Digital Thinking:

Writing in the Digital Animation Discipline through

Computer Mediated Communication

Cecilia Mouat

As a consequence of the increasing use of digital technologies for graphic representation,

Design schools have created new degrees such as Digital Animation and New Media. In the
same way, traditional degrees such as Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Industrial
Design and Art, have incorporated courses of 3D representations that students must employ
in their professional practice.

Although digital technologies for graphic representations have integrated into design
disciplines, the studio course is in all colleges of design, the main course through which
students learn how to develop a design project; the course’s assignments are practical
exercises (projects) and the focus is how students must face the design process. The
design process involves creative and critical thinking which is triggered by concepts that
students must communicate not only by graphic representations but also by words.

With the increasing use of digital tools for graphic representations, studio instructors must
teach students how to use these complex technologies; the digital tools and their
capabilities to produce digital images that were unthinkable with handmade techniques,
permit students automatically reach a high definition result, and many times push them into
looking for solutions rather than developing a critical thinking during the design process.
Students are experts technological users but they not always know how develop and
communicate the ideas which support their designs.

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In this scenario, design education is experiencing enormous changes which require deep
analysis in order to conciliate the need of creative and critical thinking with the huge
availability of technological tools. I suggest on the one hand that students must be trained
on writing as a way to increase their critical thinking during the design process, and on the
other hand I suggest that Web 2.0’s capabilities permit alternative forms of teaching which
engage students’ learning through collaboration and participation.

Design Schools’ Community:

The Studio Course and the Design Process

The studio course is in all colleges of design, the main course through which students learn
how to develop a project, and how they must face the design process. The project is a
product, physical or virtual, and the design process involves consecutive phases which
commonly have defined by the design community as: first the capture of information which
students must analyze and synthesize; second the development of ideas as a previous
phase before students start designing; and third the shaping of the project. These phases
involve instrumental competences such as the capacity to understand and manipulate ideas
and thoughts with analysis and synthesis; and methodological competences or capacity to
organize and plan decision-making, and problem-solving.

The studio course practice is under debate within architecture, art and design disciplines
and involves two different and opposite pedagogical practices: On one hand students and
teachers must experience an intense one-to-one interaction characterized by a highly
individualized practice; and on the other hand, students must face public examinations,
many times with a jury composed with other teachers or external reviewers. Peter Medway
(2002) in his study about architecture student’s sketchbooks, notes that students must
show, sometimes their work in progress and always their final works, through an oral
examination which is based in students’ designs, represented by drawings, models, plans,

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and photographs; during the oral examination students must communicate their ideas and
“the spoken word carries a great weight” (Medway, 127). This kind of instruction is not
exclusive for architecture students but for all design and art students. Deanna P. Dannels
and Kelly Norris Martin (2008) in their article about the feedback in design studios, notes
that design juries are recurrent practices within the context of design studio courses, and
the oral examination is an important event in design students’ learning experience (Daniels
& Martin, 136).

While most educators acknowledge that a core component of creative practice is the
“product” of creative thinking, many other educators are also suggesting that the design
process is an equally valued outcome of art and design education (Barbara de la Harpe et
al 2009; Demirbas & Denirkan 2007; Ellmers 2006; Gore 2004; Jackson 1999; Koch et al.
2002; Lawson 2003; Ulusoy 1999).

Neil Gore (2004) suggests that “critical thinking is an essential and important aspect
inherent in the activity of making in art, and the process of discovering forms, strategies and
techniques includes the development of a critical attitude toward craft” (Gore, 39).

In the art field, Timothy Allen Jackson (1999), in response to emerging technologies and its
application in studio courses, developed a curriculum centered on ideas and critical thinking,
rather than on technique alone. The goal of Jackson’s project is to explore “how personal
and collective identities are formed and contested through visual means” (Jackson, 71). He
suggests that studio course should combine a critically and culturally informed content and
search for alliances with other research and technological innovation initiatives (ibid, 73).

Barbara de la Harpe et al (2009) in their study about assessment focus in studio courses
analyzed 118 journal articles on studio published over the last decade in three disciplines:
architecture, art, and design; in order to develop a deeper understanding of creative
practice. Their findings suggest that educators focus more on the product outcomes rather

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than on students’ learning process. De la Harpe et al attribute their findings to the
prevalence of instructors of design disciplines, who are “firstly active practitioners and
secondly teachers in their disciplines” and they also suggest that the strong emphasis on
practical professional outcomes may reflect an orientation to industry expectations rather to
focus on learning and teaching (De la Harpe et al, 46). In their conclusions, they suggest
that design education would be focused in all aspects of design/art-making, including the
product, the process and the person; design education should include a focus on mastery,
which involves professional and innovative practice, reflective practice and interdisciplinary
collaboration (ibid, 47-8).

Aaron Koch et al (2002) in their final report for the AIAS (American Institute of Students of
Architecture) analyze the studio course’s culture in order to propose changes for current
practices. They claim for the development of new practices which must include: design-
thinking skills, collaboration rather than competition, an interdisciplinary and cross-
disciplinary learning, emphasis on design process rather than on products, clear methods of
student’s assessment, innovation in creating alternative teaching and learning
methodologies, and development of oral and written communication in order to complement
visual and graphic communication (Koch et al, 26).

During the design process, the main tools through which students must show and represent
their observations, ideas, and designs are through graphic representations such as
drawings, pictures, sketches, plans, or by models (physical or virtual). It is important to note
that there are different kinds of design representations, and each one plays different roles,
and at the same time, each kind of drawing is associated with different stages during the
design process. While the sketches are useful tools for analysis and observation and earlier
stages of designs; rigorous and technical drawings are appropriate when the design is more
defined.

