Abstract

Art and Design faculty at West Virginia University have worked collaboratively with two institutions of higher learning in Italy, il Sillabo and Nuova Accademia di Belle Arte (NABA), in creating an undergraduate summer study abroad program, Disegno Italia. Since a fundamental tenet of the program’s pedagogy is that students are taught by Italian faculty, WVU faculty designed and administered an Interdisciplinary Design Education Assessment to obtain a more nuanced understanding of our Italian partners’ concept of the program. The assessment included eight open-ended qualitative questions addressing three categories: pedagogical methods; perception of students and educational systems in the U.S. and Italy; and conceptual understanding of design and creativity. This paper addresses the survey findings which include, most significantly, that the faculty members from both Italian institutions consistently considered the trans-disciplinary nature of design and creativity processes in their programs. While correlating with observations from our early collaboration with design curriculum coordinators at NABA, the results were unanticipated from the language and humanities program at il Sillabo. One outcome of the assessment is for the Disegno Italia program to foster transdisciplinary thinking even more strongly through the orientation and curriculum to prepare students for the complex global interactions between, across, and beyond disciplines.