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Curriculum Development
There are probably as many definitions of curriculum as there are curricula; Kerr defines curriculum as, ‘All the learning which is planned and guided by the school, whether it is carried on in groups or individually, inside or outside the school’, (infed.org, 2007) and the University of Kansas quotes several definitions ranging from T. Valiga and C. Magel’s stark definition of the curriculum as, ‘The subject matter taught to students’, to R. Doll’s more expansive definition as the, ‘formal and informal content and process by which learners gain knowledge and understanding, develop skills, and alter attitudes, appreciations, and values under the auspices of that school’. I feel that Doll’s definition probably best reflects the current thinking on the nature of a curriculum as being far more than just what is taught within an educational institution, this added value is often referred to as ‘the hidden curriculum’ and is defined by Kelly as, ‘those things that are learned at school, (but) which are not in themselves overtly included in the planning or even the consciousness of those responsible for the school arrangements.’ (A.V. Kelly, 2004 p.5) By which he means the additional social skills and institutional values that are implicitly learned whilst studying within an educational institution.
The curriculum I have developed is called Adobe Illustrator 101 and is a short, product based course aimed at quickly creating a level knowledge and skill baseline on which to start teaching any group of graphic design students in post compulsory education up to degree level. The subject of my curriculum development became evident within a week of starting my work based experience and my conviction that a course like this is, not only essential within my current student level – HND level art and design – but would be also of considerable benefit to any post compulsory student wishing to study any form of commercialise art and design up to first year degree level, by which I mean graphic design, textile design, illustration, etc, in fact any course which would involve the use of a computer as an aid to design.
The computer has revolutionised the way all the commercial arts are undertaken, and in turn how they have to be taught and like all progress it has its positives and its negatives. The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGI) in their briefing paper with the The National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NSSAD) states that:
The problem with this new reliance on technology is that if students have not got a basic grasp of industry software when starting courses in graphic design (I will use graphic design as my subject but as stated earlier this could apply to all the commercial arts) they cannot now freely express any creative ideas they may have, and where in the past a teacher could see all the students thoughts and ideas drawn on paper, students are now only implementing ideas that they are technologically capable of producing, which is not a true measure of their actual creative abilities.
The course I have designed can be classed as being product based, in so much as it has a definite pre-determined end product, rather than being concerned more with the journey, or process, which is often the model used within art and design education. It is also based a deficiency model, meaning that it ‘assumes that there are basic deficiencies in the learner, which need to be remedied before progress with normal provision can begin’, Gill Whittaker (2007 p1). One of the accepted drawbacks of this kind of ‘remedial’ course is that it can hold back brighter students, whilst reinforcing the weaknesses in lesser achieving students. To get around these issues I have deliberately designed the course so that it is still based on creative exercises that all levels of students will enjoy and benefit from and will allow them to reach design solutions that aren’t limited by their baseline abilities, yet is totally measurable by the teacher on a sliding scale of technological ability that should clearly demonstrate a students growing abilities in not only the core program (Adobe Illustrator) but also their growing confidence and independence.
Independent learning was defined by Philip Candy in 1991 as, ‘a process, a method and a philosophy of education whereby a learner acquires knowledge by his or her own efforts and develops the ability for enquiry and critical evaluation’ and he later goes on to say that ‘Teachers can facilitate independent learning through deliberate surrendering of certain prerogatives and the acceptance of responsibility by the learner’. (www.brookes.ac.uk, 2007). This ability to independently acquire knowledge, though listed last on the assessment chart is actually an incredibly important aspect of my curriculum aims, because the ability to independently solve problems and find solutions is a skill that in my, though limited, experience is lacking in students at H3/4 levels as they are still used to the teacher being the sole point of knowledge and information, and I have been disturbed to find students sitting staring at their computer, waiting for the me to provide the solution when if they had the confidence to independently experiment they would in most cases be able to find the solution themselves.
If we instill students with the confidence to acquire knowledge for themselves at this early stage it will prepare them for higher education within art and design, where they will be expected to work independently and in a self directed way for an increasingly large proportion of the time.
