Mary Roth, Lafayette College
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First-Year Seminars (FYS) at Lafayette College provide a curricular opportunity for faculty to take risks in their course content and their pedagogical approaches. With the goal of creating a curricular entry point to issues related to design for students planning to major in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, I decided to use the FYS platform to create a course where students would use observational drawing, journaling, discussion, and writing to individually and collectively explore and reflect on elements of good design. Specifically, I wanted to create a course where students who were not generally interested in taking classes in STEM could develop curiosity and empathy with respect to the design of objects and spaces.
For Union College’s Ninth Symposium on Engineering and Liberal Education, I propose offering participants an opportunity to learn about this newly developed course and to experience a selection of the types of exercises I used in the course to create the scaffolding for the students to meet the desired learning outcomes.
Tentative outline of session:
– Introduction (10 minutes) — motivation for course, student learning outcomes, course structure
– Sampling of foundational design principles (10 minutes) — mapping, feedback
– Survey exercise (10 minutes)
– Report out (5 minutes)
– Observational drawing and journaling exercise (15 minutes)
– Report out (5 minutes)
– Wrap up (10 minutes) — student feedback on course, recommendations for future offerings