Tag: design education
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Dancing with Decolonial Curriculum Theorists: A Search for the Middle Path in Design Education
Introduction Over the years, the definition and understanding of curriculum have evolved and continue to evolve. Around five decades ago, Grumet (1981) defined curriculum as the stories we tell students about the past, present, and future, and a decolonial view of this curriculum definition questions the stories students are being told about their past, present, […]
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Working with Design students and tutors to understand how mental health can have a major impact on students’ studies and their wellbeing.
clipartmag.com “OfS head Nicola Dandridge said more must be done to look after students. This year’s annual National Student Survey, run by the OfS, found only 42% felt enough was done to help them.” Student watchdog concerned about mental health help – BBC News 16/07/2021 As educators of distance design students, how […]
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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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An ecological turn
As is the usual way of things for me, it was a couple of days before the abstract deadline that I clocked this conference in Bologna next January: The Ecological Turn. Design, architecture and aesthetics beyond “Anthropocene”. A key question they ask and describe is: ‘How does the ecological thinking affect architects, designers and the […]
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Conference Report: Learn X Design 2019
Conference Report: Learn X Design 2019 | Crossposted from https://www.designresearchsociety.org/articles/learn-x-design-2019 The fifth annual DRS Pedagogy SIG Learn X Design conference, Insider Knowledge, was held July 9-12 at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. And the Design Group were represented by both past and present members. The conference hosted 150 delegates from 81 institutions in […]
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Design Council and the OU Design Group
The Design Council visited the OU last week to talk about their ongoing work on the Design Economy. This work overlaps with our own on design identities and students – rather than asking ‘what is design?’ (and getting into the usual trouble…), it can be useful to ask “What are designers doing?” and “Who is […]
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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 […]
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Learning about design and technology
Learning about design and technology: It is not true – there is such a thing as a free course! Design and technology are increasingly ubiquitous concepts. This is reflected in several recently launched free OpenLearn Courses in areas relevant to engineering, software and industrial design. ——-Find out more TT284 An introduction to web applications architecture An introduction […]
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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 […]
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Paper folding
I am fascinated by the folding design of pop-up books. I recently bought a pop-up card on a market and out of interested I asked the maker how they do these cards. He said: “I use Photoshop to create the designs and then laser-cut them”. I wondered though if there really was no analogue design process involved at […]