Hi, I wanted to post a brief update on the status of the IxDA Education Initiatives, and invite you to get involved with our work.
We've targeted three main areas for progressive development this year. Within each area, we have groups investigating a number of sub-initiatives, with the intention of producing something actionable by May 1st of this year. The details are listed below; if you would like to get involved, please send me a message off-list specifying which specific sub-initiative you are interested in and I would be happy to invite you to our basecamp projects. == Awareness initiative. The goal of this initiative is to develop awareness about IxDA as a potential career path among two key groups: a) K-12 teachers, students, parents and guidance councilors, and b) Undergraduate faculty and students in programs related to interaction design. Sub-initiatives include: 1. Common person interaction design description. Develop a set of materials that describe, through words, diagrams, pictures, and other elements, what interaction design is to the "common person" - someone who isn't necessarily trained in design, art, computer science, psychology, or any related discipline. 2. Education workshop material. Develop a set of exercises and content aimed at 9th and 10th grade students, in an effort to introduce them to interaction design fundamentals and generate interest and enthusiasm in this as a professional direction to pursue. 3. Capability and aptitude assessment. Develop a set of characteristics (capabilities and aptitudes) that can be used to identify when someone might make a good interaction designer. Can be used as self assessment, or by guidance councilors. * Curriculum initiative. The goal of this initiative is to create a useful repository of curricula structure, lecture content, reading material, and other artifacts that, collectively, illustrate best practices for higher education of Interaction Designers and encourage the development of new interaction design programs. Sub-initiatives include: 1. Program audit. Identify and aggregate into a spreadsheet the various course, program, class, seminar, and other content in existence related to Interaction Design. A spreadsheet has been started; this will be an extension of that work, fleshing out the details of the various programs offered by colleges and universities. 2. Alumni. Locate alumni in the Interaction Design community from the IxD programs and courses in existence, identifying key point people that can be contacted for information about their experience at a given program. 3. Program mapping criteria. Identify criteria that will be useful for developing an ecosystem map of all existing programs. [this initiative is not actually to produce the map - just to explore criteria that will help people understand the data]. * Mentorship initiative. The goal of this initiative is to create an organic system of mentors who are willing to work with community members, on a one-on-one basis, to help nurture and develop expertise in a specific area of Interaction Design. Sub-initiatives include: 1. Mentorship, short-term. Identify a mentorship program format that IxDA can implement in the next few months with little to no IT infrastructure. How would it work? What would it be like? 2. Identify Precedents. Document mentorship programs that have worked in other disciplines (design, art, or other communities). How were they structured? What made them work? 3. Identify Mentorship Traits. Identify the attributes that can help match a mentor with a mentee. What questions and answers would show up on a survey in order to successfully create a strong relationship? 4. Face to Face Mechanism. Create and develop a way to get IxDA people face to face, in order to best establish a mentorship program in real life. What are the incentives to get people to volunteer their time? What are the reasons people will turn to this community for help? == Thanks, JK -- http://interactions.acm.org http://www.thoughtsoninteraction.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