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Within the context of digital technologies of representation, students are able to produce
design artifacts with larger amount of information and complexity. Rachel Mc Cann (2005)
suggests that technological tools allow students to automatically reach a high definition
result, transforming them into spectators rather than participants of their own designs (Mc
Cann, 78). Opposite opinions argue that in conventional design, the reflective conversation
with the design situation involves several actions, such as externalizing design ideas
through drawing/modeling, interpreting the consequences of the drawing act, and making
moves to a new design situation. In digital design, however, the feedback in the
conversation with the design situation is more immediate; digital systems of representation
such as 3DS Max, permit students create and manipulate solids and voids at the same time
they are evaluating texture, lighting, color scheme, proportion, and other anthropometric
relations of the proposed solution (Shaki, Mark & Ahmadi, 2006).

Although the main tools through which students must show their designs are through
graphic representations (virtual and/or physical), the importance of the oral speech is crucial
at the moment of the public examination, and during the professional practice, it is the most
useful tool for convincing clients. Students must use words in order to communicate their
ideas and convince their audience.

John Ackerman and Scott Oates (1996) note that architecture community tends to be “non-
linguistic” and highly semiotic; this conclusion is strongly applicable to students of design
and art disciplines The two opposite pedagogical systems within the studio course, which
involves on the one hand one-to-one interaction between teachers and students, and on the
other hand involves student’s public examinations, seems to be not entirely assumed by
design schools, probably because students’ production during their degree is mainly graphic
and as a consequence, teachers seem to emphasize the graphic representation rather than
the oral communication.

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In the case of the Digital Animation discipline which arises from the digital era, students
must be high technological users in order to employ sophisticated programs for creating
their works. They must be good performers in order to draw and model their creations;
animation involves movement, thus they are not only working with static images, they need
to create objects, characters and landscapes where certain actions will take place. In
addition they need to know about narrative in order to tell a story which is visual, and that
story must fulfill the same requirements that a traditional film: sequences with different
frames, shots, camera angles and appropriate edition.

From this description, students not only must be high technological users in order to draw,
model and give movement to their creations, they also must develop a critical thinking in
order to look for the most appropriate technique for their expressive intentions, and at the
same time, they must perform creative skills in order to articulate the story-telling with
characters, actions and locations.

Creativity is not only a product of individual personality but is rooted in a set of teachable
competences; these competences include idea generation, improvisation, metaphorical and
analogical reasoning, divergent thinking that explores many possible solutions,
counterfactual reasoning, and synthesis of competing solutions. Creativity also requires the
ability to communicate and persuade others about the creative ideas (Long Lingo & Tepper,
2010). George Steiner (2001) suggests that every human production, articulated concept or
aesthetic act is developed in a defined time; this time has evident historical, social, and
psychological components. From this perspective, art depends on contingent factors such
as the availability of certain materials, the conventional codes of recognition and the
potential public who is implied in a certain context and temporality (Steiner, 78) 1.

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My own translation from Spanish version

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From these assumptions and applying the notion of creativity to the context of digital
animation’s students, we can infer on the one hand, that creativity involves certain
competences which are teachable-learnable, and on the other hand, the value of the
creative work produced by students must be evaluated as a contextual product with its own
temporal, cultural and social exigencies.

As a mode of Summary, the studio course seems to be the most appropriate practice for art
and design disciplines, but the deep understanding on the implications of the two opposite
pedagogical practices which are involved in the studio course, suggest that design teachers
must be focus not only to promote skills in order to develop the final product of the design
process, but to promote communicational and writing skills which support students to build a
discourse associated with their design/art-works and at the same time, support students to
analyze, synthesize and develop conceptual ideas during the previous phases of the design
process.

I have suggested before that developing communicational skills based on words is a way to
help students to improve their creative and critical thinking; I also suggest that the pass from
the idea to the design/art-work implies a ‘translation’ from one kind of language (the
language of words) to other kind of language (the language of the image). With the
increasing use of digital tools for graphic representations, Design disciplines are faced to
new opportunities that permit educators to re-think the teaching-learning process in creative
ways, in order to conciliate the use of technology with the need to improve students’ abilities
on critical thinking and concept’s communication.

Writing as a powerful instrument of thought

There are evident differences between the iconic linguistic representation (the writing) and
the graphical representation we find in drawings. The words have generic functions, they
speak about a certain category; therefore the graphic images are characterized by the

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precision of its representation. The word ‘dog’ refers to all animals of this specie, but a
represented dog through a picture or a drawing is a unique dog. The visual thinking is
isomorphic which means that the mental model is analogous to the original model;
Language gives names to the objects while the graphical representation reproduces its
appearance. In summary, graphical representations have a clear function; they show,
display, present; and the nature of linguistic communication is inductive, which means that
language triggers concepts and representations (Castrillo, 1996)

‘’The visual arts present things and its character is direct, concrete and graphic, and the
other (poetry) can operate with abstractions...the visual art propose the experience, the
emotion and the pleasure of the visible world; poetry suggests the world though
symbols...the visual art is based on perception and poetry is based on imagination”
(Tatarkiewicz, 1990:151). 2

Psychologists such as Lev Viygotsky (1962), A.R. Luria (1971), and Jerome Bruner (1971),
pointed out that higher cognitive function, such as analysis and synthesis, seems to develop
most fully only with the support system of verbal language, particularly, of written language.
Janet Emig (1977) suggests several differences between writing and talking, such as writing
is learned behavior, and talking is natural; then writing is an artificial process and talking is
not; writing is technological, talking is natural, organic; writing is slower than talking; with
writing the audience is usually absent, with talking, the listener is usually present; writing
results in a visible graphic product, talking usually not; as a graphic product writing could be
seen as lees ephemeral than talking (ibid, 123-4).

