hadii

Blueprints for Designers’ Lifelong
Learning
Session 1 - Me as Learner - Personal
Accounts of Lifelong Learners
Cİ: So, in the whole area of education and especially in
design education there is quite some movement. As design
is a discipline with impact, it is getting more and more attention.
Cities, regions and countries emphasise the inclusion
of design in their longterm planning. What we would
like to do specifically in this workshop is to focus on the
blueprints for designers’ lifelong learning. What we mean
by the blueprints? They are basically actionable ideas on
new curricular contents and formats for decision makers
and activists. That’s why in this workshop, we wanted to
have many people, especially not only designers, but also
non-designers as governments, administrators, NGOs,
academics, educators, corporates and so on. These people
are also involved in education. So, together we will examine
the lifelong learning as experience under the three
sub-tracks: Competences, Credentials, and Actions. We
will have three tables for these themes and each table will
be moderated by an invited guest.
Competences, Credentials, Actions
Cİ: Competences are basically abilities, qualifications,
skills for life. Why are we at school? Why do we acquire
education? It is recognised that all are for competences. As
an educator, at the university we start each year’s curricula
with the competences. We ask ourselves for what kind
of learning objectives and outcomes we would like our
students have in the end. So, in this workshop we will look
at this important area to recognise, value, and if possible,
reframe them.
AS: I think it is important to emphasise here, as it comes
up in a traditional curriculum debate. But, we would like to
look at the competences from a different way. Such as the
competences that are not so obvious, like tacit competences
or competences which nobody recognises, because they
are so common. But, if only we would be more competent
in these particular things required in daily life, it would
still make a big difference. So, looking on how we can
rephrase competences and how we can also make them
more recognisable. That leads to the second sub-track, the
credentials. Typically, we understand why it is like that in
school starting from the primary school unto the university.
Credentials are basically numeric values, which sort of
make the final full-stop after the time of learning. We think
that credentials cannot be captured as such a simple unit.
And, the credentials are very different in demand. Some of
the credentials are very personal. Some others have much
more public significance. How can we collect those credentials
with a lifelong-learning perspective? So, it might
be interesting for somebody who makes a job interview at
24, still to have some sort of achievement he had when he
was 5.
It might sound odd, but for an interview if I had such a
person showing me something he did at 5, I would really
look at that person and say “Hey, there is something which
this person recognises as very important in his own life”
and I would see him in a much broader understanding of
his own personality. So, how can we create, manage and
produce such credentials in a good way? And, of course,
information and communications technology gives us a
different perspective from a written-down certificate and
allows much more flexibility.
Cİ: The next is Actions. How do we do in education? What
activities are we doing when we learn something? We will
talk about engagements, practices that build competences
and provide contexts for credentials. We don’t want to
think in a linear logic. Normally, in traditional education
environment, as I have given you one example before, we
start with competences and learning outcomes. But, can we
think of other ways, for example by starting from credentials
or even from actions? These three are of course related
to each other, but we want to see their relationships in
actions and from a lifelong-learning perspective.
Cİ: In the first session, we will make the first distribution of
the participants into the three groups. During this workshop,
you will notice that we will change our contexts and move
from more personal or individual learning experiences like ‘I
as learner’ to more plural ones such as ‘we as learners’ and
’they as learners’. All of these will be projections and become
the basis for the proposal that we would like to submit to the
World Design Summit Montreal in 2017. In the first session,
we would like you to set the ground by dealing with your own
personal accounts or stories as ‘learning contexts’ from the
perspective of each of three groups Competences, Credentials
and Actions. Please consider yourself in a time-span either
from your childhood, or from the present moment, or you can
make a future projection. And, please consider yourself as a
learner who had a specific learning. At the tables, your group
moderators will guide you in more details.
Session 3 - Them as
Learners - Future
Projections and Preliminary
Conclusion by Introducing three
Persona as Lifelong Learners
Cİ: In the third session, we would like you to summarise the
whole workshop and confirm the work you have already
produced in the previous two sessions by introducing three
possible personas or users, whom we call lifelong learners.
We are of course still talking about designers as lifelong learners.
So, we will try to conclude the workshop, which started
with ‘I’ as a personal account of learner, then opened up on
‘We’ as one particular lifelong learning experience/scheme
in the second session, and finally in the third session, that will
lead to ‘Them’ as a future vision or projection.
AS: By doing so in the third step, we should be aiming at
more radical than what we have been so far. Also, we should
identify our group themes of Competences, Credentials and
Actions more narrowly and clearly. Because, I think, we saw
in the previous presentations that the competences could also
be part of the actions, or the credentials could be part of the
actions, and so forth. So, we would like you to do this third
session to get that focus, but at the same time to be more
plausible as a projection. Because, in the end, we want to
compile a document, which could offer perspectives of what
lifelong learning for designers can be, and at the same time
something which can present and communicate to others. So,
we expect that this workshop is not just an exercise, but in the
best case it would lead to real proposals and real programs,
either here or in other places.
Session 2 - We as Learners -
Landscape Detailing One
Lifelong Learning Experience
Cİ: In the second session, we will shuffle the teams and
ask the participants, according to the group dynamics,
to move to the other theme-tables. So, we will ask you to
work in new groups on a joint picture, a kind of mural.
This time, it is not a personal portrait, but a landscape
view that you should be detailing one particular lifelong
learning experience.
AS: You are free to use any visual models, diagrams, or
scenarios, where you sketch out what it means for one person
to go through a learning experience with this group
specific focus.
We want to carry that beyond this workshop. Therefore,
this third session is very important to capture the essence
of the previous two sessions in a visual and tangible
way as a scaffold. We expect three separate posters.
Most possibly, they are very different to each other to
communicate the scope of your ideas. The scope could
be different in terms of the age-brackets or pre-requisites
you look at, or the breath of knowledge or competence,
or the credentials you are looking at. Please
try to make sure that these three personas are different.
The more persona-type it is, maybe the easier to discuss
about and communicate our ideas. For example, in
the case of credentials, the possible persona would be
somebody who somehow produce, manage or receive
credentials for some purpose, expectations or rewards
as a projection beyond what we see, have and practice
today.