multi-disciplinary education

The influence of the fourth industrial revolution: A multi-discipline approach for design education

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Design Education Strategy

Klaus Schwab defines the word "revolution" to convey the "abrupt" and "radical" change, which brought about the first, second, third and fourth industrial revolutions. Schwab explains that the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) will transform the way humans communicate, socially connect, function day to day and operate their jobs. The 4IR is not only about technology; its fundamental difference is due to these technologies combining: as a result, the physical, digital and biological spheres overlap.

Dismantling boundaries: Does a transdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary tertiary education approach support the development of creative and critical thinking for an Afrikan design and business context?

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Design Education Strategy

In this paper, we examine the impact that transdisciplinary and/or multi-disciplinary educational approaches have in developing critical and creative thinking competencies in a bachelor’s degree context. Strategies relating to integrated assessments within research-based modules are used to explore how transcending disciplinary boundaries in different fields are approached – one a business qualification and the other a creative/design-based qualification. This is also particularly significant in terms of an emerging call to contextualise curricula for Afrika, including adopting more decolonised transdisciplinary research approaches.

Additive manufacturing in 3D product design and development practice: an interdisciplinary shift

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Product & Industrial Design

This paper reflects on aspects that impact on an interdisciplinary shift motivated by technology‐transfer within a University of Technology (UoT). Discussion focuses on the integrated use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) as automated layer by layer 3D printing product design and development technology within a 3D Art and Design studio-practice environment. As emerging technology, AM’s impact has redefined the procedural framework and required knowledge coherence for the development of 3D objects.

Developing a discourse in fashion design: What is research for fashion design?

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

The concept of fashion has attracted a great deal of interest from a variety of academic disciplines such as history, culture, anthropology, sociology, psychology and semiotics to name a few. This has often resulted in tension between different approaches. At a conference held in England in 2009 concerning the future of fashion studies, a number of fashion scholars such Rebecca Arnold, Christopher Breward, Professor Stella Bruzzi and many others, deliberated on the methodologies and research agendas that have emerged in the growing research area of fashion studies.

Designing from Behind the Camera: Creative interdisciplinarity in film, architecture and interior design

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Architecture & Built Environment

Architectural and Interior design are disciplines that are by nature interdisciplinary. Whether in dialogue with engineers, builders, lighting designers or furniture makers, the architect and interior designer is forced to think in more than one register. The same applies in the creative sphere. In their own creative endeavours, architects and interior designers have always drawn on the ideas, concepts, theories and practices of other disciplines. Both the practice and conceptualisation of architecture and interior design then are interdisciplinary.

Cultural Action for Change: A case for cross-cultural, multidisciplinary collaborations

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Media & Communications Design

Cultural Action for Change began in 2000 as a joining of artists, educators, and student-researchers to assess sustainability and address the impact of HIV within Phumani Paper; a government-funded poverty alleviation program, establishing hand papermaking and craft enterprises across South Africa. Inspired by ideals of empowerment and self-determination, a series of qualitative, Participatory Action Research (PAR) interventions for HIV awareness and action were introduced at six Phumani papermaking workshop sites. Student researchers and participants, with the collaboration of academics from the University of Michigan, were trained in Photovoice methodology to document with photographs and personal narrative the participants‘ struggles for economic independence.

An integrated teaching strategy: Reflecting on a collaborative design project

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Design Education Research

An integrated teaching strategy was employed at a first year level in the Department Interior Design to strengthen the connection between first year modules and include participation from a related design discipline in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. The teaching strategy aimed to integrate the knowledge and skills that students gain within separate modules and develop their understanding of the interdependence of content that is taught throughout the programme and across departments.

The Politics of Change, Craft and the Bauhaus Reborn: New Relationships in Design Education

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Design Education Strategy

South African education systems straddle the developed/developing world schism, an old-school-style Eurocentric view has long tussled with an Africanist dialectic. Educators struggle with access and upliftment issues whilst implementing outcomes-based learning programmes and simultaneously maintaining academic standards. At Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), conscious of the need to build future capacity, innovation in teaching and learning is paramount and the issues identified above are constantly under debate. Experimentation is an ongoing aspect of teaching methodology.

Mapping A Relevant Education And Training Framework For The Jewellery Sector

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

This paper acknowledges the ongoing process being used in the Jewellery sector to develop an integrated training and development framework. The framework progresses from ABET Level 1 to doctoral qualifications and shows how the various qualifications could link directly to specific occupations within a sector. In doing so, this paper addresses the boundaries between education, training, industry and government. More importantly, it indicates the inclusive process followed to open the gates to enter the new terrain of relevant education and training for sector specific occupations.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the South African jewellery sector is aligning education and training within the government’s educational policy.

Making Space For Identity, Diversity And Voice In A Transcultural Visual Arts Community Of Practice

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Graphic Design & Visual Art

There is national and institutional pressure to transform education, to revisit curriculums and approaches to teaching and learning and to address issues around dominant worldviews, inclusiveness and diversity. Visual arts lecturer practitioners, like other academics, are being challenged to respond.

We know that the students entering our programmes, in all their growing diversity, provide new challenges, bringing with them as they do different and often complex social, cultural and familial identities, some of which they leave, wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly, at the door, as they look to conform to the expectations of the disciplinary communities.

New Sites of Practice: Educating New Curators of the Contemporary

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Design Education Strategy

This paper explores curation as a developing field within the creative industries and explores the theory, methodology of such new sites of practice outside the traditional gallery and museum context. It evaluates a new role for curating in terms of economic and cultural growth.

Seven years ago Kingston University and the Design Museum London launched a Masters programme in response to a clear need for professionals who could curate and communicate design within the new landscape of the changing museum and design sectors.

Design management education: the intersection between design and business

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Media & Communications Design

Students from various disciplines have been exposed to design thinking and praxis over the last decade at the University of Pretoria. Students from publishing, journalism, marketing, management, communication, multimedia (engineering) and a variety of other disciplines enrolled for design modules at under- and postgraduate levels. Learning is extended to include collaborative projects between design students and students from other disciplines.

Bridging the epistemological divide between disciplines

DEFSA conferences

DEFSA promotes relevant research with the focus on design + education through its biennial conferences, to promote professionalism, accountability and ethics in the education of young designers. Our next conference is a hybrid event. See above for details.

Critical skills endorsement

Professional Members in good standing can receive a certificate of membership, but DEFSA cannot provide confirmation or endorsement of skills whatsoever. DEFSA only confirm membership of DEFSA which is a NPO for Design Education in South Africa (https://www.defsa.org.za/imagine).