Category: Design education
-
End of Year 2018 exhibition
Creating an exhibition of Design and Innovation undergraduate students’ work has been one of the most rewarding experiences I had for a while. We called for contributions to an End of Year design exhibition. Having an ‘Annual show’ has a long tradition in other design schools, but we never had one at the OU. This…
-
Facing austerity with clever design
Braving a snowstorm and impending TMA deadlines, three students and a visitor joined us to explore the Imperial War Museum’s exhibits in the North. We investigated the effects austerity measures had on the designs and designing throughout the 20th century. The scarcity of materials and resources, and resulting inventions of new materials and production techniques, was…
-
A fairground of ideas in Milton Keynes
Sometimes, you just have to do it – get everyone in one place and bounce ideas, share inspirations and motivations. So what was the Milton Keynes Design Fair like? Three tutors, three central academics, seven students across the Design Innovation Qualification and two visitors made their way to the Open University Campus on a rainy…
-
Design Museum: what is a good design?
We did a little experiment. What if we organise a visit to the Design Museum (on a grey and rainy February weekend) and everyone from the Design and Innovation Qualification at the OU is invited to come. Who would come and join us? Twenty-five students, 2 tutors and 4 central academics from across the qualification…
-
Reflecting on a hundred years of engineering design education
I have always known that my grandfather Thomas Clinch was a railway engineer, but I was only recently given some reports from his engineering degree at Imperial College (1921 – 1923). The first thing I noticed about the reports is how beautifully presented they were – everything written in longhand script, with accurate hand-drawn figures…
-
Design education in India and the UK
The Design Group are involved in the early stages of a project looking at design education in India and the UK and how further ties might be generated in these areas. The next series of workshops and visits will take place at the end of January 2018 (full report to follow!). But in the meantime…
-
Creativity and collaboration as a means to engage women in engineering?
Last week I attended Inside Government’s “Promoting Women in STEM” forum in Manchester. It was great to spend a day with like-minded people, discussing the challenges associated with achieving greater gender diversity in STEM related jobs and education. Helen Wollaston, Chief Executive of the Women in Science and Engineering campaign (https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/ ) highlighted the leaky…
-
Digital Design Learning: Conference Report
Food for thought The conference dinner was served in the school’s own ‘Food lab’ by a team of academics and students at KISD – the Cologne International School of Design. The lab is designed to do social experiments, in which food becomes the mediator of conversations and the lab a space for co-creation of products and…
-
Design and Culture
This week the Design Museum in London hosted a Design School Summit, “Design School and the Cultural Turn”, reflecting on the relationship between design schools and the cultural sector, and in particular, design museums. The event comprised a series of speakers from Europe and the USA questioning how curatorial practice should be affected and influenced…
-
Designing Sustainable Higher Education Teaching Models
The Open University takes sustainability seriously! In addition to establishing carbon reduction measures to meet Government targets, the OU is interested in how the design of different higher education (HE) systems impacts on the environment. How do the distance education systems used by the OU, as a leading provider of creative open learning, compare with conventional campus-based…