Discussion of IA education

["Livia Labate" <liv AT livlab.com>]

: Great, so how do we do this? The first semester I taught, my students
: freaked out that the syllabus wasn't complete. Without knowing exactly
: what they had to do week to week they were very insecure.

I noticed that north-american students get freaked out when there is no
clear path to be trailed during a course. They should come down to the
tropics for a semester to do some "caothic learning" as I like to call it. I
never knew when I would have an exam or what exactly I had to do throughout
most courses. This means one can do as little as possible (with just what
they are being told to do), or go nuts and explore whatever they want.

Since my fixation was with IA and I knew I would not find any kind of
education in that area here, I went for the nuts approach, because it was
the only way to learn. It did take me 5 years and a half to graduate - but
that was preciselly because I was trying to squeeze every little thing out
of the teaching I could get :)

So, for my ideal-IA-dream-curriculum, I'd ask for Motivation and Guidance,
before any other practical teaching. Get people to focus and think before
they learn to produce. Analyse before synthetize. A mentoring approach, much
like the greeks did a long long time ago. I never planned to become a
teacher, but in the past year I've been invited to talk about UX in three
universities, because a) people think I'm kind of mad so that's entertainig
and engaging for students b) there are not many IA/UX folks in the area who
are not too career-driven to stop for a second and share knowledge.

I don't know if this little story is of any help, but I think teaching IA
has a lot to do with making people understand their value and what they can
achieve; just showing them how important they are to make things happen, as
IA is to make projects happen.