MY REFLECTIONS AND REFRACTION AS A VISITING SCHOLAR TO CPUT, SOUTH AFRICA – DR GINN BONSU ASSIBEY
MY REFLECTIONS AND REFRACTION AS A VISITING SCHOLAR TO CPUT, SOUTH AFRICA – DR GINN BONSU ASSIBEY
I was involved in three major academic activities during my visit and interactions with academic experts in post-humanist design, nomadic pedagogy, smart technology and transformative learning. Out of the three academic activities, two were writing retreats and the other, was a supervision guide for masters and PhD students.
The first retreat was to develop a conference article on a project that was dubbed “We are Earth” to explore the role of communication design in minimizing the impact of environmental degradation caused by humans in their quest to meet their daily needs.
The project adopted nomadic pedagogy to shift students design problem formulation mindset engineered to meet industrial production needs to drive materialism to a social conscious one that promotes sustainability. The students were taken to the projects site and were coached to identify problems in the project site, which was a community. Watch the project video below.
Being the lead author, I came up with a conference paper, which has been accepted and will be presented coming September 2023 at the DEFSA Conference Dubbed: Vulindlela: making new pathways. The title of the paper is “Using ‘SLOC’ as a Co-Design Inquiry Tool Into Nomadic Pedagogy”. During this retreat, I experienced amazing cross-pollinations of ideas and writing iterations that strengthened the content of the paper. The second retreat was meant to create a space for participants to finish any research paper they were co-authoring. At this retreat, I worked with two other authors on a paper titled “Transformative Learning in Design: An Experiential Account in Higher Education”, which has been published this year in NRF-DHET accredited Journal - International Journal of Art Culture and Design Technologies (IGI GLOBAL) - DOI: 10.4018/IJACDT.316178.
The visit was a success by the grace of God and by refraction as a design educator I will share that learning happens through knowing and becoming, which is shrouded in phenomenological encounters that awakens and rationalizes our experiences.
Dr. Ginn Bonsu Assibey