Writing is a process of symbolic transformation of experience through a specific symbol

system of verbal language, which is shaped to an icon (the graphic product) by the enactive

2
My own translation from the Spanish version

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hand (ibid, p.124). Writing through its inherent re-inforcing cycle involving hand, eye and
brain, marks a powerful multi-representational mode for learning (ibid, 124-5).

According to Luria (1971), writing is a “repeated mediating process of analysis and

synthesis, which makes possible not only to develop the required thought, but even to revert
to its earlier stages, thus transforming the sequential chain of connections in a simultaneous
self-reviewing structure. Written speech thus represents a new powerful instrument of
thought” (Luria, 118)

Within the context of design instruction, writing could be seen as a complement of drawing
and as a powerful instrument of thought which helps students in their process of analysis-
synthesis; it should be promoted by teachers in order to stimulate the previous phases of
the design process which involve instrumental competences such as the capacity to
understand and manipulate ideas and thoughts, and methodological competences or
capacity to organize and plan decision-making, and problem-solving. On the other hand,
writing could be seen as a students’ tool for communicating coherent discourses about their
works, stimulating their capacity to articulate ideas, checking if they express by words the
content and concepts of their design/art-work.

Writing within the Rhetorical Context of Design Disciplines

College faculty generally assumes that writing is the business of the English department;
this assumption seems to ignore that each discipline has its own rhetorical requirements
and the rhetorical demands of the various disciplines differ (Bartholomae 1985; McCarthy
1987, Murdick 1991; Williamson 1988; Russel, 1990; Russel, 1991).

Lucille McCarthy (1987) conducted a study, following one student’s writing in one class per
semester during his freshman and sophomore years. Her findings suggest that school
writing is not a monolithic activity or global skill; “the contexts for writing may be so different
from one classroom to another, the ways of speaking in them so diverse, the social
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meanings of writing and the interaction patterns so different, that the courses may be for the
student writer like so many foreign countries” (McCarthy, 260).

A discipline-specific rhetoric consists of “specific content, specific formats, specific

requirements for evidence and proof, and a specific register for language” (Murdick, 58).
From this approach, writing is also a social activity which contributes to form discourse
communities.

William Murdick (1991) in his Ph.D. dissertation Writing-to-learn in college art classes
defines writing-to-learn as “the production of an unpolished piece of writing, usually done in
class or at home, in a personal journal” (Murdick, 17). The main purpose of this writing is to
help students think about the art subject, under non threatening conditions (no evaluation),
as a way to improve the rhetoric practice of the discipline (ibid, 17). From this approach,
writing-to-learn is understood as meaning writing to learn two different things: content
knowledge and rhetoric or modes of thinking (ibid, 33). Murdick calls this kind of writing
expressive writing, and defines it as a “writing that is done primarily to explore one’s
thoughts on a subject, to pour out the mind to see what’s in there, to mull over the subject,
to develop thinking, to learn in other words, what the mind holds and what the mind can
discover by making largely unconscious connections” (ibid, p.21).

By writing expressively, Murdick suggests that “students learn to see works art in detail, and
they are also able to discover (through articulation) the holistic effects of art works” (ibid,
23). Expressive writing could be defined as a technique for personalizing knowledge of a
subject and promoting better retention of information (ibid, 23).

In his study about the expressive function of journal writing within the discipline of studio art,
Murdick summarizes the benefits of writing-to-learn (WTL) in five main points: (1) to
remember course content; (2) to understand basic concepts taught in the course; (3) to
think independently and critically about the subject matter; (4) to learn to write better within

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the discipline (that is to learn the rhetoric of the discipline); and (5) to analyze and evaluate
his or her understanding and ability (ibid,.2). “Students are capable of thinking critically and
complexity if allowed to use writing as a mode of thinking through in-class and out-of-class
writing-to-learn exercises” (ibid, 11).

The contribution that writing makes to learning is related with content and abstract thinking
ability, and it is as well, a source of information about student opinion, attitude, and
intellectual growth (ibid, 16).

High School’s art teacher Priscilla Zimmermann (1985) helps her students develop
“perceptual skills, aesthetic criteria, and specialized vocabulary” in order to be able to
“describe, analyze, interpret and judge art” (Zimmerman, 31). Zimmerman provides the
language for art description and analysis by modeling the rhetoric during slide lectures, in
which students must take notes in order to learn the terminology she uses. Once students
have learned how to describe and analyze a piece of art, they must be able to articulate an
interpretation and evaluation.

Pamela Gay (1988) explains how she collaborates with the painting class teacher, planning
assignments of different kinds of writing-to-learn. Students must write in order to define
terms which are difficult to grasp; for example students defined “study” (a brief sketch in the
planning stage) and after their definitions, the concept became clear and students were able
to understand if their studies were appropriate or they were trying to arrive to defined
solutions (Gay, 39). Students also write about what they had learned after a slide lecture on
some concept; and write critiques of each other’s work. According to Gay, the writing helped
students “engage in a dialogue with them during the painting process”. At the end of the
course, students were asked to write about the effects of their writing in class, and some of
their comments were:

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“I went further with my definitions of a study and good composition than I would have with
speaking”

“Writing made me think and I saw in others’ work what I had also been struggling with”

Richard Grinstead and William Murdick (1989) conducted a study of journal writing in an
Introduction to Drawing class taught by Grinstead. On their journals students had to write
every class what they had learned, what kind of problems they had, their successes and
other artistic influences in their works. The study’s findings state, through the analysis of
students own declarations, that writing in journals for art students is a useful tool in order to
express themselves; evaluate their weakness and try to concentrate looking for solutions to
improve their works; and get confidence about their works (Murdick, 146-9). Grinstead
suggests that through the journal’s writings “students are thinking more about their art” and
they are able to “see” their mistakes. He also suggests that “the articulation of their drawing
problems in the journals causes the students to look harder and retain the insight”; by
“examining their product at the end of the day, they would experience a moment’s
frustration, and they forget about it. The writing class student, by contrast, intellectualizes
the problem and works it out, draws herself out instead of the teacher having to do it. The
self evaluation has a direct effect on learning”. Grinstead recognizes that this class using
journals is more engaged in the course than previous classes, and in the journals he can
see the changes in attitude toward art, from scared to confident (ibid 145).

