When I received my initial appointment at Woodbury University, I filled a then vacant position in the second year undergraduate architecture studio, and continued teaching it until I left the department of Architecture in the fall of 2020 to chair the Applied Computer Science-Media Arts program. The consistency of this position and the student population gave me a great opportunity to test and develop new teaching methods.
Students of architecture must use technology to produce their work and become members of the profession. While the second year studios that I instructed in the past used technology, in the fall of 2016 I decided to move the technology to the center. In order to do this I paired a technological problem, learning visual programming, with an architectural problem, symmetry. Both of these problems come with a long history and, as a consequence, a set of preconceived ideas. Students often understand symmetry as a simple operation of mirroring. Visual programming is a form of programming that uses graphic user interface similar to a wiring diagram as means of stringing together functions. It is easier to learn than text-based programming, while still allowing users to access and build reusable programs to solve problems. In Architecture, it is often associated with repetitive formal operations such as façade pattering. The work of the studio then became to both provide students an education in visual programming and architectural symmetry while simultaneously extending students understanding of these concepts and frameworks.
In order to accomplish this, I restructured the format of the studio. Prior to this shift, my studios consisted of some workshops, lectures and a significant amount of desk critiques. In order to better pair technological and conceptual learning (visual programming and symmetry) I began to gradually increase the amount of workshops in place of desk critiques. Some of the workshops were purely technical covering data structures such as lists and trees. However, others focused on translating a reading from Euclid or Vitruvius on symmetry into a visual program that controls the radial disposition of polygons about a common center. In the process, students gained a more nuanced understanding of symmetry while simultaneously using visual programming tools to produce simple organizational strategies for buildings. Symmetry also operates as formal link the precedents that the students study which range from works of the Italian Baroque domes to Arabic and Persian Muqarnas. Between fall of 2016 and fall of 2019, the amount of workshops gradually increased until they constituted approximately 1/3 of the time spent in studio. In the fall of 2019, I prepared and delivered twenty workshops, most of which lasted four hours. Each workshop consisted of the following: an introductory lecture, software tutorial, student work session, and a shared review of submitted work. Students were able to use class time to learn new software skills, engage the architectural principles of symmetry, and develop their projects.
However, there were some problems with my initial methods, which I have since revised. In the fall of 2016, I received feedback in the course evaluations from the students in my Arch 281 class that the pace was simply too fast. I received related feedback from my seminars as well, in which I used similar techniques to teach software. This concerned me, and I have since dramatically restructured the way I teach software in all of my classes. I have always focused on the fundamentals of geometry in my teaching. However in addition to this, when I begin teaching visual programming now, I start with operations that all students can immediately understand: addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Instead of beginning with geometric operations that may be complex in themselves, I now start with simple math so the students know what to expect from the software and can therefore better understand the organization and flow of information. This has resulted in a much slower and much longer instruction period, but the results have been better. In 2016 and 2017 students learned how to use visual programming software but only approximately 25% of the students would use it for the entirety of the semester. In the fall of 2019, all students in the class completed their work in a visual programming platform. This meant students were able not only to use the software, but also use it to complete all of their design work in a given semester. Students learned to control geometry, set line-weights, define colors, create layouts, render, and animate their projects from a single visual program. Furthermore, this studio became the first core studio in the School of Architecture to use visual programming as its primary tool. This meant that all students moving through the architecture received at least one semester of education in this widely used tool in architecture.
Central to this shift in instruction, was a shift in assessment. Students in architecture are typically evaluated by the drawings, models, images, and texts that they produce. In this new format, students were asked to submit and received critical feedback on their visual programs in Grasshopper. I created a template file on which students could organize their visual programs, and provided guidance on the clear formatting of information. This was an important shift. Students work with digital tools and much of the craft and structure of their work is embedded in the digital files that they create. Shifting the focus from design products to design process helped us (students and instructors) to better evaluate the relationship between the conceptual intent of a given project and the technologies used to generate its final form.
In addition to work with students, I also trained the adjunct faculty on the software. I was fortunate to have some incredibly talented adjuncts to work with. They brought useful knowledge on a variety of topics. I provided them with instruction and helped them with their students. I also asked the School of Architecture to purchase them the appropriate software so that they could effectively evaluate student work and participate in the instruction. This allowed faculty that may not have expertise in software to provide other forms of knowledge to the class at a mutual benefit to student and teacher.
I further increased my academic commitment by developing new courses and curricula for the grant-funded Design Computation program, which is set to launch in fall 2022. I was involved in the preparation of the grant. Beginning in spring 2019, I worked with Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter and Ewan Branda to develop a draft curriculum and mission statement. I continued to attend meetings and refine this as the grant work progressed. Once the grant was awarded I agreed to work with Ewan Branda to develop the curriculum and syllabi for the first half of the program over the summer of 2020. In our proposal, we attempted to the build the new Design Computation program on the existing structure of the Applied Computer Science – Media Arts program. We believed that these two programs have a strong affinity and a set of shared central concepts. As such the structure of our proposal made the first two years of the Applied Computer Science – Media Arts program and the Design Computation program identical. This allows for set of shared resources and intertwines two programs with different career trajectories.
Based on my experience in the second year architecture studio, the development of the Design Computation curriculum, and my new position as the Chair of Applied Computer Science – Media arts program I have two fundamental objectives for my teaching an academic commitment in the upcoming years. Technology is at the center of both the ACSMA program and the Design Computation program. It is obvious that one of my roles will be to stay current in technological developments that affect these fields. However, I would also like to begin to think about how technology can be used to restructure the learning environment. This is partially based on my experience teaching on-line during the pandemic. I am already working with students to establish a student-built software tutorial library in which students can both build and share their knowledge. I am also interested in exploring the use of Augmented Reality to supplement the classroom environment. Rather than relying on the projector or monitor to work with students on three-dimensional problems, Augmented Reality enables the real time position of digital objects with the context of the classroom. I believe this would greatly increase student engagement by creating more dynamic forms of presentation. The second component is to look for curricular opportunities to mix students with different majors and career trajectories. I would like to explore the benefits of having more classes shared between similar but distinct disciplines. Architecture is a very specific and clearly defined discipline. The Media Arts, in contrast, is much more open in terms of both forms of academic research and career trajectories for students. Creating learning environments that engage technology from a variety of career perspectives will better prepare ACSMA students while simultaneously enriching the learning environment.
Below are the (4) syllabi of the courses that I typically instruct. These courses were selected from the 2018-2019 academic year.
Below are examples of two manuals that are referenced in the teaching component of the self evaluation.
This document contains the curriculum that I developed with Ewan Branda for the Design Computation Program.