Design Students Blogging: A Case Study of Identity and Convenience

University of Kent HND and BA students used blogs as part of their back-up work while studying graphic design at K College campus 2011-2013. Initiated as an activity to help professionalise the working identitiesof the learners the blogging activity developed into an exploration of how best practices were afforded by the logistics of blogging and how convenience was perceived as a motivating factor. The paper offers an explanation of how the affordances of blogging convenience enabled more efficient and effective design and education practices to emerge

How do transformative experiences in a 'design-for-good' pedagogy enable ethical responsibility in undergraduate designers?

Impacts of over-consumption and advertising suggest design must redirect to ethical practices (Fry, 2015). By 'redirecting' in undergraduate graphic design education, I researched impacts of a 'design for good' (DfG) pedagogy on students (n=45), across four years of iterative interventions. I adapted Pugh's (2011) Teaching for Transformative Experiences model for ethos-change by embedding critical pedagogy and critical hope. Focusing studies on each of the measurable elements of transformative experience - expanded perception, value, and transfer - I investigated how experiential, community-based DfG pedagogy redirected students' design ethics. Phenomenographic analyses of students' responses to two annual interventions demonstrated that they could re-see design as DfG. The cohort progressively expanded perception from an inward focus on the self as learner, to an outward focus on the social affordances of DfG, and ultimately, to a focus on systems change. Semi-structured interviews with students revealed conditions promoting value for DfG. Patterns of value-growth took comparative trajectories through experiences of empathy, self-efficacy and design purpose. Individual narratives also highlighted variations in experiential value that could slow or compete with finding value. Students' narratives supported identification of three categories of transfer: transfer of DfG content as 'noticing'; actions within developing DfG practice and career aims; and transference of DfG-grounded agency into their personal lives. Students underwent transformative experiences when all components were present, successfully redirecting their perceptions, values and actions into ethical design practice. The research into the students' perspectives, therefore, contributes to an understanding of how teaching for transformative experience can enable ethos-change in situated undergraduate contexts