From 150 to 120- Curriculum Redesign to the Extreme
For design educators, the challenge of rethinking a 5-year industrial design curriculum to fit within a 4-year envelope can be a formidable task. For every ‘new learning outcome’ to be added, and equal or greater number needed to be taken away. This story chronicles this 2- year process and offers a glimpse of what has emerged as the new curriculum at Syracuse University. The first step for our faculty was to conduct a curriculum mapping exercise. This involved reviewing the current curriculum and mapping out the learning objectives, outcomes, and assessments for each existing course. The mapping exercise helped to prioritize courses that align with the overall goals and objectives of the program, uncovering gaps in essential knowledge and emerging skills. Current perspectives on what should constitute an ID curriculum were evaluated and debated. In addition, industry experts, alumni, and current students were invited to lend their insights. Collectively, they provided valuable feedback on which courses are most relevant, useful, and essential in order to succeed in the field. This resulted in a top-to-bottom overhaul of the majority of our course offerings. As a result, what has emerged is a 4-stage curriculum with the following over-arching themes:
Year 1: Design Worlds Today
Year 2: Deep Dive: Industrial and Interaction Design
Year 3: Human and Environmental Contexts
Year 4: Speculative Futures and Professional Launch
My colleague Prof. Don Carr and I collaborated on the this peer-reviewed paper and presented together at the conference. This paper outlines our most recent curriculum work. Download full paper here