Chapter Five: Assignments

Overview

Creative learning requires practice, and while practice is done in a studio environment under the helpful eye of the professor, a lot of the experience of learning comes through individual and group assignments—work that’s done without the professor there to act as a guide or facilitator. In these cases, students need to think critically to transform often vague or conflicting assignment criteria into actionable constraints, and then work to solve a given problem. Homework isn’t just about learning skills. It’s also about learning to be self-sufficient.

There are several common types of assignments that I use. These include iterating on a design, practicing a method, building craft, and developing a perspective on new ideas.

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