Design in the Real World: A Practice-Oriented Seminar
DCI 580 / 780: Fall 2017
Instructors: Punya Mishra / Melissa Warr

This course is 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. In this course, we explore how this interdisciplinarity makes the act and process of design so complex and important. We explore design meanings and theory, to understand design in our lives, in education, and the world.

A multi-dimensional issue like design, particularly in education, requires a multifaceted approach. 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 through exciting projects. Most importantly, participants in this course will engage with real-world problems, through compelling field experiences around urgent initiatives that the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College is working on.