News & Events
Critique, historically described as the process of presenting and reviewing work for feedback, has longserved as a foundational pedagogical practice in art and design education. At RISD, we refer to our “culture of critique.” But how is critique at RISD really defined? How do we define critique within acommunity as diverse as ours? During this Faculty Summer Institute, Re-Imagining Critique, we will collaboratively examine these prescient questions.
Ramon Tejada. Associate Professor, Graphic Design (GD)
The Faculty Summer Institute (FSI) on “Difficult Conversations and Collaborative Learning” will introduce participating faculty to theories, strategies, and evidence-based techniques needed to work through moments in the classroom or studio that are inflected by differences of ideology, experience, or values.
FSI Leader: Daniel Cavicchi. Professor, History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences (HPSS) Faculty
Angelo Baca, Assistant Professor, History, Philosophy, And The Social Sciences, RISD in conversation with Lydia L. Jennings, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, Dartmouth College
Two faculty fellows working on experiential, skill and process-based learning, from writing to woodworking, join the Teaching & Learning Lab in Spring 2026. Read the story.
During the Fall 2025 term Faculty Fellows Tyanna Buie and Sejin Hwang hosted a series of three-part workshops for faculty and students on reimagining critique in art and design education. Back in November, they sat down for a conversation with Dimitris Papadopoulos, Senior Instructional Designer at T&LL, reflecting on the workshops and their thinking around critique. Read the story.
The Teaching & Learning Lab put together a Spring 2026 ‘Teacher’s Toolkit’ to help faculty get started with the new term. Access the toolkit here.
Faculty Workshop Series
Syllabus Swap: Strategies for Inclusive Teaching
The "Syllabus Swap" sessions provide space, time, and tools for reflection on, peer-to-peer review of, and revision of syllabus and course components that center inclusive teaching and learning. The workshops aim to help faculty:
- get access to tools and insights for reflective teaching
- “audit” the accessibility and diversity of course components and materials and identify areas for improvement
- identify strategies and practical steps for inclusive feedback and critique, classroom/studio interactions, and grading and assessment
- review and redesign syllabus statements, course policies, and teaching strategies
Inclusive Critique and Feedback
The "Inclusive Critique and Feedback" discussion-based sessions are open to all faculty interested in sharing insights and experiences on the ways they define and use inclusive critique and feedback methods.
Syllabi and Course Design in the Age of AI
These workshops address different approaches, challenges, possibilities and types of digital labor involved in designing a syllabus in our age of born-digital, machine readable, or machine generated content. AI, seen by many as a major disruptive force in higher education pedagogy, has already triggered a wide range of responses from strong skepticism to excitement. Despite valid concerns and criticism, the emergence of new AI tools is the latest, and clearest, signal of transitioning to a new digital environment for producing course content and, more broadly, types of knowledge that cannot be ignored by teachers. This new condition invites reflection on the function and purpose of what we call a “syllabus” but also presents some new possibilities in designing a course that are worth exploring. What should a syllabus look like? What are its key components? How can we build a machine-readable syllabus? Should we redesign assignments or rethink assessment in light of machine-generated content? How do we account for and communicate the ethical issues and questions of accessibility, labor, time, and workload involved in designing course content both for faculty and students?
