Rhetoric of landscape architecture and interior design discourses : preparation for cross-disciplinary practice

The rhetoric of the pedagogic discourses of landscape architectural students and interior design students is described as part of a doctoral study undertaken to document practices and orientations prior to cross-disciplinary collaboration. We draw on the theoretical framework of Basil Bernstein, an educational sociologist, and the rhetorical method of Kenneth Burke, a literary dramatist, to study the grammars of ‘landscape’ representation employed within these disciplinary examples. We investigate how prepared final year students are for working in a cross-disciplinary manner. The discursive interactions of their work, as illustrated by four examples of drawn images and written text, are described. Our findings suggest that we need to concern ourselves aspects of our pedagogic discourse that brings uniqueness and value to our disciplines ,as well as that shared discourses between disciplines.

Creating better learning environments by cross-disciplinary collaboration : a civil engineering and surveying linkage

Many of the teaching elements in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Spatial Science/Surveying are strongly related to multidisciplinary real-world situations. Professionals in each discipline commonly work collaboratively, knowing each other’s professional and technical limitations and requirements. Replication of such real-world situations allows students to gain an insight and acquire knowledge of professional practice for both civil engineering and spatial science disciplines. However, replication of an authentic design project is not always possible in a single unit basis where empirical project situations are often created with controlled sets of constraints, inputs and outputs. A cross-disciplinary design-based project that is designed to promote active student learning, engagement and professional integration would be the preferred option. The central aim of this collaborative project was to create positive and inclusive environments to promote engaging learning opportunities that cater for a range of learning styles with a two-way linkage involving third-year civil engineering and spatial science (surveying) students. This paper describes the cross-disciplinary project developed and delivered in 2010 and 2011. A survey was conducted at completion of the project to assess the degree of improvement in student engagement and their learning experiences. Improvements were assessed in a range of dimensions including student motivation, learning by cross-disciplinary collaboration and learning by authentic design project experiences. In this specific cross-disciplinary linkage project, the study findings showed that teaching approaches utilised have been effective in promoting active student learning and increasing engagement.

Jumping the fence from dance to cross-disciplinary research

Introduction: reading the signs Inside the dance ethos, knowledge is rarely articulated other than through the experience of dance itself. On the surface, the dancer focuses on practical and specialist skills. However, a closer look reveals that their knowledge does not merely trigger an embodied way of thinking; it enables the dancer to map a trail of metaphors within the body. In effect, dancers acquire a distinct embodied culture with its own language, dialects, customs and traditions. In this paper, I shall firstly examine the way metaphors establish a link between reason and imagination between one set of embodied knowledge and another. It is in regards to this function, where metaphor welds opposites together or when interior and exterior information exist in the same moment that it is most useful for jumping the fence from dance to cross-disciplinary practice. Secondly, I shall discuss how metaphors can help sustain creative practice. For it is only by stepping outside the culture of dance that I could first unravel the experiences, processes and knowledges inscribed through a career in dance and begin to define the quality of my own voice.

Design thinking frameworks as transformative cross-disciplinary pedagogy

Final report for the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. "This seed project ‘Design thinking frameworks as transformative cross-disciplinary pedagogy’ aimed to examine the way design thinking strategies are used across disciplines to scaffold the development of student attributes in the domain of problem solving and creativity in order to enhance the nation’s capacity for innovation. Generic graduate attributes associated with innovation, creativity and problem solving are considered to be amongst the most important of all targeted attributes (Bradley Review of Higher Education, 2009). The project also aimed to gather data on how academics across disciplines conceptualised design thinking methodologies and strategies. Insights into how design thinking strategies could be embedded at the subject level to improve student outcomes were of particular interest in this regard. A related aim was the investigation of how design thinking strategies could be used by academics when designing new and innovative subjects and courses." Case Study 3: QUT Community Engaged Learning Lab Design Thinking/Design Led Innovation Workshop by Natalie Wright Context "The author, from the discipline area of Interior Design in the QUT School of Design, Faculty of Creative Industries, is a contributing academic and tutor for The Community Engaged Learning Lab, which was initiated at Queensland University of Technology in 2012. The Lab facilitates university-wide service-learning experiences and engages students, academics, and key community organisations in interdisciplinary action research projects to support student learning and to explore complex and ongoing problems nominated by the community partners. In Week 3, Semester One 2013, with the assistance of co-lead Dr Cara Wrigley, Senior Lecturer in Design led Innovation, a Masters of Architecture research student and nine participating industry-embedded Masters of Research (Design led Innovation) facilitators, a Design Thinking/Design led Innovation workshop was conducted for the Community Engaged Learning Lab students, and action research outcomes published at 2013 Tsinghua International Design Management Symposium, December 2013 in Shenzhen, China (Morehen, Wright, & Wrigley, 2013)."

Scales and Hierarchies: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective

The volume advances our understanding of the role of scales and hierarchies across the linguistic sciences. Although scales and hierarchies are widely assumed to play a role in the modelling of linguistic phenomena, their status remains controversial, and it is these controversies that the present volume tackles head-on.