For his PhD dissertation, Murdick conduced an experiment with art students; he
hypothesized that journals will provide important insights into student thinking and learning,
as well as an opportunity for the teacher to encourage and teach students on an individual
basis (ibid, 174). Art teachers, who participated in this experiment, suggested that the
journal writers had done much better in the course as a whole than other classes have.
Although it is not certain that the high performance of the journal writers can be attributed to

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the effects of journal writing, art professors were unable to point to any other variable that
might account for it (ibid, 196-7). In the same study, Murdick also supports his hypothesis
that journal students will learn better concepts and techniques drawings than non writers, as
evidenced by better ratings of improvement in drawing skills (ibid, 204).

Within design and art disciplines, writing is substantially less time allocated than studio
activity, and often formal writing is unfamiliar territory for most practice-based artists. Linda
Apps & Carolyn Mamchur (2009) explains that some form of analysis or explicative writing is
requested to accompany the student’s final exhibition, but historically writing is marginal
within art disciplines (Apps & Mamchur, 270). They suggest that art students do not possess
a set of literary tools to adequately describe or discuss their process, although students
need to portray analytically the process of their making. Historically art discipline has
created visible divisions between classroom and studio, writing and art, theory and practice,
and educators need to rethink their perception that creating and explicating are not binary
opposites; educators must help students in order to bridge the theoretical with the practice
(ibid, 271)

Art and design students, use to work informally with written and graphical methods during
the earlier stages of the design process; according to Medway (2002), both systems be
treated as simply alternatives and equivalent modes in terms of their contribution to thought
(Medway, 129). In his study about architecture students’ sketchbooks, Medway presents
different cases; Edwin, for example, uses both systems for “figuring things out” because “it’s
very different when it’s just in your head versus on the paper...writing it down forces you to
translate thought into words or images” (ibid, 129). In the same study, Doris writes well-
spaced notes, organized under headings, hierarchized by dashes, but few complete
sentences; nevertheless Emmanuelle produces pages of solid prose with never a non

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sentence (ibid, 129-30). In his study, Medway suggests that students’ sketchbooks “are not
a vehicle of communication” and the production of these texts cannot constitute social
action; “they operate only reflexively, on the consciousness of the producer alone, serving
epistemic but not communicative purposes” (ibid, 143).

Medway’s conclusions do not contradict Murdick’s study which found that student’s journals
provide important insights into student thinking and learning; Murdick also suggests that the
kind of writing in students’ journals prepares them to share rhetorical language, but his
study does not support that students’ journals are ways to communicate discourses to other
members of the community; art journals are mainly a medium of self-reflection and private
communication with the teacher. In this sense the expressive writing on journals improve
the critical thinking but doesn’t necessarily support students during the process of oral
examination.

Dan Melzer (2009) describes Britton’s taxonomy which divides writing into three functions:
expressive, poetic and transactional, and each one corresponds to different points on the
rhetorical triangle of writer. The expressive writing is informal and exploratory, with the self
as audience (student’s journals could be classified in this category); poetic writing is
imaginative, with a focus on the text as art form; and the main purpose of transactional
writing is to inform or persuade an audience. Melzer adds a fourth function into Britton’s
taxonomy: the “exploratory” writing. Like expressive writing, exploratory writing is informal
and focus on exploring ideas, but the audience is public (Melzer, 243). In his study, Melzer
gives examples of writing assignments with an exploratory function; which are reading
responses posted on an electronic bulletin board that are read and often responded to by
peers and the instructor (ibid, 243).

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Melzer’s new category is useful for describing the kind of writing that art and design
students need; it is expressive, it is not academic or formal writing, but it is more than a self-
reflection, it is created for an audience.

As a conclusion, writing is a powerful tool that art teachers should incorporate in their
pedagogical practices. The common understanding that teaching writing skills is English
department’ exclusive obligation, disallow the rhetorical implications within specific
disciplines; in this sense each discipline must be responsible to train students in specific
rhetorical skills. The expressive writing is useful for developing critical thinking during the
design process, it is a way to think critically about the art making, but the exploratory writing,
in Melzer terms, which is reflexive but is also addressed to an audience, seems to be the
most appropriate writing for art and design students. The new scenario of emerging
technologies and participative learning must encourage educators in order to look for
creative solutions in specific disciplines. In the case of design disciplines, the dichotomy of
the two opposite pedagogical practices within the studio course suggests the necessity to
explore new ways for supporting students in their communicate skills, which is, apparently
and based on the sources revised in this article, often an unexplored arena within the studio
course.

Critical and Reflective Thinking

100 years ago, John Dewey in his book 'How We Think' (1910) identified several forms of
thought, including belief, imagination, but he emphasized the reflective thinking. Reflection
is for Dewey, a special form of problem solving, and may be seen as an “active and
deliberative cognitive process, involving sequences of interconnected ideas which take
account of underlying beliefs and knowledge” (Hatton & Smith, 34). One of the key issues
with regard to reflection and which emerge from Dewey's original work and its subsequent
interpretation is that reflection is inextricably bound up in action.

