For the 3rd year in a row, Rebecca Graaff asked Writing PAD (Julia & Kaye) to work with her Interior Design students to develop ideas for their final year essays. Again, the Reframing technique was used, with students working on pre-printed A3 sheets to explore contexts surrounding their essay topic. This exercise informs the project proposal and subsequent essay assignment.
This Reframing workshop ran in a similar way to those run in Technology (see previous post), although these students interacted with the process differently, making use of their design skills in the development of their Frames:
Students also used arrows to make visible the connections they discovered between different aspects of their topic:
Rather than repeat the written description of the workshop, as befits the visual emphasis of Writing PAD, you can see the stages of the Reframing process in the images below:
Comments from students were very encouraging in terms of our aim of overcoming barriers to student writing: ‘Really helpful session, I usually shy away from essay writing, but now I feel way more confident! I’m ready to start. The environment was great and overall the session was very beneficial.’
It was also great to hear that the Reframing method has value outside the workshop, with a student commenting that ‘I’m going to do this on every project!’ and Rebecca telling us that ‘The students LOVE IT! They bring their “frames” to tutorials and refer back to them often.’
Julia
Next time, Writing PAD East Midlands visits ‘Art For All: Diversity and Inclusion in Art and Design Higher Education’, UAL:
http://events.arts.ac.uk/event/2015/11/27/Art-for-All-Diversity-and-Inclusion-in-Art-and-Design-Higher-Education/
