Abstract:

The aim of this article is to describe a teaching methodology to address the topic ‘Methods of Design’ aiming to improve the students` skills and competences necessary for their professional formation.

The case study is a class of design students from a generalist undergraduate design course that takes place in an institution in Brazil. As the first author of this article is a faculty member for the above mentioned design course, this is a narrative about the teaching-learning process in class, more specifically, how the activities are performed and what are the students` expectations and interests.

The curriculum for this course aims to stimulate students` creativity during the development of a design process and it helps first year`s students to organize the project, because this is the moment when students learn about methods of design. Additionally, students learn about the several ways available to follow in the process of design and how to mix them to use as a sequence during a development of a project.

The proposed activities motivate students to learn about and to use as many tools as possible during a curricular semester. In the end of the semester students should be able to decide by themselves which methodology they want to use to create their projects.

Amongst others, the following skills are addressed in the class: oral presentation, visual organization, and personal development. All of those are extremely important in the formation of a future designer.

An interesting fact in this class is the thought techniques that are responsible for arising students` skills and competencies. The faculty member uses a different approach for every meeting in order to expose students to a mix of teaching-learning process such as, flipped classroom, seminars, discussions, problem-based learning, surprise presentations, etc.

To motive the personal skills of each student, the strategies used in class are the following: working groups for projects development, interaction between working groups, discussions, oral presentations to explain the process of the design project during the class, justifications about their choices in the project, minimum time to deliver the activities and constant pressure to work as occurs in the real world that they will act as a designers.

The students` perceptions were very positive since they spoke that the opportunity to start doing tasks that they have never thought about before it is the most stimulating thing happened in class. The author`s inference is that teaching methodologies used in class were able to motive students to get together as a united group. Also, it was possible to notice the students` insights on the performed work, their absorption and application of knowledge in a short period of time.

In sum, although the teaching methodologies reported in this case study are not unprecedented, the active approach that those methodologies are used (i.e. a mix of dynamic methodologies) and the students` positive perceptions regarding the discipline, result in a great work atmosphere; which reach the objective of improving students` skills and competencies, that are necessary for their professional formation.

Keywords:

Education, teach, learn, design, methodology.