a discussion of noelle Defining and ideating
transcript of audio
00:00 I’m going to dive more deeply into Noelle’s work for this class and more importantly discussing their work according to the design steps which supported Noelle in reimagining their first project as a redesign.
00:11 In this first segment of the case study, I’ll talk about design step one, to define, and step two, to ideate.
00:16 The artifacts that I will examine for each of these respective steps are Design Journals 1 and 3 for Project 1, and they will illustrate how Noelle met the objectives of the assignment and their success in achieving the learning outcomes.
00:29 I’m navigating to a close-up of Noelle’s Design Journal 1 where they have identified an issue that they are compelled to talk about.
00:38 They were directed to explore a subject or issue about which they were passionate. Students were also given complete freedom in selecting a modality for their project.
00:46 They had to think about the most suitable vehicle for their expression in a specific space. They created their own rhetorical situations, instead of being assigned a hypothetical by me, their instructor.
00:57 So when students, like Noelle, were evaluated, an important consideration was for a student’s ability to design a project where the content was suited for their target audience, and in this first project, was fellow peers in their class, and effective in making a lasting impact upon them.
01:12 Shortly after Project 1 was introduced and explained to students, Noelle pulled me aside to explain. Noelle was concerned that I would not allow this, but I encouraged them to keep planning.
01:24 I was really excited about the prospect of having an immersive experience for the students in the class. The issue that Noelle was interrogating was great material to work with, and Noelle had wonderful and important ideas.
01:34 Scholar Jody Shipka offers perspective as an instructor using a multimodal task-based framework in first-year composition when she argues that, “the rhetorical, material, methodological, and technological choices students make while engineering these complex rhetorical events merit serious
01:54 and sustained attention,” Here in Design Journal 1, Noelle records their brainstorming and their inspiration points to build toward Project 1.
02:03 They include different factors that they understand to contribute to the overall issue. So, I can see that Noelle’s project will be dimensional, taking up several points about the issue.
02:13 In the text of their entry, Noelle talks about conforming to unrealistic beauty standards, and how it’s especially complicated for Black women, as the standards are established with white women.
02:24 European standards of beauty control expectations of femininity, especially through the eyes of white men. Noelle also includes some points about wanting to somehow include their artwork, a few paintings that they had done previously, as well as perform something with
02:37 their body. Their final project may also include the recitation of a poem. Evidently, Noelle is taking advantage of the freedom to choose a mode, or be multi-modal in their delivery, and in doing so, meeting assignment goals for visualizing the end game.
02:53 According to learning outcomes for the coursework, Noelle has inspired a larger conversation. They show their take on the matter using prior knowledge.
03:04 If we move down the page, the other half of Noelle’s journal entry shows an image-based collage. Noelle has layered a series of editorial photographs of beautiful Black women, each woman is shown from the neck up and show you turns her face toward the viewer.
03:19 Each woman is without obvious makeup and their hair is worn in an afro. Between two of the photographs, Noelle has placed small torn paper with their handwriting.
03:28 The first piece of paper reads, “don’t be fast, close your legs,” And the second paper reads, “you always have an attitude, fix your face.”
03:37 Alongside these photographs, Noelle has also layered a photograph of black and white hands. In the bottom corner of the collage, there is also an image of a black woman with long braids.
03:48 She’s photographed in profile and over her image are large tight black letters that read, this will be my undoing. There is a lot to unpack here in terms of art.
03:57 All the defining Noelle is doing- they’re not only defining a problem of race in society, but also capitalism. What I was most intrigued about was Noelle’s layering of the problem.
04:09 They were layering figuratively and literally. Again, the issue that Noelle explored was not simple and encompassed people, feelings, and a long history.
04:18 The concept of writing through a project using a design journal enabled Noelle with a space to kind of work out their ideas.
04:25 They could try to capture what was happening in their mind and illustrate it on paper. Moreover, it provided a space for Noelle to share things, ideas, quotes, images, videos, etc.
04:36 That they had seen, which ultimately led to their understanding of the issue. It was a way to activate prior knowledge and assure that they had something of value to contribute in their project.
04:46 It was impressive to see that Noelle was working out their ideas, really bringing their perspective, their experience, their position on the matter into the project.
04:54 Often students struggle to insert themselves into their projects. They write about a topic or an issue that’s heavily researched and simply put reported, offering little that is novel.
05:05 Instead, Noelle took the opportunity with making a thing and authentically made it her own. I recognized not only in their modality, a multimodal performative assemblage, that this was uniquely Noelle’s taste.
05:28 The space and prompt used for the design journals enabled Noelle to do this bold work. If I had merely instructed that they brainstorm some ideas about Black feminism and white beauty standards.
05:38 I’m not sure that Noelle would have produced the same thought sequence. Incorporating images really helped to develop a cohesive picture of the problem.
05:46 Furthermore, the photographs Noelle included are powerful in tandem with statements Noelle is making about racist practices in the beauty industry.
05:53 I get a sense for how and why the Black women are without much makeup and where their hair and skin are naturally.
05:59 They do not have the mainstream products to suit their skin, their hair, but they’re no less beautiful. They exude their natural beauty and the pictures are stunning.
06:07 The message at the bottom of the design journal, This Will Be My Undoing, is also profound. Is Noelle thinking about white men unraveling the essence of the Black woman? Keeping them at a distance? Down by not providing the equity or inclusive practices to these women? Or is Noelle saying how deeply
06:25 felt the issue is to them personally? Either way, it is thoughtful, provocative, and generative for planning in the next step of the process.
