Approaches to Coaching Students in Design Reviews

What I read

In this text, the authors summarize the different teaching approaches instructors used during teaching. The authors conclude that design teachers use a common set of design teaching approaches.

First, the authors present a brief explanation of design reviews, noting that they are the “bread and butter” of how students learn design. They introduce the word coaching as a process of advice-giving, and a coach is someone participating in the advice-giving situation. Prior work breaks coaching into three areas: functions, or the mechanisms for learning; contributions, or the way designers form identity of a professional practitioner; and roles, or the types of ways a coach presents themselves. A list of techniques is provided for each aspect. The authors discuss the way design reviews may differ in different disciplines, and how different collaborative styles, such as group critique, change the form of coaching.

The authors then describe the goal of their research, which is to “characterize teacher approaches for coaching students during design reviews.” They will approach this goal through a framework called Pedagogical Content Knowledge (or PCK), a way to make visible tacit teaching knowledge. A diagram is used to present the eight aspects of PCK. Two of these approaches are described in more depth, and three new frameworks are introduced as well.

At this point, I will stop my summary.

What I learned and what I think

During this morning reading of academic content, I haven’t yet found a paper that I was unable to at least summarize, as summarization is a pretty straight-forward activity. But this is that paper. I read it several times, and I just can’t understand it. I think the reason is the complexity curve; we never get to any point of synthesis, so I’m basically reading the raw thoughts from the authors.

A quick sidetrip. This paper is almost identical to a second paper, by the same authors, on the same topics. I don't understand how that's legit. Maybe the other one is easier to read.

Instead of working with this, I’ll reflect a little on my own experience with different ways I interact with students. I don’t know if these are considered pedagogically sound, but I do know some of them work, at least for some students.

When I was teaching development of form, our classes were in a classroom with movable, long, public desks. This isn’t a typical studio space in the sense of permanence and owned area, but in the 2.5 hour class, there is enough time for students to essentially camp, and that means I had an opportunity to go student-by-student and discuss their work. If I remember correctly (this was over 20 years ago? Is that possible?), I spent a lot of my time focusing on things other than the forms themselves. We talked a great deal about process, in the form of iterations, and the importance of working through subtle differences, and I do remember demoing that a lot. I remember talking a lot about the problem with literal approaches (that candleholder looks like a car, and that’s dumb), which is more about how a student learns to interpret a problem in the context of something designerly. I also spent time sort of performing as a way of introducing the way process work isn’t precious: drawing on top of things, cutting them to separate ideas from one-another physically, drawing on scrap paper, crumpling things.

Since a lot of this was happening in that open space, I sort of remember tailoring my approach to what I thought was my trust relationship with a student, but I also know I screwed this up with my over-focus on objectivity. I really don’t remember discussing the content itself very much, and maybe this was because I didn’t feel qualified to talk about it, or because I was more focused on the “journey” part.

On the other hand, in something like qualitative research—which was so much more formalized—a lot of my approach was more on driving towards the actual completion of the project deliverables by due dates, but also emphasizing thoroughness, particularly with written materials and presentation materials. Maybe this is because a lot of qualitative research, prior to synthesis, is so objective: I did these things, here’s my method, here’s my rigor, and here’s what I heard. The lack of interpretation is actually what makes it so feedback-able, because it can entirely focus on clearly-critiqueable technique and on binary output (you either did it or didn’t.)

A lot of the assignment structuring was based on the idea of “you can do a lot more than you think you can,” and I remember assigning things that probably shouldn’t have been possible in the amount of time provided, but students succeeded anyways. That was true at AC4D, less in the amount of time—which was super flexible—but more on the subject itself. Getting into context is the hardest part of a lot of research, and without realizing that something will be so difficult, students just sort of figure it out.

It's probably worth modeling out more of these approaches that I use, at least for my own curiosity.

Here are some questions for me to ponder, and maybe try to formalize some answers.

Is there a way any of this can actually occur remotely? What about at scale? What about quickly? You can’t cut corners…

Is there really any value at all in a formal critique, other than “thick skin building”?

What was it about shared desk conversation, rather than private cube conversation, that was so effective?

Why is a “working session” so effective for some students?