illustrates the ways that connoisseurship is underpinned by informed professional judgements located in communities of practice. Within this particular conception of connoisseurship, the lecturers' expertise is co-constituted in communities of assessors through participation and engagement. Standards reside in communities of practice.

This study surveys industrial design (ID) students' employment preparation in Taiwan, including career awareness, competency required, working attitudes and values and vocational choices. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were adopted and data were collected in three stages: literature review, in-depth interviews and questionnaire survey. The findings show that approximately 37 per cent of 904 participants decide not to enter the ID profession after graduation. ID students' career awareness is fairly good in terms of knowledge, values, preferences and self-concepts, but approximately one-fourth of the surveyed items received low mean ratings. The students' awareness of some of the job tasks and competencies required of industrial designers does not match the reality, and their perception of the lifestyle tends to be unrealistically negative, which is an observation not previously reported in the literature. The above, perhaps unrealistically negative, perception might be related to the high proportion of students rejecting an industrial design career after graduation. The authors discuss these results in the contexts of the national and international design employment markets. The findings could help design educators to understand what information needs to be provided to ID students, and help plan career guidance programmes.

This article addresses the increasing emphasis placed on industry collaboration and dialogue for underpinning student employability. Drawing on research with higher education students on digital games development courses, this article examines students' accounts of preparing themselves as industry-ready in terms of industry needs. On an industry-focused Games Design course, students highlighted their appreciation and engagement with industry needs and what is required on their part to enhance their employment prospects. Criticism in this context was focused on making better games. Students on a theory and practice mix course, in contrast, drew on theory to offer critical accounts focused on industry norms and production practices. To explore these different critical engagements and how they sit in relation to students becoming industry-ready, this article draws on everyday pedagogies to highlight students' revealing reflections on the industry-ready agenda in higher education.

Recent studies show that current higher digital media design education generally fails to equip students with the expertise and skills suited to the requirements of the industry. This is a result of design education largely adhering to a curriculum model developed for and applicable to multimedia design practice in the 1990s. Utilization of this model persists, although it has become increasingly unviable due to rapid technological advances and a resultant shift in the industry away from the individual designer and towards collaborative team design. An alternative learning and teaching model is currently under development at a regional Australian university, referred to as the POOL Model. This new model is a multidisciplinary system of interdependent collaboration and expertise exchange across university, industry and community sectors, intended for implementation in undergraduate curriculum to prepare students for collaborative multidisciplinary practice and meaningful careers in the industry. Using data obtained by industry, design educators and students, this article evidences the rationale for the development of the model, which will form the basis for the ongoing development of the new curriculum through trial and revision.

This article aims to explore an alternative framework of design curriculum among the diverse and fragmented interpretations of design education, contributing to rethinking future design education in higher education. Data were collected from thirteen individual and group interviews with fifteen informants, and a series of investigations into the academic performance of a Hong Kong university's design department. The qualitative study of the data identified embedded understandings and interpretations of design education expressed by the design experts, faculty members and local designers. Grounded theory analysis unveiled the experts' recommendations to the university senior management that design was not art in its own right but supported industrial transformation. Paradoxically, the designers aimed for art to be the foundation of design practices for economic development, while the faculty members faced a tension between art-based and industry-based design practices at all levels that reflect the nature of design. These diverse interpretations were subject to several cycles of comparison and abstraction. The findings shape the alternative vision of design education in the interplay between design artefacts and the human-made world, which integrates design-making, design planning and design thinking in a coherent framework of study. The implications are that the fragmented interpretations are neither mutually exclusive nor antagonistic in the further development of design education.

RESEARCHING LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY METHODS AND APPROACHES' GLYNIS COUSIN (2009) Routeledge: Higher Education (Taylor and Francis), New York and UK, ISBN 978-0-415-99165-0

ART AND THEORY AFTER SOCIALISM, MEL JORDAN AND MALCOLM MILES (2008) Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 125 pp, ISBN 978-1-84150-211-3

A HANDBOOK FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION, ENHANCING ACADEMIC PRACTICE, HEATHER FRY, STEVE KETTERIDGE AND STEPHANIE MARSHALL (2009) 3rd edn., 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 526 pp., ISBN 978-0-415-43464-5 (pbk) 27.99