Proof of Learning Week 4

The focus of this last week of class was our final research report. I was a bit hesitant to start the research report and it seemed a bit daunting but the report really came out to be the most interesting activity we have done in this class. It was very beneficial taking the skills that we learned in this class and applying them to something within my major. This really helped me connect to the information more then if I was just researching a random topic.

What helped me the most when researching for this project were the interviews I did with the different professors. I wanted to learn about how they learned graphic design when they were in school and how it compared to with how they currently teach design and I really learned a lot from talking with them. Having the personal experience as the main study in the research project was very interesting because I got to have personal perspective of technology.  This perspective was the thing I was really aiming to research, not so much how technology has changed in the last 10 years for graphic designers, but how we as students are affected by this rapid evolution.  I concluded in my study that as students in the age of advanced technology we are getting the short end of the stick because we are no longer being forced to do things the long tedious way, we rely too much on the computer to do our work for us.

I wish for this research report that I would have had more time because I would have liked to interview more professors and also do follow up interviews. But this was hard because I am not currently on campus and it was hard to receive responses from faculty via email. I think if I would have more perspectives from professors and compared them to students the research report would have been more complete. I also wish I could have made some sort of solid way to tally my data into some sort of graph or chart to really begin to understand technology’s affect on students being good designers.

What I really took away from this research report is that I want to really start understanding graphic design without using technology and not relying solely on technology to help me.  Technology is good and it has been invented to make the process easier but to really understand how to do my job I should first learn what it means to have good design by hand and then I can add the computer. This class in general has really helped me with my critical thinking skills and I am really glad I took it. I look at the world and want to question things more so then before.