introduction

teaching
I currently co-teach Graphic Design modules on an as-needed basis in the School of Design, Northumbria University, UK. Over the past three years I have also tutored on a casual basis at the University of Sunderland, UK, where I have taught both undergraduate(BA) and graduate(MA) students enrolled in art, design and media programmes. I have taught a range of art and design courses in both full-time diploma and part-time continuing education (CE: "Further Education" in the UK) programmes at the collegiate level at Algonqin College, Ottawa, Canada.

beginnings
My experience with teaching in a classroom began in 1993 when a friend, Elizabeth Mountford, who was working at Algonquin College, Ottawa, asked me to teach a basic drawing class that was part of a certificate program in CE. I agreed to try it. At the time, the college was in a state of transition. The course was held at an old high school building. I remember not knowing how to begin a class, but found that the students were very patient. I slowly figured-out how to prepare material and present it. And I made lots of notes.

It got easier. I began to teach a DrawingII class and a life drawing class. Over the years, the other courses that were being offered as part of the cirtificate program fell away and the drawing courses that I was teaching were left isolated on the list of courses being offered, categorized as General Interest. I kept the courses going; making posters to advertise them, going out and posting them around the campus and the city art stores. For me, they were becoming a source of enrichment for my own art practice, a means of reflection, and a sounding board for ideas about perception and cognition. And, I enjoyed the students - the wide range of ages, different skill-levels and the life experiences that they brought to the classes.

The college built a new campus. For a couple of years the courses ran in a prefabricated room located out in the parking lot. The life drawing models had to huddle between electric heaters. With the new campus the drawing courses came under the direction of a new department, and again became part of a certificate program. The notes that I had been making turned into weekly, one-page handouts. I developed a solid methodology for teaching drawing and began to compile them with samples of student work into a book named after the course, Gotta Draw.

Contacts made through my illustration work led to teaching a workshop in the full-time Graphic Design degree program at Algonquin College, where I taught Graphic Illustration. In 2005, despite record enrollment in the drawing courses, changes in the administration at the college lead to them being dropped from the curriculum.

Later that year I moved to Toronto, and in 2007 went to the UK to complete a masters degree at the University of Sunderland. While doing the MA, I began teaching again. As academic tutor I taught occassional classes in an undergraduate Illustration Life Drawing workshop. Later, while negotiating the terms of a PhD application in the Design Department, I co-taught Graphic Communications with Rob Burton, and stood-in for Dr. Manny Ling, tutroring the Design" Multimedia and Graphics MA programme. I continue to be a support tutor at the University of Sunderland, in 2011 bringing the MA: Illusrartion programme through the third semester.

In January, 2011 I began post-graduate studies at Northumbria University's School of Design. In October, 2011 I started teaching part-time in the Graphic Design programme, co-teaching one module, and designing and teaching another in March, 2012.

research
My main area of academic interest is in sketching and ideation. I investigate the role of sketching and ideation in design, and focus particularly on how, as narrative representations, scenarios and storyboards embody design-critical meanings.

beginnings
While consulting in the high-technology sector in the early nineties, I began adapting brainstorming and storyboarding techniques that are typically used in adversting and filmmaking, to design situations where scenario are used, such as user focus group testing and internal development of future products. Having fostered an interest in design systems and databases for some years, I began to develop scenario production and management tools to streamline the process and improve consistency. This led to the design of a kit that enables those who use scenarios to develop visual storyboards in-house, and a masters research project called ‘workPlay: An ideation and sketching Tool’ (Jones MA, 2008). The designs for workPlay were critically reviewed by an international panel of academics, professionals and experts. This primary research established that there is a need for an ideation and sketching tool like workPlay, however, a more pressing and persistent problem for design is storytelling, i.e. how to tell good user stories. This question has become part of the focus of my current doctoral research at the School of Design, Northumbria University, UK.