IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION A

Abstract

Combining my desire as a pedagogue to empower students and to engage them with more marginalized areas of design history, I have rewritten two of my design history courses to center students as knowledge producers and creators of an open resource. Latin American and Caribbean Design History is a student-produced online resource that develops and grows every time I teach these courses. Confronting the challenges of working on a marginalized area in academia and with attention to the politics of knowledge production, students work in creative ways to write design histories from a position of social justice. Through their work they challenge and expand histories in ways that enrich and shift our understanding of the topics they undertake. This assignment serves as a case study that confronts many contemporary pedagogical issues, especially those faced by faculty teaching history to art and design students. I crafted this project to address student engagement and empowerment, decolonizing the curriculum and the classroom, and the promotion of responsible research, among other recently emerging concerns. This presentation will address the project’s design, which was supported through my participation in an Open Education Publishing Institute funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the rationale and logistics of the project within the framework of the course. Analyzing data and feedback I have gathered over the last year, I provide analysis of the project’s strengths, how and why I have adjusted the project along the way, as well as my reflections on future possibilities.