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Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) explain that critical thinking is “a process and
outcome that is frequently presented as the ostensible goal of all higher education” (89).
Gokhale (1995) defines that analysis, synthesis, and concept’s evaluation are the main
items of critical thinking (23). Robert Ennis (1996) states that critical thinking is reasonable
reflective thinking and it is focused on deciding what to believe or do. Ennis describes the
critical thinker with eleven attributes; according to him, the critical thinker is open minded
and mindful of alternatives; tries to be well-informed; judges well the credibility of sources;
identifies conclusions, reasons, and assumptions; judges well the quality of an argument,
including the acceptability of its reasons, assumptions, and evidence; can well develop and
defend a reasonable position; asks appropriate clarifying questions; formulates plausible
hypotheses; defines terms in a way appropriate for the context; draws conclusions when
warranted; and integrates all items in this list when deciding what to believe or do.

The need to define critical and reflective thinking and its influence during the design process
is a relevant issue for planning pedagogical exercises of the course. I have suggested
before that Design disciplines are faced to new opportunities that permit educators re-think
the teaching-learning process in creative ways, in order to conciliate the use of technology
with the need to improve students’ abilities on critical thinking and concept’s communication.
But, which are the forms, strategies and conditions that stimulate students’ critical and
reflective thinking?

Gokhale, (1995) conducted a research which was designed to study the effectiveness of
collaborative learning as a way to improve critical thinking. His findings suggest that
students who participated in collaborative learning performed significantly better on the
critical thinking test than students who studied individually. Gokhale explains that
collaborative learning provide to students new opportunities to analyze, synthesize, and
evaluate ideas cooperatively; giving reasons for their judgments and reflecting upon the
criteria employed in making these judgments (28). Gokhale supports his findings with

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theorists such as Viygotsky (1978) and Bruner (1985); Viygotsky states that students are
capable of performing higher intellectual levels when they work in collaboration with others
rather than when they work individually; Bruner suggests that cooperative learning’s
methods improve problem-solving strategies because students are confronted with different
interpretations of a given situation. Peer’s feedback improves the learning process because
permits to internalize both external knowledge and critical thinking skills, and transform
them into tools for intellectual functioning (Gokhale, 28).

Hatton and Smith (1995) conducted a study which involved students of Bachelor of
Education degree at the University of Sydney. Data for the research was collected from
1991 to 1992, and groups of students were exposed to a range of strategies which might
foster the reflective practices. The key questions that researchers used in order to collect
the information were related with the identification of strategies, factors, approaches, and
conditions which promote reflection or demonstrate evidence of reflective practice (Hatton &
Smith, 39)

Their findings suggest that a powerful strategy for fostering reflective action is to engage
with another person in a safe environment, in order to examine planning for teaching,
implementation, and its evaluation. Students identified two strategies employed in the
program as being effective in facilitating their reflective practice. Both were characterized by
a high degree of verbal interaction: One was the 'critical friend' interviews, and the other
was the peer group discussions which were videotaped. A common characteristic of these
two strategies is that they incorporate a written record which could be used later as a
stimulus to reflective practice (ibid, 41).

From the research and analysis of students’ writing, Hatton and Smith conclude with a five
part framework to examine what constitutes evidence of critical thinking:

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The first level of critical thinking or Technical Reflection consists in students’ reports on
events or students’ reports on literature. In the second level of critical thinking or
Descriptive Reflection, students’ personal judgments are based on reading literature or on
searching different sources beyond the class notes and the sources provided by the
teacher. In the third level or Dialogic Reflection, students explore alternatives with the
teachers or others peer through a space where they are afforded the opportunity to be
critical. In the next level of Critical Reflection, students give reasons for their decisions,
taking into account broader social, historical and political contexts. If students have engaged
with the forums and read each other, they can deal with the discussion. In the last level of
Contextualization of multiple viewpoints, students must apply the four previous steps
into other situations and contexts.

As a mode of conclusion, the interaction with others in safe environments, seem to stimulate
the reflective and critical thinking. The verbal interaction supported with written documents
also help to encourage students into reflective practices where students can communicate
and give their arguments, but at the same time, they can enrich and improve their learning
process through the feedback’s practices. Assuming that learning derives from participation
in join activities, design and art teachers are faced to design learning environments which
provide participative and collaborative interaction between students and teachers, and
between students and their peer, as a way to reinforce students’ learning process and
critical thinking.

The movement from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and its pedagogical implications

If students are capable of performing higher intellectual levels when they work in
collaboration with others rather than when they work individually, education should be
focused on tools that provide to students collaborative learning environments.

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In the last 10 years, Web access, the nature of the Web, and the contexts for learning has
been transformed. Since the mid-1990s, public instructional classrooms with Internet access
grew to 94%; and outside of schools, more than two thirds of people in the United States
have Internet connections at home (Greenhow, Robelia & Hughes, 2009:246). 90% of
school-age youth use the internet, with adolescents ages 12 to 17 representing the largest
and faster-growing group of users (ibid, 247). Today’s youth are creative, interactive and
well trained in Web 2.0 capabilities; 55% of online teenagers are using Web 2.0
technologies, such as social networks sites outside of school, and visit their social network
sites daily or several times a day (ibid, 247).

In the educational field, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been adopted by

institutions to support administration of courses; and it offers opportunities to reintroduce a
more intimate method of communication (Radclyffe-Thomas, 161). As a complement to
face-to-face interaction, CMC offers a platform for course delivery, discussion groups,
tutorial support, co-created documents and pages with permit make links across space and
time (ibid, 161).

