How might we encourage students to "wonder" and "play" their way into deep le... more How might we encourage students to "wonder" and "play" their way into deep learning? It is within the context of design education that I explore this question. Design students are expected to develop expertise in designing for wicked problems and long time horizon futures. This requires efficiencies with understanding and navigating complex systems, drawing productively upon vast information resources, agile prototyping skills and evaluative methods, and resilience in a highly iterative, low-‐signal feedback environment. While experts thrive within the complexity of systems-‐ level thinking, novices tend to become overwhelmed, looking to the experts for direction. Experts' knowledge and processes tend to be tacit leaving novices floundering for productive courses of action. This thesis explores a framework for wonder (wonder as experience, interaction, action, sustained action) as a means to bridge this gap. Through this study of wonder, differences in orga...
Many design educators are concerned with urgent problems such as sustainable development [1] and ... more Many design educators are concerned with urgent problems such as sustainable development [1] and climate change [2]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 report clearly states that rapid decarbonisation is needed by year 2030 to avoid climate change catastrophe. Such planetary level problems impact people’s everyday existence within the biosphere, and require shortterm design action alignment with long-term vision goals. However, many design educators teach to design for increasingly shorter time horizons within consumerist worldviews (e.g., rapid-prototyping, agile, human-centered design). In this paper, we describe a course that teaches design students how to align short-term design to long-term timescales. We leverage Future Studies researchers’ work on how to teach students greater agency within long-term timescale horizons [3]. We describe an effective and efficient blended learning design pedagogy (e.g., combining online and face-to-face learning activitie...
How do design educators make change happen to address new challenges? Currently, design educators... more How do design educators make change happen to address new challenges? Currently, design educators are caught between challenges: first, teaching well-established design traditions based on craft and making; and second, training students to situate their artifact making within transitional times in a volatile and exponentially changing world. The tension design educators navigate involves teaching the core of a discipline in relation to an expanding periphery where multiple disciplines interact. The epistemic challenge is how to initiate students into the field’s crystallized knowledge at the same time as fluid, emergent knowledge. Some design educators may yearn for simpler times focusing on mastery of the deep disciplinary cores. Others may discount their own core disciplinary teaching in favor of exploration of the rapidly shifting disciplinary peripheries to meet new challenges and opportunities. We acknowledge both perspectives and further posit that students need exposure to bo...
DMI: Next wave: Design Management Academic conference, 2018
Design education is changing. In this case study, we describe how we used the flipped class forma... more Design education is changing. In this case study, we describe how we used the flipped class format to teach a design studies course. The flipped course format allowed us to push the lecture portion of the class onto an online platform where students watched videos, answered questions, and received immediate correctness feedback. During in--class sessions we discussed homework questions and did hands--on design exercises. We describe features of the flipped class courses that were positively and negatively associated with student learning experiences. In this case study, we measured: student learning with pre--and post--course tests, course quality with faculty course evaluations, and student experience with early course focus groups and post course surveys. We saw significant improvements on average students' post--course test in both courses and faculty course evaluations. We describe changes made to the courses and provide key insights on applying flipped pedagogy to design courses. Classroom type, hands on activities, and online platforms play critical roles in the flipped pedagogy. Five key insights include: match physical classroom format to in--class hands on activities, streamline online learning environments, reduce online cognitive load, scaffold time critical activities, and require thinking fast and thinking slow. We describe pitfalls to avoid.
To prepare students to imagine desirable futures amidst current planetary level challenges, desig... more To prepare students to imagine desirable futures amidst current planetary level challenges, design educators must think and act in new ways. In this paper, we describe a pilot study that illustrates how educators might teach K-12 students and university design students to situate their making within transitional times in a volatile and exponentially changing world. We describe how to best situate students to align design thinking and learning with future foresight. Here we present a pilot test and evaluate how a university-level Dexign Futures course content, approach, and scaffolded instructional materialscan be adapted for use in K-12 Design Learning Challenges. We describe the K-12 design-based learning challenges/experiences developed and implemented by the Design Learning Network (DLN). The Dexign Futures course we describe in this paper is a required course for third year undergraduate students in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. The "x" signifies a different type of design that aligns short-term action with long-term goals. The course integrates design thinking and learning with long-horizon future scenario foresight. Broadly speaking, we ask how might portions of a design course be taught and experienced by teachers and students of two different demographics: within the university (Design Undergraduates) and in K-12 (via DLN). This pilot study is descriptive in nature; in future work, we seek to assess learning outcomes across university and K-12 courses. We believe the approach described is relevant for lifelong learners (e.g., postgraduate level , career development, transitional adult education).
