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DCI 691 (Education by Design) is a course about design. Design as a way of thinking and as a process that values collaboration, context, and diverse perspectives. Design as an approach that generates creative solutions to complex (wicked) problems of practice, particularly in education.
Design is both a noun and a verb, a product and a process. Design is central to the construction of any process or artifact—be it a website or a car; an ATM machine or educational policy. Design touches on many different disciplines—science, technology, engineering, education, psychology, sociology, organizational behavior, and art, to name a few. A multi-dimensional issue like design, particularly in education, requires a multifaceted approach.
We will be exploring design through the lens of a framework we have been working on for the past few years. In fact most of the work on the framework happened in previous iterations of this course. This framework, The five spaces for design in education. In brief, we argue that it may be productive to think of the idea of design as playing out in 5 distinct educational spaces: artifacts, processes, experiences, systems and culture.
One of the key themes in this class is going to be exploring how each of these spaces will be changed by the advent of a new technology—namely generative AI.
As a class, we will do many different things this semester. We will read, discuss, analyze widely from research and theory. We will examine design practice, and build new conceptions… all in order to to explore the intertwined ideas of education and design.
Finally, we will together work on an exciting project that will focus on how generative AI will influence education in the future.
Education/Design is truly my favorite class to teach. I look forward to working together this semester.
