Educating the Next Generation of Designers toward Social Impact, Raising the Bar of Design Build Pedagogy

Abstract

Educating the next generation of impact designers requires leadership development, experiences in the field, reflective pedagogy and creating assessment plans as nuanced as the community partners involved. This paper highlights two community-engaged, design build courses –one local and one international– offered at a tier one research university in the United States as a means to explore teaching approaches that impact both students through experiential, transformative learning and community partners through direct engagement, participatory design, and collaborative craft. Design Matters is a university experiential learning course that directly engages underserved community members in design-build activities that emphasise collaboration and making with “others” as a means and praxis toward positive social change.