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Classroom Learning : Learning Styles & Life Skills

Learning Styles

Visual Learning
One of the goals of design education projects like Box City is to place visual learning on the same level as learning with words and numbers. Visual learning is a larger term for learning that includes visual culture, design and visual communication. School art programs often focus mainly on the fine art aspect of visual learning but projects like Box City come from the traditions of design fields like architecture, landscape, and urban planning.

Analytical Skills are not automatically part of the visual learning process unless they are designed into the program. This is accomplished by having the students start at the implementation stage but by backing up the process and having the students learn how to identify the problem, gather information and research the problem, develop criteria for a successful solution to the problem, generate a variety of alternative solutions and apply the criteria to select the most appropriate desirable solution. Then the student can implement their selected solution.

Life Skills

Teamwork- Because students are creating a community that works for all of its members, they must consider other perspectives and the impact of their decisions on the group as a whole.

Critical Thinking- Students are acquiring the skills to interpret and critique their surroundings. Box City encourages students to think about their community as a product of design and something that they can change and improve.

Communication- Students learn the visual language of buildings and communities, i.e. scale, materials, and zoning, and design a community by influencing these factors. Communication skills are important as students collaborate with classmates to solve problems and make decisions.

Initiative- As stakeholders in their new community design, students take ownership and initiative in the project. One objective is that students will continue to show initiative as active citizens in their "real-life" communities.

Perseverance- The Terrace Town project encourages teachers and students to think of design as a process that involves evaluation and redesign. Teaching activities will ideally strike a balance between community planning (which emphasizes process), and box building construction (which emphasizes product).


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