Teaching design in large heterogeneous classes

Magazine article, 2009

Having just returned from the annual Human–Computer Interaction Educators Conference (HCIEd) in Dundee I’ve once again come to realise the very different conditions under which many HCI and interaction design teachers work. In many cases, but not all, interaction design is taught to small classes in a studio-based environment. Students are carefully selected, and are taught in small classes with a lot of one-to-one teaching. This is the case at the Masters course at the Royal College of Art, for example. In other situations, like at my own university, a Masters in interaction design is taught in larger classes, say 40–80 students, without studios but in labs where the students can leave their work overnight. In addition, students from a wide range of educational backgrounds are accepted; their key skills can be computing, cognition science, industrial design, ergonomics, graphic design, electrical engineering and almost anything in between. Large groups of students from different backgrounds are pretty much the norm for HCI courses too, from what I found at the conference, which raises some important questions: - How can we deal with heterogeneous classes? - How can we teach and assess design in large classes? - How can we provide sufficient feedback to students in large classes?