Project title: Design thinking as an approach to support curriculum design
Project duration: 10 weeks between December and February
Description: Increasingly, curriculum design in higher education is taking on a whole-ofprogram approach. Curriculum design and renewal processes have traditionally focused on curriculum at the level of major or unit. But those days are gone!
Academics with curriculum responsibilities are under pressure to be efficient and effective, to ensure they develop programs are competitive in a world market, to guarantee that graduates develop the skills and attributes required for an unknown future workplace.
Design thinking provides a new way of engaging with curriculum design. It could provide a dynamic, responsive and inclusive approach to curriculum design and renewal. To paraphrase Tim Brown, thinking like a designer can transform the way one develops products, services, processes… and it can also transform curriculum. Design thinking has been successfully used in school education, providing a useful structure, processes and tools that can be translated to the higher education context.
This project aims to identify how design thinking has been applied in different contexts with a view to supporting how design thinking can be translated to higher education. It seeks to identify tools and processes that may be able to be adapted to the higher education context to encourage adopting of a design thinking approach to curriculum design.
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Literature review Expected outcomes and deliverables: o o application of design thinking to different contexts summary of the principles underpinning design thinking o strengths and weaknesses of using design thinking
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Web search to identify tools and resources that can be used to support the different phases of design thinking
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Development of endnote library
Suitable for:
Supervisors:
Further info:
Students familiar with design based thinking and an interest in exploring alternate applications for the approach (such as students in ITEE, Business or
Architecture)
Education students with curriculum background
Deanne Gannaway d.gannaway@uq.edu.au
Applicants please contact the supervisor listed above prior to submitting an application to discuss the project requirements. When making enquires please specify the project in which you have interest. Please provide your CV.