You can now find my final MFA thesis paper posted on OHIO LINKS.
Category Archives: Design Education
http://www.education.go.ug/
Saki Mafundikwa: Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets
Saki Mafundikwa: Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets
Enjoyed this talk very much especially since there aren’t many thorough visual accounts of the story of various African Alphabets.
Today, I am reminded of how the value in knowing who I am and how rich my culture is. As designers, we thrive on inspiration to fuel our creative juices. Many a times, I am quick to look to the web, books, journals etc and forget to look within. I think it’s important that we start to look inward and around us before we look to the outside. As an african, a lot of what I have learned, at least in the last five years has been heavily influenced by my western education, which I am grateful for however, I think it’s time that I looked back to Africa for inspiration.
Setting a center stage for young Ugandan innovators
http://www.core77.com/blog/business/mentoring_rising_tech_talent_in_ugandas_capital_24398.asp
Definitely love moments like these, when young people rise up and use their ability to think creatively and come up with viable solutions to everyday problems. Someone, told me a long time ago, that a situation becomes a problem if it has no solution and I am beginning to believe that this is in fact true. Cheers to mara launchpad, Uganda for giving individuals a platform to showcase their capabilities. It’s definitely refreshing to see the power of collaboration, teamwork and mentorship at it’s finest.
Design as a catalyst for learning
Another interesting read that has me excited about the potential for design to impact how students are taught in school today. This book presents a couple of case studies with stories from different schools whose teachers have successfully applied the concepts of cognitive and design problem-solving thinking into their curriculum.
Design-based learning offers genuine promise for preparing students to be thinking, informed citizens who can shape progress in the next century. And, for children, design experiences are intriguing puzzles through which learning comes alive.
The National Endowment for the Arts has long supported the inclusion of design in the K-12 curriculum. In response to growing evidence that design is a powerful tool for transforming curriculum and accommodating the variety of ways in which students learn
This book was written by by Meredith Davis, Peter Hawley, Bernard McMullan, and Gertrude J. Spilka
Uganda Education sector strategic plan (2007-2015)
This document that gives a brief synopsis of the Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports plan for the education sector. One of key factors of my research study is to dissect and come to a satisfactory understanding of the current and future goals of this ministry.
One of the three main purposes of the strategic plan was to address three critical areas of concern within the current education structure. The most interesting to me was that secondary schools were not producing graduates with the skills and knowledge required to enter the workforce or pursue tertiary education.
Why Design Education?
Coming up to Speed:
A quick flash back (Jan-Mar. 2012)
I have always had a passion for my country despite having been in the U.S for approximately five years now. When I decided to go to Grad school to pursue an MFA in Visual communication Design, I knew that I wanted my thesis study to comprise a topic that is relevant to my Ugandan heritage. I know the power that design research has and I wanted to make sure that as I continue to learn more about it, I put it to good use in an area that best interests me.
I chose to do my research study on design education specifically for Ugandan secondary schools because of the rising need for more practical and hands on skills in the education system. This is well explained in my proposal below;
Thesis proposal:
A need to widen the scope of art and design education exists in Uganda today (kwesiga, 2000). There is a high demand for qualified individuals in design-related professions with average salaries ranging from $800 to over $1000 per month (Ouma, 2008). Due to the lack of qualified individuals in this field, employers have turned to overseas design firms for design expertise. With eight million young people aged 15-30 and an unemployment rate of approximately twenty percent, Uganda has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this predicament, young adults have the ability and the capacity to drive positive social change and economic growth, if given the appropriate resources and opportunities
(International Youth Foundation, 2011).
This thesis study will create a secondary school level design education curriculum/program inspired by the Ugandan culture, empowering youths with basic skills to become self-sustaining, proactive professionals and preparing them for more rigorous study at the university level.
Increasing accessibility to design education will;
- Help combat the alarming unemployment rate among young people by giving them the required skill-sets to compete for jobs in the growing design market.
- Familiarizing students with potential design professions while in secondary school will encourage them to pursue a more rigorous study in visual communication design at the university level. In the long run, this will provide young people with higher paying jobs that will help boost economic growth and also reduce the country’s young adult unemployment rate while increasing the country’s annual per capita income.
NEXT STEPS…
- First this proposal was submitted to IRB (Institutional Review Board) and after thorough scrutiny, it was approved as a thesis worthy/ human subject safe research topic.
- A production schedule was created to help guide this research process from beginning to end.
- Secondary research starts.
Secondary Research Begins: Summer 2012
– Scholarly articles
– Journals
– Government/embassy websites
– Newspaper articles
– Books
– Academic papers
– Publications
DESIGN-ED UGANDA 