Know Your Work-Know Your Worth: Portfolio Design Thinking Cards
As part of a research project supported by the CUNY Adjunct Incubator, Susan Stratton andBrian McSherry, Assistant Adjunct Professors in the Media Arts and Technology Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY are developing a research project “Know Your Work-Know Your Worth: Portfolio Design Thinking Cards,” a creative and innovative system to teach portfolio design thinking in and out of the classroom through the production of method cards. Method cards are a design tool that enables users to explore and utilize strategic thinking through self-directed work and peer-to-peer learning in an interactive game like environment.
Andrew Davenport and Jeff Fredrikson, both Borough of Manhattan Community College students in Media Arts and Technology are working as Research Assistants on this project.
Their Portfolio Card System (PCS) is designed to help media and design students develop storytelling skills to showcase their work, their worth. The cards will guide the players through prompts to think about how to design the story of their work. At the heart of the cards are a series of questions, such as: What is work? What is play?, How do you plan for today? How do you plan for tomorrow? What is “good” work? What values does the work express? What is the private/public face of your work?
The PCS cards offer a strategic and playful way to encourage critical thinking about how to showcase creative work. It also provides the opportunity for continued discussion of standards of appreciation of individual work. These critical and creative thinking skills provide perspective, interpretation and analysis of portfolio work over time. The cards are designed to be used in classrooms, workshops and individually, in pairs and small groups by students, faculty and the wider public as collaborative learning tools and a precursor to an app to be researched and developed based on the Portfolio Card System.
This project is part of the CUNY Adjunct Incubator and is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Gittell Urban Studies Collective at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
