A Critical Review on the Differences between an Art Student and a Design Student in their Critical Thinking and Learning Style

Abstract

Creative thinking is the process of a specific thought that improves the ability of creativeness. The process enables the mind to generate new ideas and to think deliberately in different ways. When comparing between an Art student and a Design student, their creative and critical thinking might have similarities at the beginning of their education, since they are still exploring their talent, but students at their final year or even post graduate students might be totally different from one another. “David Kolb” published his learning styles model which gave rise to terms such as “experiential learning theory” (ELT), and “learning styles inventory” (LSI). In this paper, the researchers suggest that applying David Kolb's experiential learning theory (ELT) would differentiate between an Art student and a Design student which could help in guiding students to their strength point and to discover themselves as early as possible, besides helping the educator to design a flexible design course which could match both types and make use of the best of them. The research methodology is based on a theoretical approach covering Kolb's model, critical thinking and a case study on students enrolled at the Faculty of Arts and Design, MSA University. All levels of students were covered in 4 majors as well as a comparable study applied to a sample of students who go through the case study five years ago and had been asked them to redo the questionnaire once more to compare the results.