The many challenges of learning & teaching online
I mentor people transitioning to design both 1:1 and as part of Designlab. So I spent this week teaching almost 7 different students at different points in their career. Some are just doing a month-long course to understand design basics, while others are doing a much intensive course to build a portfolio to apply for jobs. As I hear their stories and the courage it takes to commit to an intense course, I thought of writing some tactics and strategies:
Understand the pros and cons of design toolkits: No matter what the background is, most people tend to jump to solutions or start worrying about how to execute the solutions. Instead, focus on finding the right toolkit to guide to the solutions.
Managing time: It’s easy to get deep into a part of the design process and spend time extensively to perfect it. I think that’s problematic because it reduces the time for iterations. Most people studying design in universities benefit from the practice of iterating as they grow as designers.
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Lessons for this week: Use Google drive for continuous collaboration
One of the challenges of learning online is the lack of an in-person pen and paper demo. No matter, how much we advance in technology, there are few things that technology can’t replicate. For eg: I was explaining how to create an empathy map from interview transcripts, and I was struggling to demonstrate over a video call.
So after trying out few other approaches like teaching with screen share, I found that Google doc is the best so far by giving us the option to create different types of files, have a version copy and giving the option to share/annotate feedback.
