teaching
I am fortunate to work with students in a creative environment where we learn new things and design cool stuff. I find students at the University of Pittsburgh particularly interesting and I am ever amazed by their interests, intelligence, passion, and willingness to learn new things. If I can create a learning environment that encourages students to leverage what we do in class towards their own ends, then I can guarantee positive learning outcomes.
In my technical communications classes we focus on technical writing, writing architectures, project management, digital tool learning, and design strategies that my students employ while working with others to create deliverables. In my digital design-centered courses, I draw on post-structural invention methods to encourage creativity, UX methods and design thinking to ground our work in method, and a studio environment where students work together to learn tools, techniques, and revise their work. I've also taught a range of other courses including first-year writing, professional communication, usability testing, courses housed in the school of education, independent research projects, and graduate independent readings exploring critical making methods/pedagogy.
craft
As a designer and woodworker with some twenty years of experience, I can’t help but see the teaching of writing as craft. To learn a craft, one must first learn the feel of their tools, in my case the edge of the blade in relation to the stock. Of equal importance is reading the stock and how it wants to be worked, so as not to tear away at it, and the idea behind the design. Tools needs to be tested. And in so doing a student begins to assemble the appropriate knowledge of knowing-making, which results in skill. This Aristotelian concept is not a linear one. Knowledge does not always inform making or doing. In fact, sometimes it is the other way around. That is, through practice, we begin to form theory, which in turn informs subsequent practice. The teaching of craft always involves scaffolding. After a student learns one tool those skills are transferred to the next, and new theories are formed and tested for each process so as to effect a consistent product. Inevitably, the student learns that there are many ways of accomplishing an intended outcome. A skilled craftsperson, however, understands when to apply a given tool to achieve a specific outcome in particular situation.
