Introduction and Background:
Building on the analogue drawing exercises I use as a precursor to digital design instruction, I explore further the integration of analogue drawing activities in Adobe Illustrator Technical Skills sessions for Year 1 BA Bespoke Tailoring students, aiming to enhance their learning experience and foster a deeper understanding of design principles. ‘drawing as an academic dialogue tool when developing digital learning designs, was seen as playing an important part in students’pedagogical considerations about digital learning designs and data collection’ Hautopp, H., and Buhl, Mie., 2021.
Evaluation:
Assessing the effectiveness of Analogue Drawing with regard to enhancing student Digital Design skills requires analysing:
- Engagement and Attention:
• Level of student engagement and physical activity during analogue drawing activities.
• Monitor how analogue drawing exercises stimulate interest and curiosity. - Skill Transferability: skills acquired through analogue drawing to digital design processes:
• Define which skills transfer, eg fine motor skills and spatial awareness development, which directly transfer to Adobe Illustrator. Other skills include trialling, iterating and conceptualising which foster creativity and planning.
• Enhancing understanding of fundamental visual communication principles and concepts. - Cognitive Development:
• The cognitive benefits of engaging in physical drawing activities, such as improved spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills.
• Impact of analogue drawing on students’ visual-spatial perception and creativity.
• Introduction of Thinking Through Drawing theories (TTD network) to inform practice.
Issues:
- Time Constraints:
• Balancing the need for foundational analogue drawing skills with the pressing demand for digital proficiency. - Resource Availability:
• Availability of resources eg drawing materials and studio space. Changing rooms from a Computer to a Drawing studio would physically emphasise the dual nature of Analogue and Digital work, and help avoid the Traditional Master-Pupil Knowledge Transference set up.
• Accessibility considerations for students with diverse learning needs or physical limitations, and availability of computers in Drawing studios.
Moving Forward:
I can design sequential sessions that progressively build upon analogue skills and transition into digital proficiency.
I will also explore other teaching methods, such as flipped classroom approaches, to optimize the use of live sessions for hands-on analogue drawing activities. Involving students in the choice of drawing (such as type of Jacket and Details) and therefore direction of a digital session would also help to promote student engagement, with regard to their Unit Learning Outcomes.
I will also do more research into pedagogic theory regarding the benefits of physical activity for learning, which could incorporate principles of kinesthetic learning and visual-spatial cognition.
I will develop Assessment Criteria and Feedback for use in each session, that recognise and evaluate the transferability of analogue drawing skills to digital design tasks.
Analogue drawing is the foundational activity for creative work. ‘Sketches are just that, sketchy; for example, they can represent incomplete objects as blobs, or incomplete connections as wavy lines, so that a designer can consider general configurations before committing to particular connections and specific shapes’ Tversky, B. and Suwa, M. 2009.
I want to encourage a holistic approach to Design education, combining Analogue and Digital methods, to cultivate students’ creativity, critical thinking, and technical proficiency.
Academic References:
Hautopp, H., and Buhl, Mie., 2021. Drawing as an Academic Dialogue Tool for Developing Digital Learning Designs in Higher Education. The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 19(5), pp. 321-335, availableonline at www.ejel.org
Tversky, B. and Suwa, M. 2009. Thinking with sketches. In: A. Markmann and K. Wood, eds. Tools for innovation. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online.