Final version – brief research overview

Follow-up to Expanded brief research formulation from Inspires Learning - Robert O'Toole

Translated, with the help of Michael Hammond, into the language of the Institute of Education...

Title: An exploration of designerly learning and its effectiveness.

This is an exploration of designerly thinking in arts and humanities education in HE. The idea of a designerly approach has been covered in depth in the upgrade paper, but in short it includes the following ideas:

1. Learning is a process of finding and resolving confusions, contentions and complexities through the creation of designed innovations (including essays, performances, films etc) within specified non-negotiable bounds.
2. A designerly approach to this iterates in a reflective and evidence-based manner through three distinct modes of activity (or ‘spaces’):
   • inspiration (mixing information from the problem domain and potentially useful patterns and ideas from elsewhere),
   • ideation (prototyping, ‘building to think’, making ideas tangible, sharable and subject to testing);
   • and implementation (building a good, reliable, quality, innovative end product) with the emphasis shifting over time to implementation.
3. Designerly thinking is also powerfully reflexive in designing the conditions for its own success (or the conditions for its own ability to learn).
   

My understanding of the designerly approach has developed through my literature review, through observation and data collection undertaken as part of my professional role, and through reflection on my own learning and experience of learning. Details of all of this can be found in my blogs and upgrade support documents.

Through my professional practice, I believe that designerly thinking is present to varying degrees in teaching and learning at the University of Warwick. Indeed, I have access to several ‘sites’ (including both formal and informal learning opportunities) in which I know through observation and collaboration that a designerly approach is implicitly or explicitly followed. I want to consider the value and difficulties of this approach through the exploration of a selection of these sites. I wish to find out:

• What are the key features of teaching and learning within each site, how do they exemplify aspects of designerly thinking?
• What characterises designerly teaching, learning and the context within which it may occur (including physical spaces, institutional arrangements and technologies)?
• How do learners evaluate their engagement with this approach (at cognitive and affective levels)?
• What elements of support do learners feel they need when engaging in a designerly approach (including tangible aspects like technologies, as well as more intangible aspects such as “a sense of legitimacy”)?
• What constraints on their learning do they experience (are they negative or enabling constraints)?
• Does this transfer to the learner gaining a better understanding and more effective control over the design of their own learning? A better understanding and more effective control when faced with complex, non-linear, real-world problems?

This is a multiple-case study, with cases positively chosen to be illustrative of designerly thinking (that is to say, to test the hypothesis that designerly thinking is occurring with positive results for the learners). It will be accompanied with a wider (and necessarily shallower) survey of arts and humanities teaching and learning, giving a sense of how common these cases are.

Each case will be explored through mixed methods involving survey data, interviews, observations and ethnographic conversations. The data will be analysed within a process of triangulation, within and across the cases and the background survey. This will provide a credible and trustworthy account of the value or otherwise of a designerly approach to teaching and learning.

Case Studies

• The Warwick Writing Programme, undergraduate modules.
• English and Comparative Literary Studies, creative and academic projects.
• History of Medicine, film making and the design of postgraduate research
• Living Arts, a collaborative academic-cultural project.
• MA International Design and Communications Management.
  

Timetable

End of August 2011: literature review extended and completed.

End of September 2011: negotiations and arrangements for the five case studies to be completed; broad survey questionnaire design completed and tested; detailed timetable of interviews, observations and activities for each case study to be ready.

October 2011 – August 2012: case study research, year one; broad contextual survey.

October 2012 – August 2012: further work with a second iteration of the case studies, and possible extension of case studies; repeat broad contextual survey; follow-up students/graduates from previous year to explore the impact of their learning as transferred to other contexts.

October 2012 – August 2013: writing-up of case studies and the broad contextual survey.

Robert O'Toole : 28 Mar 2011 11:42 |  Tags: Implementation |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem