These are excellent points Jon, and many programs sincerely strive to do this.
But having worked in such programs through bad economic times as well as good, I have another question to pose to you. What do you do when administrators REQUIRE numbers, and the quality of your students, for various reasons, is not that good, and the majority can't survive the rigors you want to put them through? There are two sides of this, particularly with grad class recruitment efforts and admissions. In good economic times, the primo students are being snagged up straight to industry, so you can end up with weak classes of students that way. And in bad economic times, really bad times, beyond when layoffs send folks to grad or second degree programs, people just don't have the money to spend on an expensive school (esp if student loan sources are completely drying up). There is a sweetspot, I suppose, where bad economic times fill classes with great students, before they start to cull them due to lack of funds. But there's an administrative imperative (you must admit a new class of 15 grad students every fall, for instance) that can be quite demoralizing for a faculty member, I have to say. And then the next thing you know (probably not at SCAD, but elsewhere), you've got a class of students you have to show how to open and close multiple windows and save files on a server for collaborative projects. It's a dilemma, so if you don't have an answer to my question, join the club! If you do have an answer, tho, please share! It will make me feel better. Chris On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 7:43 PM, Jon [GMAIL] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:20:54 > > From: David Malouf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] What to teach interaction design students > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > GREAT thread. Before I go all up and theoretical, I wanted to point > > people to Jon Kolko's work in this regard. He is my predecessor at > > SCAD as the Prof of IxD there. He has his course materials and other > > thoughts on IxD education on his site: > > http://www.jonkolko.com/education.php > > I've been following the thread, and enjoying the discussion. Having placed > ~99% of my 50 or so interaction design undergraduates in interaction design > jobs or grad degree programs, it looks like the interaction curriculum I > developed with Professor Bob Fee works. That said, the reason it worked so > well is because the students I had were passionate, aggressive, interested, > and fired up - and the ones who weren't realized quickly that they couldn't > hack it in courses that were as demanding as industry. And so the best > suggestion I can give to someone structuring an interaction design program > [really, any design program at all] is to make it demanding, challenging > and > difficult, and do your best to establish a reputation for it and yourself > as > being equally as demanding, challenging and difficult. The students learn > to > self-select classes based on reputation, and you control quality through > word of mouth. > > After my experience teaching, I'm solidly of the belief that anyone can > learn any design "skill" - any practical ability and set of methods - but > not everyone has or can acquire the passion and fire to learn something as > challenging and as ambiguous as design. A good curriculum and a good > professor exists, essentially, to feed the fire of passion. > > > - > Jon Kolko > > Co-Editor-In-Chief, interactions > http://interactions.acm.org/ > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
