Communicating design ideas affectively

Within my first-year wood technology classes over the course of the week I have noticed that after the students have received a design brief and have a general idea for a teapot stand design thought up in their head, they really struggle to communicate that idea to me. They have limited experience of detailed working drawings however I have really focused on this in my presentations to them, they are well able to create the flattened-out development style drawing and fully dimension it after they have been shown examples of other working drawings off seat designs but they really struggle to show me a 3d sketch of a drawing. Not all students within the class do technical graphics but there attempted sketches show a clear distinction between the ones that do technical graphics and art and the ones that do neither, with the design element becoming a more and more important element of the subjects I teach I feel that sketching ideas must become an area that students become more comfortable with within my classroom as it is a key aspect of design. Students don’t seem to see the full importance of these sketches, but I feel I must promote them as to quote a passage from Welch students must “learn the relationship between sketching and thinking, and how to use sketches to clarify and show details of their design thinking” (Welch, 1999).

Within Lane Seery Gordons 2010 paper on the importance of promoting freehand sketching they outline how the Department of Education and Science emphasises the value of freehand drawing and the role that it plays in “explaining as well as solving problems” (DOE, 2007) and I think in many cases schools don’t do enough of this especially with younger year groups where the importance of the steps of design can often get glossed over until they reach leaving cert level and are asked to design an artefact, they then struggle with this task due to lack of prior experiences.

I also feel that I could in the coming weeks sit in on a few art classes for example in order to take some techniques or teaching practices from the art teacher which I could apply to some of my classes when either introducing a design idea or relaying a concept to them, this cross curricular knowledge and skills links well with some of the reading I have done within Lane Seery Gordons 2010 paper in which Seery outlines how this trans-disciplinary knowledge could be used to advance the learning process (Seery, 2003).

I am happy with the progress of all classes this week especially my fifth-year construction students who have taken in quite a bit of information this week, they have received the 2010 practical bench test. In the coming week I hope to continue the bench test and ensuring the students follow the correct procedure.

Bibliography

Education, D. o., 2011. literacy and numeracy for learning and life, dublin: department of education and skills.

Lane, D., Seery, N. & Gordon, S., 2010. A Paradigm for Promoting Visual Synthesis through Freehand Sketching. Design and Technology Education, 15(3), pp. 68-90.

LIM, W. a., 1999. Teaching sketching and its effect on the solutions produced by novice designers. 1st ed. Loughborough: Loughborough University.