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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2022/2023

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh College of Art : Design

Postgraduate Course: Designing for Change: Projects and Practices (DESI11177)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh College of Art CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course will introduce students enrolled on the MA Design for Change programme to project-based learning perspectives. It shall prepare students for their individual dissertation, by encouraging their critical and reflective engagement with methodological approaches fostering design-led change.
Course description This course will provide students on the MA Design for Change programme opportunities to examine, in depth, methodologies and practices intended to foster change across social, technical and environmental dimensions. The course is intended to prepare postgraduate students for their individual design-led dissertation projects by allowing them to develop a deeper understanding of project and challenge-led perspectives and approaches, whilst exploring a range of associated methodological perspectives. Engagement takes place through inverted lectures, workshops and seminars emphasising a range of methods and approaches relevant to social, technical and environmental change projects. Assignments will foster students¿ abilities to review theoretical perspectives and construct appropriate methodological plans suitable for postgraduate dissertation projects in design-driven domains.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2022/23, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  31
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 21, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 6, Feedback/Feedforward Hours 6, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 163 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Assignment 1 (Wk6): Draft a project outline for your design-led dissertation, providing a clear question, brief discussion of its context, and a coherent rationale for how this question will be analysed and investigated, and the project¿s findings synthesised and communicated to a wider audience. 2000 words
Value - 50%. All learning outcomes assessed


Assignment 2 (WK12): Draft a project methodology that provides critical reflection on the relationship between your intended research question and the choices of methods you are proposing within your project, to address your design-led approach to change. 2000 words
Value - 50%. All learning outcomes assessed
Feedback Formative feedback is regularly communicated through the course. This takes a number forms, including verbally through group sessions where work and ideas are discussed with both peers and tutor. A formative feedback event will take place at the mid point of the course, the particular format is outlined in the relevant course handbook and the course VLE.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Describe, critique and discuss methodological approaches and examples of practice that their research has shown are relevant to their identified design project for change;
  2. Demonstrate the skills and abilities to plan, theorise and conceptually underpin, synthesise and organise a project of suitable scale and reach for a postgraduate student-led dissertation;
  3. Communicate complex information and concepts to relevant audiences clearly and effectively, using appropriate modes and media;
Reading List
Required
ECO, U. 2015. How to write a thesis, Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press.
ESCOBAR, A. 2018. Designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds, Durham, Duke University Press,.
INNS, T. (Ed.) 2007. Designing for the 21st Century: Interdisciplinary Questions and Insights. Aldershot: Gower.
KOSKINEN, I. K., ZIMMERMAN, J., BINDER, T., REDSTROM, J. & WENSVEEN, S. 2011. Design research through practice: from the lab, field, and showroom, Waltham, Mass., Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier.
LURY, C., & WAKEFORD, N. (Eds.). 2012. Inventive methods: the happening of the social. London: Routledge.
SIMONSEN, J., SVABO, C., STRANDVAD, S. M., SAMSON, K., HERTZUM, M. & HANSEN, O. E. 2014. Situated design methods, Cambridge, MASS, MIT Press.

Suggested
CULHANE, D., & ELLIOT, D. A. (2016). A different kind of ethnography¿: imaginative practices and creative methodologies / edited by Denielle Elliott and Dara Culhane. University of Toronto Press.
FELTON, E., ZELENKO, O., & VAUGHAN, S. (Eds.). 2012. Design and Ethics: Reflections on Practice (1st ed.). Routledge.
SIMONSEN, J. & ROBERTSON, T. 2012. Routledge international handbook of participatory design, New York, Routledge.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills This course will allow students to foster key competencies involving the practice of designing for change through a critical application of a range of skills, techniques and practices; to communicate to varying audiences, through a range of ICT applications, the outcomes of design practice addressing issue-based approaches to problem-solving, and; exercising substantial autonomy in addressing the nature of wicked problems through a project-based approach involving design practices.
KeywordsDesign Studio,Design Studies,Design for Change,Project-Led Dissertation,design methodology
Contacts
Course organiserDr Arno Verhoeven
Tel: (0131 6)51 5808
Email: a.verhoeven@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs Sophie O'Shea
Tel: (0131 6)51 5448
Email: soshea@ed.ac.uk
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