Art 220 Concept Development (3/28/11)

 What is a concept? Today in my Art 220 Concept Development class, my professor Jimmy Moss had everyone who has a data cell phone look up the word concept. Going into this class, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I didn’t know what the class would be about because all I knew was that this was a required course to take for my major. In class, several topics were thrown around: ideation, critical thinking and experiential learning.

The point of having us look up the word concept was to have us really understand its meaning. A concept is a general idea. An idea can stem from something small and grow into something exponentially big. My professor made me really think about how a concept and critical thinking go hand in hand. They work together to help create a product. It can also help spark another new idea which may be even more brilliant than the first idea. An example used in class today was the cell phone. Where did it originate from? Its creation had to start somewhere. It started with an idea to be able to communicate across long distances.  In order to achieve this, the telegraph was created. After the telegraph came the telephone. Then after the telephone came the cordless phone. All of this eventually leads to the creation of the mobile cellular phone. Once an idea is thought of, it takes the critical thinking to plan out and test the product. A lot of energy, time and labor are put into creating a product. There needs to be sketches and experiments and a lot of trial and error before an idea becomes a successful reality.

Hearing about concepts and critical thinking brings me to understand what experiential learning is. Experiential learning is a term I have never heard of before. But I have come to realize that what comes out of concepts and critical thinking is that after all the trial and error, skill and understanding is gained from it. It is the type of way you learn.  The only way to learn certain things is by having hands on experience and knowledge. There are certain things that we can’t learn unless we experience it for ourselves. My professor Jimmy Moss used learning to ride a bicycle as an example for experiential learning. A manual on how to ride a bicycle can be given to a student. It could contain all the instructions and diagrams on how to ride a bicycle. By reading the manual, would that student be able to ride a bike right away? No, the end result is that student won’t learn how to ride a bicycle by only reading a manual. That student will need hands on experience to learn how to ride a bicycle. It will take many tries to get it right and the first few tries will end up in failure. But after much practice that student will eventually learn to ride a bike. In this class I believe we will have a lot of experiential learning. It will help us to achieve our goals in design education. 

After leaving my first day of class, I now have a better grasp of what this class is about. It is a class to help me and my fellow classmates advance in design education. In this field, writing may not be a strong point but I learned that it is a necessary skill to have in the design world.