RISD CIRCUS: New ways of learning/teaching
"The RISD CIRCUS" - What kind of an event or an organization could boldly and confidently related education with fun? Well, the dean graduate studies department at the Rhode Island School of design, Chris Rose hosted an interesting meeting that brought together faculty and students from across the academic departments to take part in an active discussion about the future of learning in the school.
RISD is a traditional school, where a lot emphasis is put on the fundamentals of the our craft in art and design. The biggest challenges the school faces is to make these crafts more relevant to the student's future, and how do we provide a holistic college education by better incorporating liberal arts classes. Perhaps 'the way to be innovative in education may be to "exovate"', as Chris Rose started our conversation.
We have to begin to challenge the role of the student and the teacher, especially at the college level, where it is common for students and faculty to exchange ideas. Changing our titles and re-evaluating our roles could better reflect us as learners and advisers. This could be a way to break the mold and encourage conversation that otherwise will not happen. This model of shared learning and teaching will allow students to gain authority and help bring new ideas to the table.
Creativity cannot be taught, but it wouldn't just happen, so what should we do as educators? An interesting point brought up by Chris Rose is that 'instead, we can mange the circumstances for creativity.' This creates an unique opportunity for endless possibility to innovate and learn. Some of the ideas that was spawned out of this notion is; to have students learn through witnessing an "intellectual argument", where they eavesdrop on the conversation and come to their own conclusions; and to use unconventional, even guerrilla tactics, to lure students out of their departments to engage in cross-disciplinary conversations.
It is great to have these conversations but the real dilemma is how can we do up against the established framework and implement these radical ideas. We have a tangible plan, where we have broken up our task to small, medium and large scale; small task that can be implemented now, medium task that can be implemented within the year and large task as our ultimate goal.
An implementable goal is to create a more interdisciplinary environment where different classes would intersect at various points in the semester through a symposium where the classes would be informed and influenced by each other's work. A successful experiment called the "recess" that could be reproduced was conducted on campus last year successfully brought people together where students were encourage to interact through games.
Our ultimate goal is not to simply change our education system now, but to create a framework in which we are able to constantly challenge and change our teaching and learning methods to best prepare the students of the future.