To encourage this style of learning the course is essentially designed around a series interactive screen shots taken from various key points of the program that can be used by the teacher to deliver a directed lecture at the start of each session and then as a support to the students as they then attempt the exercises. Students can click on the screen shots in highlighted ‘hotspots’ and they are then taken online to various Internet based resources – video tutorials and illustrated tutorials etc. The teacher is instructed to deliberately step back and let students take more responsibility for their own learning. The Brookes University lists the benefits of independent learning as:
The Saskatchewan Education Board also notes that,
Each of the four sessions that make up this course are three hours long and are designed to be taught, once a week, over the first four weeks of the main curriculum they are supporting. The decision to keep the sessions to essentially half days is to allow the teacher to not only assess the courses effectiveness against the core curriculum but to allow the teacher to observe and if necessary encourage the students in the use the interactive resource from my remedial course as an aid on their main course. By running the course in conjunction with the main curriculum this also minimises its impact on already established schemes of work and lesson plans that the curriculum planning team will have already developed. It is designed as a ‘preformed bolt on’ to a variety of syllabi that planning teams can include without disrupting the core course.
As I have mentioned earlier, with its increasing reliance on technology, the issue of software competence is something curriculum-planning teams within art and design, and more specifically, graphic design education are going to have to address more and more frequently as key stakeholders such as future employers and central government demand an increasingly computer and software literate workforce. Because art and design at a higher level is now mainly delivered within a university environment, curriculum planning teams are not only being asked to ensure that design education is vocationally relevant and academically rigorous, but are also being asked to deliver this through shorter taught sessions, as the traditional 6 hour art and design module is replaced by the 4 hour academic module. To achieve this it is vital that they have a tools to quickly bring students up to the required competence on core software, so that lecturers can concentrate on delivering the ever expanding curriculum content that university academic boards are increasingly demanding.
The key moment of the course is session 3, where exercise 4, The Pen or Vector Tool, is deliberately set at the end of the session and expected to be completed by the start of session 4. The use of the vector pen tool is one of the most difficult skills to master within the Adobe Illustrator program, yet by using the interactive cd and the video tutorials it links to, students should be able to master the basics of this tool as easily as if they were sitting watching a directed lecture and because they will have taken ownership of this learned skill they should retain the knowledge better and their overall confidence will be increased.
The students are assessed on a seven point scale, four being the expected baseline for students starting the course. As the course is designed to be deliverable to students across a wide range of ages and core abilities, the baseline for each group of students will be different and the individual course tutors are expected to use the first exercise to establish the baseline ability of their group and then relate the seven point scale to these abilities. Each exercise, except the first which, as already stated, is used as an entry level assessment, incorporates skills learnt in the last exercise to help re-enforce these skills and is marked against four points;
A student’s ability to navigate and save files on the Apple Macintosh platform.
A students ability to work and design freely using the exercise specific tool, plus their general ability to use Adobe Illustrator.
A student’s ability to express their thoughts and ideas using Adobe Illustrator without being impaired by lack of technological ability.
A student’s ability to learn and develop strategies to self-learn outside the supplied materials.
With each exercise students’ scores should rise and any student struggling can be easily identified and the individual section can be repeated either in class or ideally the student should be encouraged to use the cd in their own time and bring the exercise in next session to be reevaluated. As this course is designed to be delivered to students of various ages, they will obviously be of various levels of creative maturity, by which I mean we wouldn’t expect a first year A level student to be as accomplished designer as a first year degree student. It has been deliberately left to the individual course tutor to use his knowledge and judgment to access his students growing creative confidence against their own expectations of students at a particular stage in their education. Assessment of students learning can thus be described as being ‘norm referenced’ as it, ‘compare(s) an individual student’s performance with the performance of an entire group of his or her peers.” (Curzon, 2004, p384)
Another feature of this course is because it can either be taught or self-taught it easily accommodates all the various learning styles. Because of this flexibility it offers tutors an excellent opportunity to address any equal opportunity and individual student differentiation issues they may have identified at the start of their courses and the course can then be individually tailored to meet students specific learning needs; e.g. learners with dyslexia can be encouraged to use the online video tutorials which being both visual and auditory and not tactile better suit their learning style. In keeping with the independent learning style advocated, teachers are asked in the tutor notes to encourage students to use the CD as a starting point to discovering online resources that better suit their individual learning styles, and to share any discoveries with the other students and the teacher so that they can be included in future editions of the CD. In this way the course should grow and grow with each successive group of students adding to the resource pool available to the next.
