The Design Cognitive Process Using Digital Instruments: an Enlightening Design Activity of Secondary School Pupils

Le processus cognitif de la conception dans les usages des instruments numériques : une activité de conception instructive d'élèves de lycée

Sophie Farsy (1) , Blondina Elms Pastel (1) , Eric Tortochot (1)

1 ADEF - Apprentissage, Didactique, Evaluation, Formation

The French Curriculum for Design and Applied Arts presents a subject area stretched between artistic and technology education. It offers multidisciplinary approaches and practice shifts based on design projects that engender a digital skills development process. This—O-level—syllabus does not actually train design professionals. Rather, it develops pupils’ design skills and requires the use of digital instruments to visually present and defend the design projects. We observed the design activity of several pupils in three learning situations (French high schools). We analysed pupils’ intentions and preparations during the assessment tasks: artefacts they designed, statements they made on those artefacts, communications they organised to enlighten what they designed, etc. We based these analyses on interviews, slideshows and 3D graphic representations. The outcomes show the complex interaction between traditional and digital practices. It unveils the way pupils develop their creativity using and uttering peculiar ideas or tampering with teachers’ requirements. It also demonstrates design skill development and knowledge acquisition: how pupils adapt the required tasks to the assessment criteria the teachers enunciate; knowledge they request to complete the tasks they must do; what kind of efficient activity (exploration, necessity, obligation) is involved in the design cognitive process when using computer-aided design.

Mots clés: Cognitive processes; Digital skills development; Design Education; Social Constructivism; Computer-aided design

Domaines: Education; Art et histoire de l'art

Sophie Farsy, Blondina Elms Pastel, Eric Tortochot. The Design Cognitive Process Using Digital Instruments: an Enlightening Design Activity of Secondary School Pupils. 2018. ⟨hal-01692224⟩