While the first generation of Web 1.0 was viewed as an educational source of information,
which was largely controlled by a small group of content providers, Web 2.0 characterizes a
transition from the predominately read-only Web 1.0 into a read-write Web 2.0 (Greenhow,
Robelia & Hughes, 247). In Web 2.0 scenario, production is based on collective
participation, collaboration and distributed expertise and intelligence. Other terms used to
characterize Web 2.0 suggest relationship technologies, participatory media and social
digital technologies. The pass from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 means the shift from information to
communication, from a passive and individual learning to an active and social-constructed
learning. In other words, knowledge is decentralized, accessible and co-constructed by and
among a broad base of users (ibid, 247).

19
Web 2.0 includes social networks (MySpace, Facebook, and Ning); media sharing
(YouTube, Flickr); social bookmarking (Delicious, CiteUlike); collaborative knowledge
through wikis (Wikipedia); blogs (Twitter, Blogger); etc. Greenhow, Robelia & Hughes
(2009) suggest that Web 2.0 promotes users and their interconnections through four main
affordances: (1) User-defined linkages among users and content that permit users post on
others’ pages; (2) Mechanisms for sharing multimedia content; (3) Prominent personal
profiling; and (4) Inter-technology applications enabling interfaces with services and features
on other sites (247).

Web 2.0’s capabilities offer a scenario where collaboration and social interaction is not only
a possibility, but the most prominent way of interaction between web’s participants. In this
sense, the notion of virtual communities becomes a popular social interaction, especially
among young people. A survey from the National School Boards Association (2007)
reported that students’ online sharing in social network sites involves also education and
learning. 60% of students reported using their social network sites to talk about education
topics, and 50% reported talking specifically about schoolwork (National School Boards
Association, 2007).

Although is well known that youth are technological users, students are employing digital
writing outside school primarily for social purposes (Beach et al, 2009); Nelson (2004) posits
that if students are technological users on a daily basis for their academic and nonacademic
pursuits, there is a need to understand the educational effects of this use. He suggests that
using information technology for educational purposes increase students’ engagement in
effective educational practices (Nelson, 19). Beach et al (2009) suggest that teachers play
an important role in helping students learn to use digital writing tools to foster learning, in
order to connect outside-school writing and in-school writing (vii).

20
In the past decade, many studies have conceptualized Web use in classrooms as an
information source, where students are recipients rather than producers of knowledge
(Greenhow, Robelia & Hughes, 249). Web 2.0 features allow learners to create, consume,
and share vast and varied produced information in different media. “Many features
encourage interconnections among learners, allowing them to develop their networks and
increase the number and range of people to consult for feedback or support” (ibid, 249).

Nelson (2004) conducted a study using data from the 2003’s National Survey of Student
Engagement (NSSE) in order to investigate the relationship between student uses of
information technology and other forms of student engagement. Several studies had argued
that using information technology is potentially an effective educational practice, and Nelson
was interested to investigate the effectiveness of information technology and its relation with
other practices such as active and collaborative learning, and student-faculty interaction
(Nelson, 5). The study’s sample consisted of over 60,000 students from more than 420 four-
year colleges and universities across the country (ibid, 10), and the results suggest that
areas of engagement like student-faculty interaction and collaborative learning may well be
related to information technology (ibid, 18).

Charles Lowe posits that “blogging represents the interaction of a community in the sense
that all posts are subject to concerns about audience”; the posting content, as well as the
discussion and feedback from peers, become the voice of that community, including the
teacher. Lowe argues if the teacher no longer is predominant active reader and responder
of student texts, students, as a community, take more ownership of their writing.

Wilde (2008) suggest that blogs are prototypical examples of a Web 2.0 application which
focuses on a participatory model and recreate real-world relationships (between things
and/or people), where the act of creating often means creating context.

21
Prior to 1999, blogs were used primarily by web individuals, generally designers or persons
who worked in the technology industry. These kinds of blogs were chronologically
organized; contained links to sites of interest on the web, and provided commentary on the
links because these specialized bloggers’ users were able to code their own HTML pages
(Miller & Shepherd, 2009: 266). In 1999, some blog-hosting sites were started offering easy-
to-use editing tools that require no coding (ibid, 267). With these changes in technology, the
second phase of blogging was characterized by younger and less technically adept users,
who emphasized “personal commentaries rather than links, and self-disclosure rather than
information sharing” (ibid, 267). A 2003’s Perseus Development Corporation survey,
concluded that new blogs increased by more than 600% between 2000 and 2001, with over
four million blogs by the time of the survey (ibid, 267 cites Henning, 2003). The third phase
of blogging was characterized by the advent of social-networking; between 2002 and 2004
the most popular networking services: Facebook, MySpace and Friendster were launched.
In April 2005 an update of the Perseus survey estimated 31.6 million blogs on twenty
popular hosting sites (ibid, 267 cites Henning 2005); and in March 2007, Technorati was
tracking 70 millions blogs, excluding the popular social networking sites (ibid, 267 cites
Sifry, 2007). Social networking sites have much more features that enable community
development, such as the option to request other users become friends, share photos,
videos, links and post comments (ibid, 268).

Web 2.0 digital writing tools such as blogs, wikis, online chat, digital storytelling, and
podcasts can help students improve their learning and writing ability; processes such as
generating, organizing, mapping material, and formulating arguments and ideas for online
audiences can be improved through using digital writing (Beach et al, 5).

