Bringing back hands-on type learning for interior design students Down Under

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Rennie, Julian
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2023-12-23
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Journal Article
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Unitec, Te Pūkenga
Auckland (N.Z.)
New Zealand
design students
design education
hands-on education
experiential learning
assessment
Unitec, Te Pūkenga courses
COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-
Citation
Rennie, J.J. (2023). Bringing back hands-on type learning for interior design students Down Under. International Journal of Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics Science, Special Issue 1, 2023 August, 384-389. https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6530
Abstract
During the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown in New Zealand, and the attendant Zoom sessions that proved exhausting for both Design students and tutors alike, it seemed a reset was required to encourage a more enjoyable, tactile way of learning and assessment for these drained students. Based on a cohort of over 40 Interior Design Students in a 2021 Construction type course at Unitec / Te Pukenga, this paper case studies a proposal to abandon essay writing and embark on a 1:20 scaled model of a partial interior as a new form of assessment for this course. Light timber balloon framing is the mainstay of residential construction in New Zealand, and knowledge of this construction method is at the core of the required learning. Allowing the students to ‘design’ their own interior space on the inside of the walled model allowed real ‘buy-in’ for them. This assignment was transformed from a chore to a form of enjoyment. The students were given an in-the-flesh cooking-school-type demonstration on model-making, tools, materials, and model-making techniques. The students were then allowed to bring in partially completed models to get one-on-one feedback from the tutor in the classes leading up to the final hand-in. For the tutor, these models provided rich material for their individual formative and summative assessments. This paper will unpack this ‘on-the-fly’ experiment and research various pedagogies to ground this application as a valid way of providing an experiential way of learning for the student and speedy marking for the tutor.
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