100 Years of Work
At a Glance
Discipline
- Applied arts
Instructional Level
- College & CEGEP
Course
- Design & the Built Environment, Topic: History of Architecture & Design
Tasks in Workflow
Social Plane(s)
- Individual
- Group
- Whole Class
Type of Tasks
- Collecting & seeking information
- Discussing
- Debating
Technical Details
Useful Technologies
- Miro
- Whiteboard
Class size
- Small (20-49)
Time
- Single class period (< 90 mins)
Inclusivity & Accessibility
- Diversity of engagement
- Variety of representations
Instructional Purpose
- Exploration & inquiry
- Preparation & knowledge activation
- Application & knowledge building
Overview
The purpose of this activity is for students build knowledge collectively and to apply analysis skills that they have practiced in previous course activities.
The activity serves as an introduction to a design typology that students will explore in a subsequent studio course. It helps to frame contemporary workplace design strategies within historic precedents.
Students arrive to the activity having reviewed either a video documentary or an academic paper related to the topic, bringing specific knowledge to their group discussion. Following their inquiry and debate, groups must summarize key findings with a short text and a chosen image.
This activity has been designed to take place in a 3-hour class near the end of the semester. As an in-class activity that uses familiar tools with minimal homework preparation, the activity is well-received by students who are juggling end-of-semester deliverables in multiple courses.
All participants collaborate on the same artifact. Miro is an effective cloud-based tool that allows enough options for the instructor to build a framework and enough freedom for the students to choose how to communicate their findings.
Instructional Objectives
Students will be able to map key developments in workplace design over the past century and identify successes and failures based on their discussions.
Workflow & Materials
Activity Workflow
Contributor's Notes
- Students have a steep learning curve with each new design typology they encounter, and this activity helps them build knowledge and confidence for a topic that is the focus of a subsequent semester.
- The activity replaces a lecture, and the format allows students to practice synthesizing complex ideas through reading, writing, discussion and visual representations.
- The activity works best when the preparatory assignments are more or less equally divided amongst the group. While the instructor could distribute the prep assignments to ensure equal groups, students appreciate having the choice between watching a video or a reading a paper and the diversity of media supports UDL.
- The instructor needs to act as a facilitator for group discussion. Plan to be actively moving from table to table to check in on progress and guide their inquiry.
- If using Miro, there is some work to do on the break between part 1 and part 2 of the workflow for the instructor. Re-mixing the groups and adding the blank template for part 2 to each of the completed part 1 takes some time but means that groups are ready to dive into the second half of the exercise more efficiently.
- Any whiteboard tool will do, but there are certain features of Miro that make it well suited to an Applied Arts discipline.
Applied Strategies
Published: 03/03/2025
Copyright: © 2025 Holfeld. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication on this website is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.