ConnectEd in Australia

I went to Australia to be part of the International Conference on Design Education.

ConnectED 2010

It was a great reason to get my over seas with a purpose and a little bit of funding.

Highlight of the conference: Hearing the excitement, innovation and drive of the hundreds of educators who really care about teaching great Design.

They were doing great things like:
1. designing businesses within their schools to get students access to real world experiences (especially when internships are non-existent during a recession)
2. pushing the envelop of what collaboration means by teaming with new disciplines like performance art
3. constantly being surprised by the great work their students created and never settling for the notion of “what we have been teaching will work forever”

Design is a growing, changing field and these professors are in charge of teaching their students to  keep pushing the boundaries of the field. They prototype and fail, but they also prototype and are truly inspired by the creativity of how their students interpret a project.

This was a really intersting display of how one woman was looking at the different dimensions of her course so she could find what she needed to improve on and what she did well.

More design educators need to start pushing the envelope of what a design program needs and keep the cutting edge of design at the fingertips of their students to ensure their ability to get the best jobs when they leave.

Thanks to all the keynotes (especially Kees Doorst, Larry Leifer and Thomas Meier) for their risky but inspirational speeches, thanks to all the other educators who came to share and be inspired by other’s research and thanks to Pam Hinds for letting me write the paper and get this great opportunity.

This entry was posted on 16. July 2010 at 20:35 and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.