Category: Design education

  • Designing the 2019 Design Qualification student exhibition

    Designing the 2019 Design Qualification student exhibition

    For the second year running, the Design and Innovation Qualification team organised an exhibition of students’ work across its 3 core design modules U101, T217/T218 and T317. The exhibition was designed by 3 student designers: Rukhsana Ali (U101), Patrice Belton (U101) and Kristina Valenkova (T317) and one professional exhibition designer: Dawn Correa (also tutoring U101 […]

  • Bauhaus 100

    Bauhaus 100

    The Bauhaus –one of the world’s most influential art and design schools – was established by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany in 1919 and this year the centenary of its foundation is being celebrated in Germany and many other countries. Beginning in Weimar, relocated to Dessau in 1925 and closed in Berlin under pressure from […]

  • Taste some Raspberry Pi? Yes please!

    Taste some Raspberry Pi? Yes please!

    Raspberry Pis are a key smart technology at the heart of the Internet of Things (IoT) and are central to the design of our future smart cities. At the Open University, there is interest in the way smart technologies can help build and manage the world we live in, and in their role in helping […]

  • Co-designing a Makerspace with the La Campagna-Altamira Community in Mexico

    Co-designing a Makerspace with the La Campagna-Altamira Community in Mexico

    I am just back from Monterrey in the north of Mexico, and can’t wait to share what I have done there. I worked on co-creating a Makerspace with La Campana-Altamira, an impoverished and marginalised community in the otherwise comparably wealthy city of Monterrey. Since the former Mexican president Calderon declared the Drug War, this low-income […]

  • Innovating Pedagogy – Virtual Studios

    Innovating Pedagogy – Virtual Studios

    The Innovating Pedagogy report for 2019 has just been published by The Open University (IET) in conjunction with the Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE), University of Bergen, Norway. The Design Group have one of the sections on Virtual Studios (Section 7!) So I thought I’d share a couple of the stranger […]

  • Play, Wonder, Empathy – Educational trends from the Innovating Pedagogy 2019 report

    Play, Wonder, Empathy – Educational trends from the Innovating Pedagogy 2019 report

    The seventh Innovating Pedagogy 2019 report from The Open University highlights ten trends in teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world. One of these may be of interest to designers, since it considers how studio pedagogy is becoming more prevalent, through the use of Virtual Studios. The report has been written in collaboration with […]

  • The U101 Welcome Pack Incredible Give Away Competition Event Thing

    The U101 Welcome Pack Incredible Give Away Competition Event Thing

    Lola herself has been in touch with the Design Group and asked that we spread the cheer of U101 at this time of year. She has donated a number of U101 Welcome packs to give away to at least 7 lucky recipients. Just look at the creative goodness on offer, each object a portal to […]

  • Design Museum: designs of the year 2018

    Design Museum: designs of the year 2018

    On Saturday, a group of 22 Design and Innovation students (and their friends and family) joined the Qualification team and two Associate Lecturers on a tour of the Design Museum’s permanent exhibition ‘Designer Maker User’ and the Beazley’s Designs of the Year 2018 exhibition. Andy, a U101 student, gives a good summary of the rundown […]

  • It was a PIG of a Game!

    It was a PIG of a Game!

    PIG – the Problem Identification Game – from the OU Archive  PIG was part of the module T262 (1975-1982) entitled Man-made futures: design and technology, a 30 credit module students typically enrolled on after completing their Level 1 study, which then was two foundation modules (60 credits each) such as  The man-made world: a foundation […]

  • Envisioning Futures of Design Education

    Envisioning Futures of Design Education

    Do you know how design should be taught in the future? Our recent paper in the journal Dialectic reports on a workshop we held with a group 6 design educators and 40 international participants to explore the future of design education.   To spark off the discussion, the 6 design educators presented 4 provocative future […]