10 Take-aways from the d.studio

Making lists is a wonderfully creative activity.  Challenging oneself to generate 3 ideas, 10 ideas or 50 ideas really does help push the envelope and go beyond.  So I am challenging myself to articulate 10 important take-aways for me from the undergraduate d.studio class experience:

1. Teaching and Learning is Fun and Energizing: Am reminded how much fun it is to teach and learn — especially undergraduates who are open to learning and experimenting and finding out more about their paths into the future.
2. Collaboration skills can be learned: One of the best pieces of advice I received from Sara Beckman at the Haas Business School at Berkeley is to invest in a coach for student teams.  We did that in the d.studio.  Diana Cawood first of all spent some time with the whole class talking about best practices in team work.  Then each team had the opportunity for 2 coaching sessions, using the tools that she provided for them.  The feedback has been excellent from the students.
3. Space and Learning Environment matters: While we did our best in the horrible swing space classroom — it was hardly a studio space experience.  There is the need for good collaborative set-ups, lots of whiteboards, and a non-classroom-like setting that inspires a different kind of learning experience.  One of the students called the d.studio a “space for creativity”.
4. Balancing discipline and free-flow: Always a challenge to bring critically important discipline into a studio setting — it is easy to let things  be too chaotic or unstructured in an attempt to let students experience a non-rigid environment.  But good design thinking is incredibly disciplined and rigorous.  We want students to learn good behaviours, not sloppy ones.
5. Benefits of Team Teaching: How lucky was I to be able to work with a colleague of the high calibre of Ron Kellett — architect and teacher extraordinaire.  There are enormous benefits to be able to collaborate on both designing a learning experience and also facilitating it together.  It is so useful to have a sounding board — and when you make mistakes you groan together and when you have little successes, you celebrate together.  I think the students benefit too — they see us not always agree and also (hopefully) we model good and workable team-work.
6. Learning Style differences: I was reminded how important it is to pay attention to learning style differences in all of us.  This was one of the great advantages of having Diana in the mix because the students all did Myers Briggs and then used Diana’s template for working in teams.  From their Blogs it was clear that had new insights about themselves and others.  And in designing the learning experience keeping in mind the diversity is key.
7. Explaining Design Thinking is Not Easy:  This continues to be challenging.  But it was interesting how the article in the Sun helped many people actually understand what we were up to and what the studio was about.  See link: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Design+studio+approach+emphasizes+creativity/3950013/story.html
8. A Safe Place to Take Risks: The last few days I have been reading the students’ “Blog Wraps” which are essentially a summary of their blogs through the term.  They are sometimes hard to read because they are so honest about the experience.  But one of the take-aways for me is that somehow Ron, Miguel and I managed to create a relatively safe environment in which they could grow professionally and personally.  That is gratifying.
9. There can Never be Enough Clear Communication: When we did go off the rails, it was usually that we hadn’t communicated clearly and at the right time and possibly using the right medium.   There are now so many communication options that it is overwhelming — should I speak?  should I use Vista (UBC’s somewhat clunky Learning Management System)?  should I email the students through the Faculty Service Centre?  should I email them directly?  I guess I can’t really hand out hard-copies any more.  And one of the real challenges (not just for students) is that we aren’t very careful readers any more — if we read at all.  Are we at a point were we have to communicate in tweets?
10. Learning has to be Fun: If we’re not having fun;  the students won’t have fun.  It’s a must for learning.