Reflection
This experience has made me realize that I am not in sync with the novice learner. My own expertise has made it difficult to see the material the way a beginner would. As a novice teacher, I still have a lot to learn about my students. This will come with time and experience.
In the meantime, designing this toolkit gave me an opportunity to refine the concepts I have been teaching, using the activities I had already developed for the course as a starting point. In doing so, I quickly realized that those activities needed quite a bit of work. I am happy with what I have developed in theory, but the real test will be in the classroom.
My biggest takeaway from this project is how much I have undervalued analysis, critique, and observation as the foundation for learning graphic design. I have a tendency to rush to the “doing” phase, mostly in fear that the students will get bored with too much theory. However, in doing so I am skipping critical steps in developing design thinking and supporting students in crossing the threshold. Developing my toolkit gave me the opportunity to explore ways to build these critical skills in interesting and engaging ways.
This work was completed with the assistance of Claude, an AI developed by Anthropic. All ideas, concepts, and content are entirely my own — Claude played no role in generating or developing them. Claude was used primarily as a proofreading tool to identify grammatical errors, inconsistencies, and areas where phrasing could be improved. I also used Claude to check the clarity of my writing by asking questions such as 'what does this mean?' to verify that my ideas were being communicated as intended. This transparency statement was written by Claude based on my description of how I used it throughout this project.
Ai Transparency