Journal of Design, Business & Society - Design Education: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Dec 2022

This work explores the integration of design thinking (DT) and anthropology as enablers in addressing responsible innovation in a real-world project. We used a problem and project-based learning (PPBL) approach with transdisciplinary research to explore such integration. We implemented design thinking as a reflective practice, process and mindset and postmodern anthropology as an approach and interpretative anthropology as an instrument. The objective is to integrate both when teaching strategic innovation as they help secure profitability while being responsible for the negative implications of innovation and its hidden un(der)costed flows. We designed a project-based learning approach embedded in a problem-based learning approach to expose students to the complexity of responsible innovation and distinguish its different elements through a sustained period. We documented a semester-long project where an interdisciplinary undergraduate group (non-designers) and community members partnered to face a societal challenge. Students submitted reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action assignments throughout the semester, and we triangulated them with participative observation and physical artefacts to document their learning experiences. We used thematic analysis addressing recurrent themes, topics and relationships towards the experiential learning approach and instructional methodologies that facilitated learning DT, anthropology and responsible innovation. Students perceived that anthropology and DT helped them visualize unforeseen consequences, make the normative within the technical explicit, acknowledge plural viewpoints and promote collective learning. Second, they recognized human perspective, participatory tools, intentional actions and functional outcomes as approaches to attend to those external factors that discourage responsible innovation. Third, they discerned that a PPBL approach using transdisciplinary research enabled them to have a greater understanding of the topic, deeper learning and increased motivation to learn. It also facilitated taming ill-defined problems while producing new understandings and feasible solution-oriented outcomes. This work discusses the need for theories and pedagogies to teach contemporary innovation in business education. First, we contributed to the former by embedding anthropology and DT to discuss responsible innovation as an essential element in devising strategic innovation. It emphasizes the need for academics and non-academic participants to reflect on their role and power in developing integrated knowledge for science and society. Second, we explore the practical implications of integrating a PPBL approach in business education pedagogy. It allows students to work in real-world settings and produce workable contributions to (and with) society. This project provides a detailed and descriptive analysis of a PPBL approach that aims to address responsible innovation in a public project while documenting students learning experiences. This work contributes to empirical research addressing pedagogies and advancing new theories in business education.

As complex global problems increasingly require the knowledge and skills of a broad array of disciplines, existing pedagogical approaches need to shift to support graduates to develop the skills necessary for innovation. This article reports on an experimental design studio that asked students from the disciplines of architecture, business and arts to work collaboratively to propose innovative solutions to complex real-world problems. While bringing other disciplines into the design studio is not new, in previously reported examples students were provided well-defined parameters for assessment tasks, alongside clear expectations for how disciplines should work together. The studio reported here provided students with the agency to define their own artefacts in response to the problems facing palliative care, and to decide how they would work together in the process of that production. Within this context, students were forced to examine their own disciplinary limitations and to find strategies for working beyond those, and in doing so, move beyond the recognized limitations of inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches to problem solving. To understand the value of this learning experience, extensive data were gathered from students in addition to educator observations. This article provides advice for design educators wanting to augment the studio learning environment through transdisciplinary collaboration, as well as those beyond the design disciplines who may be interested in utilizing this learning approach.

Engineering students need creative thinking skills to achieve innovation. This study focuses on ameliorating the creative process in engineering design units with the purpose of getting more creative and innovative engineering design solutions from students and better preparing them for industry and real-life conditions. It is suggested that engineering should use design pedagogy as a model for ameliorating creativity. The research is carried out using qualitative investigation. The study used triangulation to collect data about engineering educators’ approach, understanding and beliefs about creativity using observational research, a survey and in-depth interviews both with students and with educators. The study used an interpretive approach for data analysis by following the levels of understanding in an organizational culture. Three main results drawn from this work are as follows: (1) Engineering educators should understand the practice of creativity in an educational context. (2) Engineering educators need to value creativity as an important part of engineering design. (3) The discipline needs to value creativity as a core part of the curriculum.

The findings suggests that enriching creativity in engineering education is not feasible until engineering instructors comprehend and embrace the use of creativity in the classroom. This article specifically explores ways of integrating creativity in engineering design processes that took place in a mechanical engineering undergraduate programme – with an expectation that the research can be used as an exemplar for other engineering disciplines to learn from. This study is an important step, with a holistic approach, in suggesting creativity and creative thinking be inherent and an integral part of every engineering curriculum.

This article’s purpose is to demonstrate the ASPEN method (from the acronym in Portuguese Algorithm to Solving Problems in Teaching), developed to help teachers solve problems in design teaching and establish the relationship between unmediated creative methods and heuristics adapted to this context. The long-standing relationship between teachers and students has been under transformation into an increasingly complex knowledge ecosystem and it has been driving teachers to take on new roles and communicate in ways they have not done before. Now, as opposed to merely passing on knowledge, teachers must guide their students’ learning process. Due to the societal challenges that we all face nowadays, teachers must be able to articulate across multiple disciplines, have a global understanding of the matters and be timely up to speed with technology. Taking an innovation ecosystem that includes all agents of teacher education into consideration, these professionals must be prepared to the fast-changing social scenarios that have been recently presented. The ASPEN method emerges from an ethnographic and exploratory investigation of the behaviour of teachers in the classroom, observation and analysis of interviews, and the analysis of pedagogical influences through curricular plans. The observation results found that older and highly experienced teachers claim that they do not need to participate in continuing education courses primarily because they do not have enough time and because they are often more involved with their own investigations. The classroom is no longer a priority. They believe that their pedagogical techniques still work. The ASPEN method is structured to enhance teacher’s experience in anticipating and solving possible problems in the classroom, as well as helping address specific issues that could occasionally arise during the learning process. The expected outcome of this research converges around the guidelines resulting from the practical implementation of specific pedagogies in design education grounded on the ASPEN method. This pedagogical model has been tested in the design field, but it can be applied in multiple areas.

This study advances the debate over the role of technology-enhanced teaching in the practice-based design studio. Framed by the exigencies of the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a detailed survey and follow-up interviews illuminate the transformative experiences among 90 experienced design educators from seven countries. At the heart of this study is the question: where did design educators succeed in trying to approximate a physical studio using online technologies and where did technology-enhanced teaching fall short? Content analysis of qualitative data and reflective remarks provide a window into what educators see as the concrete pedagogical challenges and opportunities they have encountered. Their responses are analysed using the four major characteristics of the practice-based design studio: dialogical learning, the critique, studio culture and studio class size. The results clearly demonstrate that the social aspects of the physical studio with its informal learning opportunities are difficult to replicate online and dialogical learning could not be effectively established online unless classes were smaller. There were also positive responses, particularly using online collaboration platforms for online critiques. Design educators can now prototype a new studio pedagogy that incorporates online elements that potentially enhance the learning and teaching experience in the physical design studio, while rejecting those that do not work for their domain.