Body of the conference

The conference days were broken up into plenary session, with talks given by the keynote speakers and then there were three (3) parallel sessions a day. This is where the mere mortals of research  did their stuff. Each parallel session was divided into about seven (7) different categories depending on the day. Each session had three (3) speakers, who had 30min to say their say and take questions. This spread the meagre helping of delegates rather thin, and made deciding which session to attend very annoying, because you wanted to listen to everyone’s.
The parallel session topics ranged from workshops, design as research, multidisciplinary education in design, problem-based learning, design sustainable futures, learning creativity and design, e-learning, studio-based learning, to name but a few. So you can see the predicament on deciding which one to attend, they all sounded so good.
The buzzwords and exposed topics –
Multi-disciplinary moving to trans-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary
Problem/project/studio-based learning
Sustainability as a discipline and within design education
Collaboration and working with industry
Integrated practice
Understanding collaboration
What students use to communicate
Culture – understanding it
Working in teams
Student autonomy
Teaching critical thinking – VVVNB
Core classes – looking at core competencies
Interactive feedback
Mapping
Convergence and divergence – learning when to do which
Practice of process
Students must learn “how to learn” – interesting one!
Students must learn about quality
It is ok to learn by failure
Interaction design
Refining, recourse, evolving
Interacting within a community of practice
Sociological experience
Cultural
Social
Physiological
Ideological
= total experience
Experience for multi and trans-disciplinary
RESEARCH
Ethics
Electives
Andocentric visceral – human centred design – linked to environmental ethics