The appropriate Ending

I thought long and hard about what I felt was a good topic to go out on, at least as far as my responsibilities for class, and I elected to write an example of how design classes should be taught, if and when i become the teacher rather than the student.

I'll start with a week by week glimpse of what i would teach;

Week 1:
Introduction, Design Processes, Assign groups for projects

Week 2-8
5 minute review of expected current stage of design by weeks end, in class design activity, discussion of blogs, clarify any uncertainties, meet with students for a quick progress report

Week 9
Review Expectations for Presentation, Discuss Blog

Week 10
Enjoy a product demo from each group

Other standard Syllabus stuff

Now, you are probably wondering, what about texts?
There are none, if you need to do readings here's a list of resources, but other than the descriptions i gave on the first day, you should be able to manage.

What is our homework/grading going to be like?
This is mostly going to be a class discussion and participation class, you should plan on being active at each meeting. Each week we will have a design challenge and some unusual tools to complete it with, on the other day, we will be discussing the design problems you discovered and wrote about on your blogs, they will be due at 8am on Thursday of each week.

Blogs? Whats a Blog?
For your blog (go create one and post it to our google group), style it how you want, and each week discuss something, it can be an object, an idea, a person, whatever! The only criteria is that the topic must have the need for revision and must fall prey to a critical design flaw discussed in the first week.
Depending on the number of students, we may go by volunteers, or random selections. Each student will need to briefly describe the product, the issues they discovered, and their suggestions for improvement. (it may be a good idea to focus on design flaws that are relevant to the stage of design you are in)

The Project
Depending on your groups strengths, you will be able to tackle different areas, but the goal is this, to bring a product at least to an advanced prototype phase that meets an established need. Your product can be software, law proposals or physical objects, but you must reach them through legitimate design practices. Write down everything you do to get there, date it, save it, have proof that you completed your research, your brainstorming, your testing, your revisions, your failures, keep records for EVERYTHING. Each week you will be asked to show some sort of evidence that you are progressing through the design process, at the expected pace. At the end of the quarter, I will expect a product unveiling. This unveiling should be treated as if it were a press conference, and you were convincing the world of its need and glory.

2 days of lecture, 7 days of practicing pressure situation design, 8 days of dissection of other designs, 1 day of clarifications.

This setup allows me to keep track of my students, avoids boring power points to give or receive, keeps the class challenging, engaging, and different class to class, semester to semester. The content for the class is going to be generated for me, and I will be able to be a moderator, picking interesting topics from areas my students are interested in. Additionally, on the off chance that i am unable to attend, am late, or just having a bad day, my assistant will not be hung out to dry, and i can rest easy knowing that the students will be practiced at the routine and with a little encouragement can run the discussion or activity without me (unless i happened to have the materials with me for the activity in which case i will always have a text based scenario for my students to go through).

Its not easy being a teacher, but its essential to be upfront and clear on what the expectations are, and i believe this system would do that, while keeping the grad student feel.