To prepare students to imagine desirable futures amidst current planetary level challenges, desig... more To prepare students to imagine desirable futures amidst current planetary level challenges, design educators must think and act in new ways. In this paper, we describe a pilot study that illustrates how educators might teach K-12 students and university design students to situate their making within transitional times in a volatile and exponentially changing world. We describe how to best situate students to align design thinking and learning with future foresight. Here we present a pilot test and evaluate how a university-level Dexign Futures course content, approach, and scaffolded instructional materials-can be adapted for use in K-12 Design Learning Challenges. We describe the K-12 design-based learning challenges/experiences developed and implemented by the Design Learning Network (DLN). The Dexign Futures course we describe in this paper is a required course for third year undergraduate students in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. The "x" signifies a different type of design that aligns short-term action with long-term goals. The course integrates design thinking and learning with long-horizon future scenario foresight. Broadly speaking, we ask how might portions of a design course be taught and experienced by teachers and students of two different demographics: within the university (Design Undergraduates) and in K-12 (via DLN). This pilot study is descriptive in nature; in future work, we seek to assess learning outcomes across university and K-12 courses. We believe the approach described is relevant for lifelong learners (e.g., postgraduate level , career development, transitional adult education).
Next wave: Design Management Academic conference, 2018
In the 21st century, change is exponential. Products and services are designed and developed fast... more In the 21st century, change is exponential. Products and services are designed and developed faster, and their shelf-life disrupted by a constant flow of new offerings. Thus, design for the 21st century requires different skills and design educators are challenged to teach new skills within an already packed curriculum. We describe four case studies as futures signs of a changing design profession and teaching and learning landscape. "Remaking Singapore as an innovation and world design hub" describes the role of design in helping a nation re-invent its education system and jumpstart a creative innovation economy." "INDEX" describes how a design competition was invented to instigate and crowd source the exploration of design to improve life. "Dexign Futures," a required undergraduate course, describes leveraging a flipped class format to provide students with sufficient practice to develop deeper expertise with new design methodologies. "Design Learning Network" describes leveraging the learning sciences and design-based strategies to challenge K-12 students as they develop the habits of mind to investigate problem sets and propose innovative solutions. We explore three critical questions for 21st century design learners: who teaches/learns design; where/how is design taught/learned; and when is design taught/learned.
Change is exponential. Products and services are developed faster, hold a shorter shelf-life disr... more Change is exponential. Products and services are developed faster, hold a shorter shelf-life disrupted by new offerings, and exist in the wider environment with global challenges emerging such as climate change and sustainability. Thus, design for the 21st century requires different skills; design educators are challenged to adapt. In this paper, we compare two versions of a futures studies course developed for design students: one uses a flipped classroom pedagogy (with interactive online pre-work and in-class workshop activities, meeting for two 80-minute sessions per week); and the other uses a hybrid studio approach (making more use of in-class lectures followed by hands on-studio activities, meeting for 170 minutes once per week) focused on experiential futures practices of tangible artifact and immersive scenario creation. We use four measures: learning activity inventory, course quality with faculty course evaluations, student experience with a post-course survey, and time and feedback on final projects. We discuss design trade-offs for learning: format of reflections is linked to transfer activities, time on learning activities shapes perceptions, less (interference) is more, more (scaffolding, feedback, links to practice, active learning) is better, and timing is everything.
The transition towards societal level sustainability requires thinking and acting anew. Tradition... more The transition towards societal level sustainability requires thinking and acting anew. Traditional design pedagogy poorly equips designers to integrate longrange strategic thinking with current human-centered design methods. In this paper, we describe a three-course sequence: Dexign Futures Seminar (DFS), Introduction to Dexign the Future (iDTF), and Dexign the Future (DTF). The term dexign indicates an experimental type of design that integrates Futures Thinking with Design Thinking. Students learn to engage strategic long time horizon scenarios from a generative design perspective. DFS, online modules, teaches students to critique and deconstruct existing futures scenarios. iDTF situates students to explore futures based themes and apply design methods and research techniques. DTF takes students into a semester-long project designing for 2050. In this paper, we describe lessons learned that lead to a pedagogy for supporting novices as they develop skills and methods for long time horizon futures design.
In this paper we describe our research and development efforts to integrate assessment and instru... more In this paper we describe our research and development efforts to integrate assessment and instruction in ways that provide immediate feedback to students and meaningful data for our Digital Dashboard for Learning (DDL). The DDL is an instructional tool that collects learning data as students work through online instructional activities, summarizes the data, and displays meaningful indicators of students' progress so that (1) faculty can monitor students' progress and intervene where necessary and (2) students can monitor and adapt their own progress through their learning.
Design education is changing. In this case study, we describe how we used the flipped class forma... more Design education is changing. In this case study, we describe how we used the flipped class format to teach a design studies course. The flipped course format allowed us to push the lecture portion of the class onto an online platform where students watched videos, answered questions, and received immediate correctness feedback. During in-class sessions we discussed homework questions and did hands-on design exercises. We describe features of the flipped class courses that were positively and negatively associated with student learning experiences. In this case study, we measured: student learning with pre-and post-course tests, course quality with faculty course evaluations, and student experience with early course focus groups and post course surveys. We saw significant improvements on average students' post-course test in both courses and faculty course evaluations. We describe changes made to the courses and provide key insights on applying flipped pedagogy to design courses. Classroom type, hands on activities, and online platforms play critical roles in the flipped pedagogy. Five key insights include: match physical classroom format to in-class hands on activities, streamline online learning environments, reduce online cognitive load, scaffold time critical activities, and require thinking fast and thinking slow. We describe pitfalls to avoid.
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Papers by Judy Brooks