06:33 I’m going to jump over to the second step of the process, ideating, to show Noelle’s third design journal. The third design journal
06:43 asked that students find other artifacts that have taken up the same issue. Could students find images, editorials, research, videos, interviews that interrogated some aspect of their chosen subject matter?
06:57 I don’t want to use the term model text, but I do think that encouraging students to look at samples or possible options for ways they might engage the same material is in fact helpful.
07:07 Having been given so much freedom in Project 1, the third design journal was critical in helping a lot of students get their projects off the ground and shaping them into a thing.
07:18 Noelle provides three links to videos of three individual artists who are performing. Beneath the videos, Noelle writes up a brief critique.
07:26 They write about what they like best about the performance and sometimes, as in the final video of Joseph Bai’s work, Noelle comments about an element that they would certainly not include.
07:38 This critical work helped Noelle to make rhetorical decisions about their live performance of Project 1. For example, although Noelle appreciated Abramovic’s offering of various tools for her audience to use on her person, this was a step too far for Noelle’s comfort.
07:55 They did not feel that they knew their peers well enough to trust them with such a bold task. Noelle said they would not allow tools to be used, but instead would allow encourage students to place post-it note papers on their person.
08:07 Although the redesigned project would come later in the semester, Noelle was already thinking in terms of remix, how to take a thing or a part of something and make it into something else.
08:17 The work produced in the third design journal demanded that Noelle think about genre conventions, and in their instance, what sorts of expectations they might have.
08:25 How might Noelle work within the genre, but also challenge it by making their performance unique? How would Noelle say what they had to say, but especially to make connections with their audience?
08:36 By segmenting and sequencing the writing process into design-oriented journal entries, Noelle was able to do a few things. In defining the writing and ideating, Noelle 1.
08:45 Determined a rhetorical situation. 2. Had agency through their project. 3. Asserted their voice. 4. Located related texts and research to inform their project.
08:56 Noelle was able to develop a rhetorical situation for their issue. As a young black female, Noelle had firsthand experience with feeling lesser than white women, lacking access to beauty products suitable for their skin and hair and feeling insecure about their appearance in response to the expectations
09:12 placed on them by unrealistic standards imposed by white men. Noelle wanted to share their experience with their fellow all-female peers so that they could A.
09:21 Artfully work through a catharsis for their B. Get their peers reflecting on their own experiences with beauty standards and C.
09:30 Create a space to discuss shared experiences and ways forward. During their steps to define the problem, Noelle was able to parse out distinct points to be made and craft each so that they spoke directly to the audience.
09:42 Most importantly, Noelle was Noelle thought about how to use their own words, their own experience, to appeal emotionally to their audience.
09:50 Noelle was agential in having power over each decision for their project. Noelle also had the idea to augment their voice by including the poetry of other artists.
09:59 They spent time thinking about texts and performances that they were already familiar.In his 2020 article in CCCC’S, “Using Design Thinking to Teach Creative Problem Solving in Writing Courses,” Scott Weibel asserts, “Design thinking methods…present opportunities for students to pursue inquiry in creative ways, as they try to idenitfy and ask those questions that draw forth detail-rich stories from horizons of experience they cannot see through traditional library research or surveys.” Wible notes the power of the “detail-rich stories” and the “horizons of experience” that promote creativity in students. Although research is a critical skill- the way it has been framed in the academy, more specifically in writing
10:45 courses, has transformed the practice into an egg hunt for students to mine quotes. It has become formulaic and predictable, constrained by academic expectations to cite, then explain, only to support a claim made by a student.
10:58 Almost to say, I think this, but look at all these credible people that collected data that proves what I think.
11:03 I’m sorry. Design thinking flips the script to, this is how I experience the world. I found out that other people experience the world in a similar way, so this is what we could do about it to make the world better for people like us.
11:19 Noelle performed research for their project, but did so by drawing on resources that they were already using. Noelle used research to frame their approach to performing live in class.
11:29 Instead of finding a way to work in what other artists had established, Noelle used the research to study genre and the conventions associated with performance art.
11:37 It was a practical way to think about a means to bring their ideas to life. The emphasis on the inquiry-based methods that come through a design-focused approach which is tied to the problem-solution dichotomy, however, is less fixated on the actual solution and more vigilant about working a process that
11:52 can produce informed but innovative thought that generates viable solutions. Students need to learn recursive writing process that allows them the space to ask these questions.
12:03 They don’t need to have all the answers, and even if they ultimately arrive at an answer, new questions may follow.
12:10 In Noelle’s case, they continuously ask themselves questions about what to include in their performance, what would inspire their peers to participate in the event, what would inspire their peers to share their own experiences with the problem, what things might Noelle do that would prompt their peers
12:23 to propose solutions. Noelle’s goal did not seek to fix the problem, but rather share themselves and their thoughts to make a human connection with their peers, in the hopes of maybe a future solution.
12:35 The design journals provided a space for student intuition, whereas traditional writing approaches can be limited to a set of guidelines- as examined in the article “Designing Your Writing, Writing Your Design: Art and Design Students Talk About the Process of Writing and the Process of Design” by Susan
12:50 Orr, Margo Blythman, and Joan Mullin. The design journal was implemented in the course for students to capture their process. It was a record of their plans, sources of inspiration, and reflections, a place where all their ideas were housed.
13:05 Not their responses to what the instructor wanted.