Graphic designers and illustrators intuitively believe that their graphic embellishments such as pictures, photographs and graphics will aid a learner when they use instructional material. The results of empirical studies however indicate that graphic embellishments have a limited effect and only contribute to learning under very specific conditions.

Visual Communications at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), incorporating graphic design and photography, aspires to instil social, environmental and ethical sensitivity within students in order to meet a perceived increase in demand for these issues to be addressed at local and global level. To meet this imperative students are required to produce visual communications solutions for charitable organisations and participate in community-linked photographic excursions that expose them to social and environmental issues within real life scenarios.

South African education systems straddle the developed/developing world schism, an old-school-style Eurocentric view has long tussled with an Africanist dialectic. Educators struggle with access and upliftment issues whilst implementing outcomes-based learning programmes and simultaneously maintaining academic standards. At Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), conscious of the need to build future capacity, innovation in teaching and learning is paramount and the issues identified above are constantly under debate. Experimentation is an ongoing aspect of teaching methodology.

Ethos, the origin of the word ethics, originally meant a place where animals frequent. When the herds gather at the watering hole how do they interact with other herds, species or competition? How do they behave in a way that they will be welcomed back?

One of the central obligations of a post-graduate programme at a university is research. Any research project starts with a research proposal. Therefore one of the central tasks in the training of researchers is mastering the strategies of persuading the overseers of research that the task that the researcher is undertaking is feasible, do-able and worthwhile. To do this act of persuasion the researcher has also to demonstrate that he or she is in all likelihood capable of doing research – this demonstration of competency is built into the proposal. The result of research will be a document like a dissertation.

This paper questions how we teach and practise within our various specialities without a holistic understanding of the self and our humanity.

The paper reflects on how DEFSA has delivered on the Forum’s first aim, with specific focus on the liaison activities that takes place at a tertiary level. This aim, as documented in the DEFSA Constitution, reads “Ensuring that liaison is maintained between relevant primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education in matters pertaining to design education, between technikons, universities, technical colleges, private institutions, education authorities and the design industry” (DEFSA, 2007a).

The design process, like all creative activities, involves both rational aspects and other less easily-explicable non-rational aspects, such as the roles of intuition, imagination and personal insight. There are therefore different ways of knowing and learning involved in teaching design.

The practice and the teaching of Typography in South Africa has yet to undergo radical or substantive changes in light of the multiple shifts and developments in critical thinking that has taken place in Academia and contemporary visual practice in recent years. While contemporaneous thinking has “ forced a change “ in many disciplines in light of the Postmodern, Post Colonial and other “Post” posturing that challenge the dominance of Europe and the West as the centre, very little of the core imperatives of these schools of thought has found its way into the development and thinking around Typography in South Africa save a few seminal books and teachers.

A Structured Reflection Framework To Implement Visual Research As Practise-Based Arts
Research Design Illustrated Within An Applied Photographic Educational Context

Although various South African universities engage with art practice research methodologies, the research designs employed have not been clearly articulated or interrogated as of yet, leaving some work to be done towards answering Loxley and Prosser’s (2005) call for a refinement of arts-based research methods.

This paper acknowledges the ongoing process being used in the Jewellery sector to develop an integrated training and development framework. The framework progresses from ABET Level 1 to doctoral qualifications and shows how the various qualifications could link directly to specific occupations within a sector. In doing so, this paper addresses the boundaries between education, training, industry and government. More importantly, it indicates the inclusive process followed to open the gates to enter the new terrain of relevant education and training for sector specific occupations.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the South African jewellery sector is aligning education and training within the government’s educational policy.

There is national and institutional pressure to transform education, to revisit curriculums and approaches to teaching and learning and to address issues around dominant worldviews, inclusiveness and diversity. Visual arts lecturer practitioners, like other academics, are being challenged to respond.

We know that the students entering our programmes, in all their growing diversity, provide new challenges, bringing with them as they do different and often complex social, cultural and familial identities, some of which they leave, wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly, at the door, as they look to conform to the expectations of the disciplinary communities.

The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg has diverse departments ranging from Architecture, Fine Arts and Multimedia to five different design disciplines. After years of being housed in geographically dispersed locations the faculty has recently moved into one building, and is in the process of consolidating and rationalizing the teaching programmes. One area of rationalization has been identified as the theory programme, and we have been assigned the task of identifying theoretical material and drawing up a single teaching programme that most departments could subscribe to.

According to Megan Hughes (2006) the generation that educators of the 21st Century have to deal with is referred to as “Generation Y”. They represent the by-product of the previous generation, i.e. the “baby boomers”, who heralded a “surge of new inventions and improvements” (Hughes, 2006), allowing the next generation benefits of improved technology and a much easier life.

“The Y Generation doesn't like hard work, even when it's for its own benefit, and is very much in love with anything that's 'instant'. “(Hughes.2006)

Design educators often adopt teaching and learning methods of a traditional nature. These practices may no longer be effective in the fast-paced world of tomorrow.

Design thinking, a well known topic of discussion in the design discourse, offers exciting innovative possibilities when applied in other disciplines. This paper explores the potential of design thinking in the seemingly disparate discipline of Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS). OR/MS develops mathematical models for analysis based on quantitative logic as an answer to management or other real life problems. Design shares this concern with trying to improve current situations but approaches these problems differently, using ‘designerly ways of thinking’.

The creative and cultural industries form a significant employment sector in both the Thames Gateway region in England and the Durban Metropolitan Area in South Africa. Whilst successful completion of a degree has increased the chances of employment and career options for learners in both countries, employability may also be increased through work experience.

Silk is a prestigious material, often used to produce textiles and clothing associated with rank, luxury, wealth and social status. In Africa silk is produced and used less extensively than cotton and wool – both geographically and socially. However, silk textile traditions in Africa have been sustained by the continuing demand for prestigious culturally significant clothes.

Kalahari tussah silk comes from a silk worm from the Kalahari, a vast region of red sandy soil extending across much of Southern Africa. The wild silk is a naturally occurring renewable resource used by the San, who are the original and oldest inhabitants of South- Africa. Small communities are located in a few areas like the Kalahari Desert region, and regions of Namibia (Lewis- Williams, 1991:6-11).