Projects and research theme – Studio Michael Shanks

Some personal reflections from Michael Shanks.
Main page – Pedagogical manifesto – [Link]
Creativity in complexity: learning through experience and design – a new edited book on the way for MIT – [Link]

My studio/lab has run many projects in and around pedagogy, learning, curriculum design, and the fundamental connection between research and learning. The key standpoint has always been – experiment, explore, try things out. Don’t respect boundaries – transgress and find connections that aren’t supposed to be there.

Embracing life-long learning

Everyone and every organization needs to embrace a growth mindset to learn, adapt. And crucially – it never stops.

Project-based studio-based learning

experiential learning by doing

Key question: how might we develop and share skills?
Answer: by doing, plunging in medias res and asking – what might we do?

Highlights at Stanford

• Traumwerk. Way back in 2002 Sam Schillace (Google) told me about wikis – cloud-based collaborative authoring platforms holding enormous potential for hands-on dynamic research and learning. Abram Stern built a few for the lab. Hybrid content-management learning-management research management. We called it traumwerk – dreamwork – going nomadic, making disparate connections and seeing what happens. Now they have been tamed and usually get called Learning Management Systems.
• Stanford Humanities Lab. Inspired by Jeffrey Schnapp’s vision for a new kind of Humanities. Project-based hybrid research-learning. 2004-2009.
• Cocreating Cultural Heritage. Information and Communication technologies in the service of distance learning in and around heritage. With Gothenburg University. 2006.
• Stanford Continuing Studies. Outreach and connecting More experiments in hybrid learning, including a new program in online learning from 2015. 1999 ongoing.
• Stanford Strategy Studio. Researching ways to facilitate conversations that make a difference. Exploring different kinds of learning spaces. 2008-2011.
• Stanford d.school. I’ll never forget the day that Bernie Roth and Bill Moggridge turned up at the lab and asked me to join their studio in design thinking. 2008-2014.
• Foresight and Innovation at Stanford – a research focus in Larry Leifer’s Center for Design Research and mobilizing Tamara Careleton and Bill Cockayne’s wonderful playbook. 2006 ongoing.
• Rhetoric at Stanford. Classes in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric – appreciating the scope of rhetoric. 2005 ongoing.
• Stanford mediaX. Partnership with this industrial affiliates program in the Graduate School of Education. 2008 ongoing.
• Roskilde University – experimental classes and workshops with this pioneer in student-centered learning. Scholartistry with Connie Svabo. 2012 ongoing.
• World Learning Summit. Exploring the future of EdTech with the global network of inspiring educators in and around Oddgeir Tveiten’s lab in Norway. 2015 – 2018.
• Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Working with Annemartine Van Kesteren’s extraordinary program of exhibitions in speculative design – the museum as catalyst for learning. 2012-2013.
• Studio Michael Bell, Columbia University. Exploring the architect’s studio as learning space. 2018 ongoing.

Read more

A personal pedagogical manifesto – [Link]
Research creation – [Link]