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FIND THE GAP: AN APPROACH FOR VISUALIZING AND ANALYSING DESIGN COMPETENCIES IN A UNIVERSITY WITH INTERDISCIPLINARY CURRICULUM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Sumbul Khan ,
Immanuel Hendra ,
Shravya Thandlam Sudhindra ,
Nur Liyana Binte Abdul Muthalib  and
Lucienne Blessing
Sumbul Khan*
Affiliation:
Singapore University of Technology and Design
Immanuel Hendra
Affiliation:
Singapore University of Technology and Design
Shravya Thandlam Sudhindra
Affiliation:
Singapore University of Technology and Design
Nur Liyana Binte Abdul Muthalib
Affiliation:
Singapore University of Technology and Design
Lucienne Blessing
Affiliation:
Singapore University of Technology and Design
*
Khan, Sumbul, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, sumbul_khan@sutd.edu.sg

Abstract

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Design education needs to be continually investigated and improved to stay relevant. The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is a leading university focused on all elements of technology-based design. The overarching motivation of our research is to enhance design education curriculum at SUTD. Our research objectives are (1) to understand how design competencies are implemented in SUTD's curriculum and courses (2) to identify gaps in teaching of design competencies at SUTD. We analyse competencies in 28 design courses at SUTD. We develop the visualization and analysis of 12 skills grouped under two abilities from the Design competency assessment framework. Our main contributions are: (1) We present an approach to map the design competencies that are taught across design courses at a university with an interdisciplinary curriculum, (2) We present an approach for mapping design competency progression based on ITAE (Introduced, Taught, Assessed, Expected) categorization, (3) Based on the above, we provide preliminary findings on two skill gaps in the curriculum, substantiated with insights from interviews with course coordinators.

Keywords

Design educationDesign processDesign learningEducation
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 3: ICED23 , July 2023 , pp. 1885 - 1894
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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