Category: Design education
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A rose by any other name…
If the prevailing brand culture is a reliable indicator, then society at large is seemingly obsessed with names. Products, including electronics, fashion, food, etc., are bought because of the name slapped on them, often without much more thought. And, it often seems that political discourse and public debate suffers from a similar affliction, where complex […]
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OU Design Summer School 2020 – Week 2 (and mostly 3 if I’m honest…)
OK, so in the best traditions of being an OU student: life got in the way of what I wanted to do; I realised that what I wanted to do was probably a bit, and I failed to meet my own deadlines… But part of being an OU student is that with these difficulties come […]
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OU Design Summer School 2020 – Week 1
A few of us are working on an OU Design Summer School this year and we already have a great bunch of students working on this. It’s a bit of an experiment in terms of trying to get a community of learning going with a whole range of individual learning goals. I’ll blog separately about […]
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The Science and Poetry of Messy thinking
This post started out as a few reflections on a few distance design education events I attended recently, where most of the discussions did not centre around online vs face-to-face or technology and IT services. Instead, discussion focused on learning and teaching – basic stuff, like ideas around how to make learning activities engaging (for […]
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Designing in partnership
This blog was co-authored by Abbie Jackson, Anna Ward-Stancheva, Georgy Holden, Leo Rees-Evans, Mar Reyes, Nicole Lotz and Rebekah Manston, all Design and Innovation students at the Open University. On June 25th 2020, the third annual exhibition of work of OU design students was launched. Every year, we invite students to design the exhibition together […]
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Using remote and onscreen laboratories in online learning
As many Universities need to quickly move their learning online during the current coronavirus crisis, we have received many questions about our remote and virtual laboratories. This blog collects together useful information about our OpenSTEM Labs and provides links to online resources. This blog is a working document and was last updated on 20th November […]
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Editorial: Ed Tech defining design curriculum
(This is a cross post fromthe #DistanceDesignEd blog: http://distancedesigneducation.com) If you’d asked me ‘What drives your design curriculum?’ a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have said Zoom… I’ll shortly have to add a whole list of other technologies, services and ed-tech that are emerging as “class leaders” (That was a satirical pun, by the way). […]
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50 Things And More That Made Today’s World
Like Dr Seuss’ metaphorical ‘The Cat in the Hat’ BBC Radio 4 opens the box to release ” 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy“. The “Things” did not stop at 50 but kept coming throughout the first and second series. “These things will not bite you” said “The Cat in the Hat”, but are […]
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A strange collection of objects or ground-breaking inclusive design?
Helen Hamlyn (2019) design innovation awards What are these objects? How can we use them? Are they modern or vintage? Answers on a postcard please… #HH@theRCA Helen Hamlyn (HH)Trust has been breaking new boundaries in inclusive design since 1991 and became fully founded in 1999. The Helen Hamlyn centre is the largest centre for design […]
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Museum of Brands
We followed a recommendation from an OU tutor, Richard Coles (T317), who has been working as a packaging designer for a long while. Under his guidance, a group of students from the Design and Innovation qualification and other qualifications visited the Museum of Brands in London. We were delighted that Robert Opie, the Founder of […]