Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

Abstract

The first year in the graphic design program at OCAD University engages students in six month-long approaches to design as a process of experimentation, exploration, and iteration. Rather than constitute design process as a body of knowledge to become known, the studio sequence asks students to begin building their own tools and methods. The diversity of students entering the program fosters the unpacking of design process as plural, not uniform or universal. Each pedagogical approach – system, sequence, code, dimension, information, and publication – is presented as a cohesive module of specific tools, techniques, and methods available to respond to the brief. The language of the experiment permeates each module, as everything made is seen as an attempt. In place of offering rigid methods, the context of the studio is one of critiquing experiments that respond to the scenario established in each monthly brief. Experiments are chosen to further in explorations, which are then refined into iterative moves as each month draws to a close. The artificial sense of being done is slowly replaced by a reflective sense of accomplishment. While this approach might be seen as too open, we see the openness as an opportunity for students to identify what design might mean to them, their lived experience, their way of sense-making. A curricular case study of the modules in the first year of the graphic design program will detail both the work that emerges from the studios, and the structures behind the monthly shifts in approach that scaffold from fall to winter.