Teaching With Uncertainty

For the last three semesters I have been teaching design studios in which generative tools are present from the first week. Students arrive already fluent in them, sometimes more fluent than I am. The familiar pedagogical posture — the instructor as the keeper of craft, slowly handing it over — does not quite fit. I want to write down what does.

The first thing that changes is the relationship between assignment and outcome. When a prompt can produce fifty plausible solutions in an afternoon, the value of the assignment shifts from "make something that works" to "decide which of these is worth defending, and say why." Critique becomes the center of gravity, not the final step.

The second thing that changes is the role of uncertainty. I used to teach as if I knew where the semester was going. Now I tell students at the start that some of what we try will not work, that the tools will change underneath us, and that the goal is to build a practice resilient enough to absorb that. They respond well to this honesty. It models the conditions they will actually work in.

The third thing is harder to name. There is a particular quality of attention that comes from working alongside a system that is fast, fluent, and unaccountable. Teaching, for me, is increasingly about helping students notice when that quality of attention is serving them and when it is dulling them. The craft we are passing on is partly the old one and partly something we are learning together.