Andy, a few comments: re: scale (# of students) Education is not just a business. Yes, it IS a business. Or more aptly, it has to deal with financial realities like every one/thing else. But education is also a social contract. Keeping class sizes reasonable and not degrading methods for the purpose of increasing profits.
Further, I'm severely worried that the way we as educators are responding to the new and heavy demands for post-graduate education. How do we respond to it? I know I'm not being clear, but it seems to me that the rush to "remote education" especially in the design context where "knowledge" is but a piece of the total of the education system. Here's my thought. A person gets a masters degree remotely. They have a diploma and a set of transcripts, but is that masters REALLY 1) a true "masterery" of the material, methods, practice, culture and philosophy behind the degree? 2) the same value as the same degree (in title) from another institution? Of course, we already have secondary methods of evaluating degrees, right? I.e. we prefer ivy league degrees over others, or we look at specific degree ranking publications, etc. etc. But my concern is that we are actually in this mad rush to educate ourselves and provide the service of education, and not thinking about the long term ramifications of the services we are offering. re: Critique Andy, my reading of what you suggest about critique doesn't make sense to me. critique is not something you offer, but something you facilitate as an instructor. Critique in the studio is about the students more than it is about you. For me this requires 2 things to work: 1) Real-time communication and 2) small groups. the reason is that it requires manageability and relationship building. For students to critique each other well they need to have that relationship that comes from the camaraderie of small group studio. This also takes time to develop. Now one might argue, suggest that "studio" is for undergraduate education. This is where design education teaches studio and critique (as it well should) and thus it is not needed in the masters level. I would love to think so, but way too many applying to interaction design programs have never gone through foundation studio courses of any kind, so the grad environment is where they'd be able to do just that. For example the ID program at Pratt is 2 years for people who have a design degree (bachelors) and 3 years for everyone else b/c they require a full year of foundation before you continue into the real degree program. At SCAD, I understand we do this based on portfolio review. if your portfolio doesn't demonstrate "undergraduate" abilities, we tell the student they have to do the undergrad version of the courses before they can continue at the grad level. (obviously, increasing their time in the program). I think the MBA has killed education. Seriously, the MBA has been crafted to be a cookie cutter degree, towards the purpose of going to the next step in the bank or consultancy practice. B/c it is this vocational requirement there is a mass economic system around MBAs all over the world. It feels like to me that we are expecting the same type of education system to take place in our design education and career paths and I feel this is a shame. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37349 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