The internet as a educational resource is obviously already being exploited for both remote delivery of courses and also as an educational support tool through formal revision sites etc. Ronald D Owston in his article, ‘The World Wide Web: A Technology to Enhance Teaching and Learning? puts it succinctly when he states that, ‘the learning resources of a college or university can be augmented by the learning resources of the world, via the Web.’ (www.jstor.org, 2008)
The internet is, however, also a huge informal bank of collective knowledge that students are going to have to be encouraged, more and more, to access. Sites like You Tube and AOL Video have literally hundreds of video tutorials posted that students can use as free sources of independent learning and as graphic design becomes more and more technology based colleges are going to have to make the distinction between teaching graphic design theory and teaching the practical software it involves. If the core skills of creative thinking and design structure aren’t to be watered down as teachers struggle to squeeze these in around showing students how to use software programmes then the responsibility for knowing the software must be passed to the students.
The debate between theory and practical is going to grow and grow and as Reece and Walker define a curriculum as, ‘programmes for learning and those factors which influence the quality of learning’, (2006, p443) it is going to impact more and more on how we develop graphic design curriculum.
The government are raising the school leaving age to 18 by 2013, (news.bbc.co.uk, 2007), which is going to increase the numbers of students taking supposedly ‘non academic’ subjects such as art and design. This, whilst increasing employment possibilities, will also increase the number of students who have had no previous experience or personal interest in graphic design ‘trying out’ the subject, which will in turn increase the pressure on teachers to quickly bring groups of students to a level at which the course can be effectively taught. I have four students on my current course whose main reason for taking it was that they ‘liked drawing’! If the government are intent on forcing all young people through some form of further education and as graphic design becomes increasingly software reliant, I fear that the quality of graphic design education will have to suffer simply because of the time it is going to take to teach basic software use to students, so perhaps another use for my course and other ones I could develop in other software packages could be pre course, in that students are asked to work through the exercises over the summer before commencing their chosen courses, thus enabling the graphic design teacher to teach graphic design from day one, we can but hope.
Bibliography
American Institute of Graphic Arts, The National Association of Schools
of Art and Design (n.d) Technology Thresholds in Graphic Design Programs
Online.Available:http://www.google.com/searchq=cache:dyUnXzfxZD0J:www.aiga.org/
resources/content/3/7/4/2/documents/technology.pdf+The+impact+of+the+computer+in+
graphic+design+education&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=13&client=safari [7th January 2008]
BBC News, School leaving age set to be 18 (Friday, 12 January 2007)
Online. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6254833.stm
[24th February]
Curzon, L.B (2006) Teaching in Further Education: An Outline of Principles and Practice. 6th Ed. London: Continuum.
Kelly, A.V. (2004). The Curriculum. Theory and Practice. 5th Ed. London: Sage Publications
Owston, R.D. (1997). The World Wide Web: A Technology to Enhance Teaching and Learning? Educational Researcher, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Mar., 1997), pp. 27-33 Online. Available: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-189X(199703)26%3A2%3C27%3ATWWWAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 [8th January 2008]
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development,
Oxford Brookes University (2007). Independent learning: some ideas from the literature Online. Available: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/2_learntch/independent.html [6th January 2008]
Reece, I and Walker, S. (2006). Teaching, Training and Learning – a Practical Guide. 6th Ed. Sunderland: Business Edition Publishers
Regina, SK, Saskatchewan Education. (n.d) Understanding the Common Essential Learnings Online. Available: http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/policy/cels/el7.html [6th January 2008]
Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000) ‘Curriculum theory and practice’,
Online. Available: http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm. [24th February 2008]
University of Kansas (n.d) Curriculum/ Program Planning and Evaluation. Module 1, Curriculum Definitions and Influencing Factors
Online.Available:http://classes.kumc.edu/son/nursedu/nrsg871/content/module01/curric_definitions.htm. [24th February 2008]
Whittaker, G (2007). FEU models of the curriculum. Based on the FEU document ‘Developing Social and Life Skills- strategies for tutors’ (1980)