Education and Engagement
Featured Participatory Pedagogies for Student-led Designs at Scale: A Study of the Entrepreneurial Action Programme in India View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Syeda Asia
Researchers studying design education for vocational practice in India clearly point to centre-periphery relations of colonial legacy that have led to grave challenges in bringing a change or a significant shift in the practice of vocational and design education in India (Agrawal 2017, Singh: 2010). With streams like plumbing, fashion, carpentry, welding, food technology, turner, fitter and many more, we see that the labour market perspectives govern majority of the design pedagogy, leading to systematic deskilling and a rising uncreative rendering of the instructional practice. This keeps the average salary for first employment opportunity for students anywhere between USD 70 to 100 per month, barely making it to the figure of minimum wage parameters. This paper explores reflections and learnings from the design of a radical design pedagogy experiment at scale in a populous developing country like India. The student-led entrepreneurial action programme, conceived to invert some of these conditions, uses entrepreneurial mindsets, agency and self-directed learning as its core principles to enable thriving career action for students in Industrial Training Institutes. Based on 14 months of rigorous engagement in the field since the inception of the project, this paper explores unique insights on participatory approaches and cultures of co-creation with the users and communities for a transformative design executed at scale in 100 institutes impacting 30,000 vocational and design education students. It brings to light critical dilemmas and reflections on designing for democratised entrepreneurship at scale in context that lacks basic infrastructure and affordability.
Experience Design: A New Paradigm View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Anna La Fratta
Graphic design students partnered in cross-disciplinary practice, exploring creative learning tools as part of a larger initiative to preserve the Cherokee language for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina. Over several years undergraduate graphic design students at Western Carolina University collaborated with the New Kituwah Academy Elementary, a Cherokee language immersion campus in western North Carolina and, most recently, with the Cherokee Language Program at WCU. The goals have been to design and develop a range of tools/activities for learning the Cherokee language. The collaborating partners selected the topics, wrote the narratives (the scripts), and recorded the voice-overs provided by Cherokee Elders fluent in the language. The topics ranged in subjects including experiences while shopping, animals indigenous to the southern Appalachian region, learning about shapes and using them to make animals and seeing shapes in a landscape, learning about five human senses, and understanding the unique use of action words in the language. The media formats the design students used were both digital and physical: a board game, a card game, animations, a web-based interactive site, and large 4 by 8 feet interactive wall pieces. Empirical evidence gathered as the partnerships evolved informed the media formats used, prompted forms of assessment, expanded the collaboration with university second-language learners, and broadened the scope of evaluating the works to include the design students and their design process.
Walking, Observing and Making – Rethinking Plastics in Edinburgh: Co-designing and Digitally Making with Bio- and Waste Plastic Workshops towards ErasmusPlus 2020’s ‘Reframing Perspectives on Sustainability View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Xingyu Tao, Constantia Anastasiadou, Samantha Vettese
Plastic is a widely used material with great longevity, if designed, utilised, and re-used properly. However, the average usable lifespan for single-use plastic products is as little as 15 minutes and generally ends in landfill. The over consumption and disposal of plastic products have added pressure to pollution of the environment. Solutions to the plastic problem are directly related to people and their actions. Collaborative ‘crafting’, as a form of environmental education can be effective in raising people’s awareness of environmental issues and adopting positive behaviours. This paper presents findings from a public engagement activity carried out as part of the ErasmusPlus 2020, project “Reframing Perspectives on Sustainability: Appreciating Opposing Views to Influence Others and Drive Change” in Edinburgh, UK in February 2023. During a two-day event that focused on plastics as pollution and material resource, using lectures, a making workshop and multiple integrative methods and lo-fi crafting techniques 60 teenage students and 8 teachers from Scotland, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands became informed of plastic and its properties, its affect on the environment in Edinburgh, and co-created mementos that could be taken home. Findings highlighted the participants’ interest in alternatives to raw plastic that could be used in producing everyday consumer items, innovative ways to repurpose single-use plastic and an increased willingness to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours towards plastic consumption in the future. Collaborative crafting constitutes an authentic environmental educational approach that should be used more widely.
Cultivating Transformative Design: Satisfaction on Building Performance and Perceived Well-being of Adolescent Occupants in Malaysian Juvenile Institutions View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Muhammad Firzan Abdul Aziz, Mohd Taufik Mohammad
Good health and well-being (Sustainable Development Goal 3-SDG3) is part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development established by the United Nations. Ever since so, the well-being of building occupants has gained more traction within the discourse of the built environment. Vulnerable groups, for instance, adolescent occupants residing in juvenile institutions for their remand and rehabilitation purposes has been less explored by built environment researchers. This calls for an exploration on the perceptions and satisfactions of adolescents during their occupancy in juvenile institutions through Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) procedures. Via cross-sectional survey, 188 adolescent occupants collectively from seven Probation Hostels (Asrama Akhlak - AA) and six Approved Schools (Sekolah Tunas Bakti - STB) in Peninsular Malaysia were surveyed to explore their satisfaction on building performance of juvenile institutions and its relationship with their perceived building well-being. The analysis has demonstrates that the satisfaction of building performance has a positive relationship with the building wellbeing. Implications from the findings are useful to inform policymakers, architects, and planners about the importance of designing juvenile institutions that prioritise the well-being of adolescents, leading to some recommendations for specific design features or interventions aimed at enhancing the overall living conditions and rehabilitation outcomes for the adolescent occupants.
