Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education - Current Issue

In 2019, the University of the Arts London (UAL) declared a Climate Emergency and undertook to make sustainability a required part of the student learning experience. Subsequently, in 2021, UAL published an anti-racism action plan and declared itself an activist university. These initiatives require educators across UAL’s six constituent colleges – of which Central Saint Martins (CSM) is one – to underpin creative arts learning and teaching with an understanding of global ecologies and societal structures. Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, a considerable amount of this teaching has been delivered online. This case study – based on data gathered from students participating in online workshops – seeks to understand how established teaching practices, such as object-based and experiential learning, can be mobilized to support student understanding of these complex global and societal issues in an online learning environment. We also address the challenges and benefits of teaching art and design subjects using educational technology and ask whether experiential pedagogies can be successfully translated for delivery online.

Enhancing student success has been increasingly a focus for universities. But the context has changed, with complex challenges including a global pandemic, rapid digital transitions and greater diversity with related inclusion needs. Creative thinking is essential to address what student success could (and arguably should) look like and be. In this article we utilize Appreciative Inquiry to rethink current knowledge and practice. We refer specifically to our context in Aotearoa New Zealand, where data shows that a change in approach is needed particularly for Māori students, Pacific students and other ‘new’ learners. We explore a different way of working and learning – ‘mahitahi’ – and argue that improving outcomes requires more than incremental or tactical shifts in action. We propose a re-imagining of diversity, inclusion and success for sustained transformation. Integrating Indigenous approaches to knowledge into innovative frameworks, adapting future-focused curriculum and creative practice pedagogy in the process, could benefit all students across disciplines.

Inclusivity is the explicit and ultimate aim of Inclusive Design. Although the field continues to develop, it remains heavily influenced by product design logic and practices. Drawing on current discussions on how to educate designers for real-world challenges, we argue that Service Design offers a complementary knowledge set that supports novice inclusive designers in engaging with increasingly complex design problems. To this end, we describe how a Service Design workshop was introduced into an ongoing inclusive design project. The participants’ self-reported experiences were captured throughout and results show the workshop’s impact in five key aspects: re-framing the problem-solution space; encouraging a new design logic; challenging a heuristic approach to designing by systematizing the process; shifting views on disability from individual to structural and systemic levels; its effectiveness for student learning. We discuss how these findings have direct implications for building capacity to address increasingly complex design problems and for the future of Inclusive Design education.

Of all academic fields of study, few encounter as much difficulty with issues of assessment than the fine arts. Yet despite calls for greater transparency and accountability at the post-secondary level, the majority of relevant research and literature focuses on primary and secondary school instruction; post-secondary instructors are essentially abandoned to wrestle with the apparently irreconcilable goals of quantifiable measures of assessment, on the one hand, and the chaotic nature of the creative process, on the other. Given the above, the goal of the present research is to add to the understanding of the pedagogy of post-secondary studio instruction by examining how instructors go about the problematic exercise of assessing their students. Findings indicated a strong sense of confusion amongst participants and a need for teaching institutions to invest more in instructor training and support in order to increase dialogue amongst faculty and the dissemination of best practices.

Peer critiques play a major role in the design learning process. However, due to vague boundaries and definitions of them, it is hard and yet significant to model peer critiques in the context of design education. This article aims to gain a greater understanding about dynamics, motivations and contents of peer critiques. As a result, a framework to categorize peer critiques in design education context is presented. Also, a new type of peer critiques is suggested as compassionate critiques, which are defined as statements that occur between hierarchically equivalent, emotionally matched individuals and contain a general appreciation and sensitivity without determinate judgements about the idea, project or process.

This article focuses on feedback, a one-on-one design teaching practice that teachers approach intuitively and has been crucial within the design studio. However, although healthy student–teacher relationships are fundamental for feedback, research on understanding them deeply or developing them is still incipient. This research contributes with a tool for teachers to strengthen student–teacher relationships. The tool highlights that teachers must practise empathy as an iterative process. The approach was through a three-phase research methodology. First, a literature review on empathy and feedback aimed at understanding their relationship. In-depth interviews with students correspond to the second phase, exploring the role of student–teacher relationships in motivation and performance. Finally, in the third phase, a five-skill/stage cycle was put into practice during feedback within the design studio: the iterative empathy model. Results show that student–teacher relationships strengthen by practising five skills iteratively through a five-stage process: openness, perception, comprehension, communication and action. Consequently, students’ motivation and performance also improve.