01 | Introduction to Hacking the Learning Environment
There is only one thing certain about how to educate a new generation of professional designers, which is that:
There is no precise universal educational approach which guarantees that in the end of the education process, a student will become a “qualified designer”.
Unpredictability is an intrinsic part of the educational process since its compounding elements (e.g.: students, context, etc) are mutable. Moreover, the kinds of problems and challenges that the learners will have to face in their future practice cannot be precisely foreseen, as said by Ari Rocha:
“The universities have to prepare the students for a profession that does not exist, to use a technology that has not been invented yet, and to solve problems that have not manifested themselves yet (…) He will be a professional in area that does not yet exist“. — Something Worth Leaving Behind.
The discussions about the educational models that could better prepare the design professionals usually assume that the dispute between approaches, school models, theoretical lines and other aspects are centred on the content, the learning environment and teaching strategies. The offered curriculum acts like a product in the “formal education market”.
This market is so competitive that it is not rare to see universities claiming their quality based also on the careers of their alumni. It goes further than just honouring the accomplishments of their former students, the students are presented as a “portfolio” for the university; a type of claimed proof that the university (therefore, the curriculum) “produces” successful professionals.
Nevertheless, some of the formal education institutions (namely universities and colleges) are losing credibility in its relevance as a main professional education provider.
Based on projects and research about learning in universities, it is possible to conclude that most of the institutions have a bigger relevance as a certificate provider, rather than a learning environment. There is a demand from the students for rethinking the formats and approaches of higher education.
There are actions already occurring in higher education on many different levels, such as within classrooms and departments, in the courses, in the faculties, in the university and within the government. It is possible to witness changes with the emergence of new courses in different areas of expertise in design and different proposals of learning environments (e.g.: D-School). However it seems to be not enough. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done in order to redefine the role of higher education in the design learning process and overcome the presented problems.
Designer definition is a moving target
Due to the specificities of the new challenges within design practice, technological development and new market dynamics, different strategies are being adopted by the educational institutions. However these changes do not seem to be enough to fully prepare new professionals for their future working life.
“In the early days of industrial design, the work was primarily focused upon physical products. Today, however, designers work on organisational structure and social problems, on interaction, service, and experience design. Many problems involve complex social and political issues. As a result, designers have become applied behavioural scientists, but they are woefully undereducated for the task.” —Don Norman, Why Design Education must Change.
Throughout design history, the nature of the “design expertise” in its entirety, was of big interest and subject matter of controversial discussions. The attempts to frame and to define it as an “area of knowledge” are usually incomplete.
“one of the difficulties in understanding design, is its multifaceted nature. There is no one single way of looking at design that captures the ‘essence’ without missing some other salient aspects.” — Lawson & Dorst
Therefore, to understand and to identify how people learn design becomes uneven harder accomplishment. Since design is categorised as an “old learning”, the knowledge is mainly “practical”.
In other words, it cannot be encoded, it must be experienced through performance. The learning process usually tends toward a “learning by doing” approach. An experience based learning in which the attempts to identify the elements and events that actually have an impact on the competence and skills acquisition might lead to a narrative fallacy.
The practical knowledge learned is strongly attached to the context, as this is the learning design experience. Although it is possible to affirm that there is a theory (that can be taught and encoded), the genuine education comes about through experience.
It is the process of giving meaning to acquired information through being exposed to different situations and reflecting on it. The conflict emerges when the proposed learning environment in universities have a lack in making this information acquisition meaningful.
Due to the tacit nature of the practical knowledge, its teaching process happens through specific formats of communication (i.e.: Telling and Listening, Demonstrating and Imitating, combining Telling/ Listening and Demonstrating/Imitating). The format chosen is based on the best fit with the different kinds of subject matter (i.e.: learning how to use tools, learning semiotic principles, etc) and in turn better suited for different students. Hence, the “teaching versus learning” design process is a “coincidental-trial-and-error” matching game in which even experienced professors must reflect-in-action in order to teach.
However a one-to-one accompanied mentoring process is not feasible due to conditions, e.g.: the increasing size of the classrooms; and also the increasing diversification of professional roles in the market, that cannot be fully and fast followed by the university.
As a result of the mismatching of learning environment strategies and individual cognitive process and interests there is a gap. In face of the exposed arguments and inquiries, the framed problem I will discuss in this series o article is:
Considering the mismatching of learning environment strategies and individual cognitive process and interests of students, how can the formal learning experience be suited to different internal conditions of the learners(individual cognitive processes) on the acquisition of desired design competencies that are not being offered in their learning environment?
Hacking Actions
It was observed that the students reframe the provided learning environment in order to fulfil their own interests and motivations. From the different possible answers to this question, this series of articles presents a way found to tackle this divergence, namely the Hacking-Actions.
It is defined as actions of deep understanding and use of a system (the formal learning environment) in order to run functionalities (address other topics or perform other activities) that were not originally planned, in other words, the redesign of the learning environment.
The phenomena has been identified, witnessed during the research and pointed as a potential subject to be explored in the design education area.
I believe that the autonomy and engagement observed in a phenomena called Hacking-Actions influences positively the acquisition of design expertise. In other words, by hacking the learning environment the student acquires competences and skills related to the design professional practice.