In using digital writing, students are acquiring what are known as digital Literacies (ibid, 6).
Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel (2007) define digital Literacies as “socially recognized
ways of generating, communicating and negotiating meaningful content through the medium

22
of encoded texts within contexts of participation in discourses” (224). An important digital
literacy involves the use of hyperlinks to connect texts. When students participate in writing
blog posts, they are continually linking to other blog posts, texts, images or video clips
(Beach et al, 9).

Chris Dede (2009) and his graduate students of emerging educational technologies’ course,
studied ten Web 2.0’s technologies in order to analyze “their potential to enhance learning
by promoting creativity, collaboration, and sharing” (260). His useful categorization
distinguishes three groups according with their functionality: the first category of Sharing;
includes (a) communal bookmarking; (b) photo and video sharing; (c) social networking; and
(d) writers’ workshops and fan fiction; the second group of Thinking; includes (a) blogs; (b)
podcasts; and (c) online discussion forums; and the third group of Co-creating; includes (a)
wikis and collaborative file creation; (b) mash-ups and collective media creation; and (c)
collaborative social change communities (ibid, 260). The study’s findings suggest that
shared artifacts could provide “informal professional exchanges among members of this
community, empowering the social scholarship” (ibid, 261).

Proponents of collaborative learning claim that the active exchange of ideas within small
groups not only increases interest among the participants but also promotes critical thinking.
Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) argue that learning of community occurs through the
interaction of three elements: cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence.
Cognitive presence is manifested through the practical inquiry process, and has the
potential to assess the quality of critical inquiry in terms of providing a means to assess the
systematic progression of thinking over time (Garrison et al, 2001:11).

Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2001) argue that asynchronous text-based communications
technology, such as computer conferencing, is a way to assess critical thinking as both
process and product (12); “members question one another, demand reasons for beliefs, and

23
point out consequences of each other's ideas—thus creating a self-judging community
when adequate levels of social, cognitive, and teacher presence are evident” (ibid, 12).
Higher-order learning requires systematic and sustained critical discourse where
dissonance and problems are resolved through exploration, integration, and testing (ibid,
21).

One of the central aspects of digital literacy is the ability to judge the validity of information
available on online sites (Beach et al, 29). During students’ inquiry process, they must
search different sources which support, inform and enrich their discourses. Instructors must
teach students to adopt a skeptical stance toward material on the web by modeling critical
analysis (ibid, 29), and by checking sources in sites such as Wikipedia.

Unlike face-to-face discourse, in CMC there is no body language or paralinguistic

communication used by participants to enhance their communication flow; class members
view only the content that the participants choose to make visible in the conference
(Garrison et al, 2001:13); thus in this complex and challenge context, collaborative learning
and interaction must be coordinated and synergistic. This requires an understanding of the
medium of communication, the process of higher-order learning, and the critical role of
teaching presence in attaining higher-order learning outcomes (ibid, 21).

Garrison and Anderson (2003) suggest a model for developing critical thinking with four
stages: triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution; where the teacher’s role
and the student’s role are different when they engage in a program of critical thinking. While
the teacher must provide a well thought out activity, must encourage searching for
information, must provide opportunities for deep thought and for probing for understanding,
and must reduce complexity constructing a meaningful framework; students must recognize
the problem, engage in an information exchange, arrive at solutions and explanations, and

24
show a commitment to applying and testing their solutions and explanations. Garrison and
Anderson (2003) note that this approach requires a strong teacher presence (62).

Wu & Hiltz (2004) conducted an exploratory study in spring 2002, in order to investigate if
the “mixed mode,” meaning classes that meet face-to-face and also require additional
asynchronous online discussions, improve the students’ perceived learning. Their results
suggest that online discussions definitely improved students’ perceived learning; but
although students appreciate the online discussions, they state that the instructor plays an
important role to motivate effective online discussions (148-49).

Hawisher & Pemberton (1997) suggest that the use of asynchronous learning networks
requires careful planning and sensitivity to the dynamics of online interaction in an academic
environment (57). They explain that ALN is capable of reshaping the social contexts of
classes if teachers bring the necessary kinds of critical thinking and pedagogical values that
successful educational innovations require (53). They explain that students tend to see their
postings as occurring in an educational context and therefore subject to evaluation. The
experiences of other instructors had demonstrated rather convincingly that teacher
encouragement alone would not ensure regular student participation in ALN discussion
groups (58). Students need to be encouraged explicitly to use forms of discourse that go
beyond the relatively narrow and confining conventions of academic prose when responding
to specific assignments online (62). Teachers must prepare a context for each assignment:
when students are asked to write about something related to the subject in the class, it is
often possible to plant fertile ideas in advance that will help generate more comprehensive
writing; teachers must plan the assignments approximate real communication situations,
where the writer/speaker communicates something to a reader/listener who wants to learn
more about it; peer interaction is also a useful way to motivate and educate each other (66).
Hawisher & Pemberton suggest that a summary writing is useful for helping students pull
together material they glean from their reading, but it is generally less useful as a piece of

25
communication in a conference discussion. They also suggest that online conference
assignments should be represented in a class syllabus in a way that makes them as
important to the course as paper assignments (69).

Digital discussions can be used in the classroom as a way to create community among
students, to check their understanding about a content and to review issues of expression
and clarity in students’ writing (Beach et al, 47)

Beach et al (2009) recommend asynchronous discussions for reflective assignments which

help students adapt to digital discussions environments (58). These activities must be
structured by the teacher because requires more effort from the students (ibid, 59).
Synchronous discussions can be used also for reflective purposes, often to create online
forums (ibid, 59)

Honeycutt (2001) conducted a study for comparing the mediated effects of asynchronous
and synchronous conferencing on peer's writing responses. The findings suggest that
asynchronous system (in this study the e-mail peer's response) supports deeper revision of
documents, as reflected by more specific comments. The findings also suggest that many
students prefer the organization and elaboration of the e-mail comments, as well as
instructors find that students improve their writing when they use asynchronous systems. In
sum, e-mail seems to encourage more elaborate comments than synchronous chats; and e-
mail was also viewed by students as the most helpful of the two media (52)

Thompson (1993) argues that asynchronous technology permits students and teachers to
take their time to read others, inviting to more reflective practices (Honeycutt, 27).

