Student Engagement in Research, Writing, and Problem Solving in MCAD’s Applied Arts and Designed Objects Course

Applied Arts and Designed Objects is a newer course at MCAD that I designed and have taught for four semesters. The breadth of design and history that the course is charged to cover is challenging, and teaching with some slide lectures is unavoidable. I have tried to build in assignments at regular intervals to break up the lecture format, activate the students, and engage their own interests. My students are a very mixed group of second semester and second year makers including furniture designers and graphic designers, but also illustrators, comic artists, animators, multi-media artists, and fine artists. I have two short group assignments that treat identifying and solving design problems for which students present their solutions in class, tying the design history to present day concerns and practices. By midterm, students are able to divide into two groups to restage and update the 1914 Deutsche Werkbund debate, reanimating the points advanced by Hermann Muthesius and countered by Henry van de Velde. The culminating assignment of the course is an annotated timeline that asks students to identify a chronology of ten historical objects of design that culminate in a piece they themselves have made at MCAD. This is a challenge for which they are prepared because the same assignment is given as in-class writing on the first day of class, for use in assessment. I will present my assignments as well as the learning outcomes they fulfill and advance my arguments for their success with my students.