Design, Collaboration, and Computation: The Design Studio as a Model For Computer Supported Collaboration in Mathematics

Critical Analysis

In this text, the author examines the design studio as a place for collaboration, and how that collaboration is experienced through design critique; the conclusion is that studio is a valuable approach to learning how to collaborate with others, such as an instructor.

Referencing Dewey, the author explains that students need to learn how to regulate their learning, both by themselves and with others. The design studio is a unique place where this regulation is learned and experienced. The space looks different than most other classrooms, and the author notes that the pace is different as well. For example, studios at MIT “meet from 2-6pm three days a week. But these are more rough guidelines than a fixed studio.” While there are official class meeting times, students are free to come and go, and to work on other things while they are in the space. The “large blocks of time allotted to the studio and the flexibility of the routine also make it possible for students to organize collaborative conversations with teaching faculty and with other students as the need for input in the design process demands.” The space and time are flexible and provide autonomy.

Key to the success of the studio are desk crits, during which a professor asks questions, isolates problems, and explores implications of design choices. Professors and students “’design together,’ with the critic sketching quickly a series of design possibilities… the critic both offers design ideas and models design thinking.” Throughout this, the student is moving through a scaffolded learning process into an area that they aren’t yet skilled to be in; the student is “designing, as it were, beyond his or her reach with the help of another.”

The author concludes that design studio is a useful model for thinking about collaboration, based on the loose schedule and process of structured desk critique. A sense of collaboration is “strongly influenced by their sense of control—or lack of control—over their learning process.”

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that it:

• Further emphasizes the role of crit in the learning process as a form of modeling work processes, not only as a form of feedback
• Notes the importance of an open studio in helping students learn to work on their terms