Computer mediated communication has opened up opportunities for learners including new
forms of interaction with instructor, course content, and other learners. The wiki, for
example, is a space where participants could co-construct meaning and create new
knowledge; this space allowed students to formulate, articulate, and talk around their ideas
26
(De Gennaro, 341). With wiki platform, instructors can easily support the learning
community and provide direction of the conversation when it is necessary (ibid, 342).

Digital writing tools such as wikis and Google Docs allow students to create collaboratively
written texts. The Web-based tools permit students to have access to same documents
online to write, revise, store and publish collaboratively (Beach et al, 73). With wikis,
students can easily revise the same text simultaneously at any time simply by accessing
their site (ibid, 75).

As examples of CMC in the art field, fashion students of three Colleges at UK, attended a
face-to-face class and subsequently they communicated each other via the use of “Virtual
Studio” which groups of students shared a virtual gallery, posted comments, and chatted on
real-time (Radclyffe-Thomas, 161). At De Montfort University in Leicester, England, video
feedback was introduced on a large class of Interior Design; teachers could record their
‘critiques’ on video and students could view their feedback and request a tutorial within a
day. With this practice, students not need to wait during hours for getting a feedback,
allowing teachers and students for better administration of their time (ibid, 161). In a College
of South Africa, videoconferencing was used to link classroom and industry;
videoconferencing exposed students to the planning and performance of a real-life puppetry
production, and students could ask questions, and offer feedback to the professional
company. (ibid, 162);

The increasing accessibility of digital mediated experiences creates opportunities for

students and teachers to become cultural producers with global exposure, rather than mere
consumers (ibid, 164). The creation of a site based on emerging technologies serves as a
catalyst for instructors wishing to re-conceptualize pedagogies (Anderson, 2008:42).

As a mode of summary, in the last 10 years, Web access, the nature of the Web, and the
contexts for learning has been transformed. Web 2.0’s capabilities offer a scenario where

27
collaboration and social interaction is the most prominent way of interaction between web’s
participants. Collaborative learning not only increases interest among the participants but
also promotes critical thinking. When students create this knowledge and information they
are doing so in a social process. Web 2.0 digital writing tools such as blogs, wikis, online
chat, digital storytelling, and podcasts can help students improve their learning and writing
ability; processes such as generating, organizing, mapping material, and formulating
arguments and ideas for online audiences can be improved through using digital writing

As a mode of Summary, the studio course seems to be the most appropriate practice for art
and design disciplines, but the deep understanding on the implications of the two opposite
pedagogical practices which are involved in the studio course, suggest that design teachers
must be focus not only to promote skills in order to develop the final product of the design
process, but to promote communicational and writing skills which support students to build a
discourse associated with their design/art-works and at the same time, support students to
analyze, synthesize and develop conceptual ideas during the previous phases of the design
process.

I have suggested before that developing communicational skills based on words is a way to
help students to improve their creative and critical thinking; I also suggest that the pass from
the idea to the design/art-work implies a ‘translation’ from one kind of language (the
language of words) to other kind of language (the language of the image). With the
increasing use of digital tools for graphic representations, Design disciplines are faced to
new opportunities that permit educators to re-think the teaching-learning process in creative
ways, in order to conciliate the use of technology with the need to improve students’ abilities
on critical thinking and concept’s communication.

28
Within the context of design instruction, writing could be seen as a complement of drawing
and as a powerful instrument of thought which helps students in their process of analysis-
synthesis; it should be promoted by teachers in order to stimulate the previous phases of
the design process which involve instrumental competences such as the capacity to
understand and manipulate ideas and thoughts, and methodological competences or
capacity to organize and plan decision-making, and problem-solving. On the other hand,
writing could be seen as a students’ tool for communicating coherent discourses about their
works, stimulating their capacity to articulate ideas, checking if they express by words the
content and concepts of their design/art-work.

Writing is a powerful tool that art teachers should incorporate in their pedagogical practices.
The common understanding that teaching writing skills is English department’ exclusive
obligation, disallow the rhetorical implications within specific disciplines; in this sense each
discipline must be responsible to train students in specific rhetorical skills. The expressive
writing is useful for developing critical thinking during the design process, it is a way to think
critically about the art making, but the exploratory writing, in Melzer terms, which is reflexive
but is also addressed to an audience, seems to be the most appropriate writing for art and
design students. The new scenario of emerging technologies and participative learning must
encourage educators in order to look for creative solutions in specific disciplines. In the case
of design disciplines, the dichotomy of the two opposite pedagogical practices within the
studio course suggests the necessity to explore new ways for supporting students in their
communicate skills, which is, apparently and based on the sources revised in this article,
often an unexplored arena within the studio course.

As a mode of conclusion, the interaction with others in safe environments, seem to stimulate
the reflective and critical thinking. The verbal interaction supported with written documents
also help to encourage students into reflective practices where students can communicate
and give their arguments, but at the same time, they can enrich and improve their learning

29
process through the feedback’s practices. Assuming that learning derives from participation
in join activities, design and art teachers are faced to design learning environments which
provide participative and collaborative interaction between students and teachers, and
between students and their peer, as a way to reinforce students’ learning process and
critical thinking.

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