The d.studio Community of Practice was launched on Wednesday December 1 — just after the 24 students in the d.studio course presented their final projects to their clients.
The event was in the Museum of Vancouver. As a side-note it was amazing how many people don’t know where the Museum of Vancouver is — or what it is. Several invitees to both the presentations and the launch ventured far and wide to the Museum of Anthropology, to the Art Gallery and various other museum-like locations.
Ron and I each took 3 teams into separate rooms at the Museum. It was fun to be off-campus and in a different setting. I took the two Coast Capital Savings teams and our Vancouver Coastal Lions Gate Emergency Room team. Ron took our two Concert Properties teams and the AMS/Pulse project team.
Our Coast Capital clients enjoying the student presentations.
Am hoping to post the presentations on the d.studio site so not much point in going into detail about them. Enough to say that the students acquitted themselves well. The ideas were fresh, the presentations professional (and sometimes outstanding), and the energy was high.
I am more interested in reflecting on the past 13 weeks and on what should happen next. Ron, Denise (our Sauder Learning Manager) and I spent a considerable amount of time in the summer designing the d.studio course — from articulating learning goals and objectives to tying in activities and assessments.
I am struck by the difference between having the typical built environment design studio times — typically 3 afternoons per week for 4 hours per session– and what we had for the d-studio — once a week for 3 hours. It frequently felt too short a time to really engage in a different way of thinking. Typically it takes learners some time to make a transition in what we are doing and thinking. So We had to think about ways to help students enter into studio-mode and then often by 5:30 they would be thinking about their mid-term that was happening in the next hour. This speaks to the intense schedule that these students operate within. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of time for reflection and learning from that reflection.
Daniel presenting the Pulse Energy/AMS project
We have talked about either extending the studio over two terms or finding a way to schedule it twice a week. Not sure either solution is practical or viable in their current calendar set-up. But worth thinking about.
More on reflections and what next later in the week.