My experience on the MACME programme has enabled me to navigate with purpose, develop more concrete possibilities for research and to be confident to look outside of my own discipline for fresh ideas. With this research experience my capabilities as a design practitioner has added value not just as an academic but also in industry practice.

Impact on teaching:
The programme has helped me find pathways to introduce research activities into the visual communications design assignments and projects, and to prepare students to embark on their own independent studies in their final year. As a result, two visual communications final year students were able to present for research day, in February 2017. I was in a much better position to give them informed guidance and facilitate purposeful and meaningful tutorials than in the past.

Reviewing and examining pedagogic theories:
The learning experience in units 2-4 have been invaluable to me as both an educator and designer. As I am able to locate myself as the researcher in my work and think about my theoretical position, something I never did before.

Out of unit 2 – Design Research is Design Practice came unit 4 and 5 – Problem-based learning: An approach for the method of instruction in the preparation of blended learning environments for the partime structure for some selected college courses. I will be using this theme for a serious of workshops and seminars for both faculty and students as the college moves towards expanding its catalogue of programmes online.

Unit 1, was difficult. It was then I realised, like it or not I had to respect the process of research. For this unit, I spent too much time in the detail of descriptions and as a result, I produced a paper which read more like an opinion piece riddled with references. I took some sound advice from my examiners to locate myself in the research, and focus more on what was happening in my own region.

Unit 2, maybe by far one of my favourite units. It was in this unit I was able to use design practice and design research as the overarching theme. It was a mix of enjoyable research, reflection and design work. I believe this might be how I need to approach my research ideas. As a result using a similar process, I crafted an intercultural communication assignment using this approach I took for unit 2. Where the process was just as important as the final artefact.

The pedagogic unit was an interesting experience, however due to illness, I was not able to complete the process in the same way as the other units. I did a tremendous amount of research work, but was not able to synthesize the research enough. Going forward, this is definitely an area I need to work. My plan is to practice by choosing narrow topics and identify the best research method to use and produce the result in a reasonable time. Time management will be critical.

With this unit, I chose a topic that was broad, but managed to narrow it down, however there was not enough time to synthesize results. The information gathered from the research was valuable.