Developing Research-Based Education: A case study in teaching Interactive Digital Media Design

Abstract

Art and design degree courses at the Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland are research-based degree programmes, and as such, place an emphasis on interpreting, interrogating and experimenting with ideas, concepts and contexts. The challenge of designing curriculum that effectively integrates research with learning presents itself in this teaching and learning context. Facilitating divergent approaches to art and design thinking and making, and encouraging risk-taking and the challenging of established ideas, conventions and models is a complex task for educators. Research-based working methodologies seek to question, extend, invent and innovate, a central tenet being the construction of new knowledge (including the notion of knowledge new to that learner, and not necessarily new knowledge per se). Research approaches to subject learning contribute positively in critical ways to sound pedagogical aims concerning art and design education as the site where understandings of the nature of the subject of learning, and of conceptions of learning itself, are challenged and broadened. In response to this challenge this paper presents a case study at subject level describing an attempt to embed in the learning experience (at a philosophical as well as practical level) characteristics of a research based investigation drawing on pedagogical theories of ‘transformative learning’ (Mezirow, 1991) and, particular to design pedagogy, ‘learning and the design entity’ (Davies & Reid, 2001). The study describes the rationale, ideas and methodology behind the design and delivery of a third year project unit titled “Interactive Digital Media Design”. In answer to the challenge of aligning research with learning the approach centered on a number of ways of problematising the project to raise fundamental questions about the subject of study intended to promote a research style engagement. This included conceptualizing the digital medium as unique as a representational system for carrying ideas, information and concepts and prompting students to engage in alternatives that went beyond existing principles and conventions through questioning where those principles and conventions derive from and reflecting on their usefulness as part of a progressive, research-driven approach to new media design.