Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute 2016 – Notes from the Design Track
Inspired by the reflections shared by Audrey Watters and Lee Bessett Skallerup, I am sharing my notes and thoughts on last week’s Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute hosted at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA. It was an amazing week and I feel lucky (The Luckiest, as I told Sean and Jesse) to have the opportunity to be part of the edifying and growing #digped community.
(click here to view slides from the week—not much there because we mostly did not use slides)
Description & outline of the track
Goals
In the DPLI design track, we will explore the following questions:
- What are the problems with our current approaches to design?
- What are the challenges instructional designers face in higher education today?
- How are the strategies and approaches to instructional design working for us? For teachers? For learners?
- What role can an instructional designer play beyond traditional notions of design?
- Given all of this, how do we approach designing for our learners and teachers?
Project
In teams, participants will undertake a design project to design some part of next year’s DPLI. They will explore design strategies for understanding, divergence, and emergence to develop and explore their design ideas. Participants will also contribute to an instructional design wikity that will remain as a resource to participants and to others outside of the track.
Readings
Learning design patterns as an alternative model of course design, Mike Caulfield
Unpleasant design and hostile urban architecture, 99pi
The 2016 Manifesto for online teaching, multiple authors
Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities Keyword Design, Jennifer Sheppard & Kristin Arola
Conversations: Instructional design, trust, and discover, Sean Michael Morris & Joshua Eyler)
Not-yetness and learnification, Amy Collier
Topics
Monday – What is design? Design as understanding, divergence, emergence (not checklists, steps, best practices, or rubrics). Design rules for the week: Take notice & play
Tuesday – Design patterns, unpleasant design, unintended consequences of design
Wednesday – Design as a moral activity. Working with empathy maps and point of view statements. Listening as an act of design.
Thursday – Emergence. Presentations from groups on their designs for DPLI.
Friday – I like, I wish, What if…
Sample activity
Design carousel – modeled after the Gamestorming Carousel activity, this was designed to encourage inclusion of all voices in the room, both as an opportunity for introductions and as a chance to converse about important topics related to design. I wrote the following questions around the room on the white boards and people were asked to convene around a question to discuss & write ideas in response to the questions: 1) Why does design matter? 2) What are your new and enduring questions about design? 3) How does instructional design differ from other forms of design? 4) What does design look like in 10 years? 5) Where and to whom do you look for design guidance and ideas? It was such a productive activity and it set a good tone for the rest of the week by inviting all voices and all experiences to the conversation. Pictures from the boards after:
The keynotes
(my god, these were some good keynotes! Videos linked below)
Tressie McMillan Cottom – What is Critical in the Corporate University?
Cathy Davidson – Educating Higher: Transforming Higher Ed for the World We Want
Martha Burtis & Sean Michael Morris – Critical Instructional Design
My intention
(this is the text from a short talk I did on Thursday, when Lee Skallerup and I were asked to set the intention for the day)
“For a shy introverted person like me, weeks like this are a real roller coaster. You spend the days and weeks leading up to the event riddled with anxiety and nervousness; the first couple of days of the event feeling like the floor is really the only safe space for you, exhausted; and toward the middle and last few days, as you find your stride, as relationships solidify and trust builds, you begin to hope that weeks like this will never end. And then someone asks you to get up in front of everybody on Thursday and help to set the intention for the day, and the cycle restarts all over all. I’ll be on the floor in about 3.5 minutes.
The week’s end
It’s always hard to say goodbye to people after an intensive week like this. People in my track were so open, so willing to share their stories, their dreams, their fears, their opportunities. I learned from them more than they ever could have learned from me.
As I said in the intention on Thursday, it takes me a few days to build up trust with people but, once I have, it’s hard to let them go. I am so glad that I ended the week in the exact same way that I ended the week at Digital Pedagogy Lab 2015…with Legos. There are few better ways to restore the soul than through play, especially when it’s play with dear loved ones, like Sean Michael Morris, Jesse Stommel, and Joshua Lee.
