Re-imagining and Reaffirming Design Pedagogy

Whitham, Roger and Jacobs, Naomi and Coulton, Paul and Stockton, Glynn and Lindley, Joseph (2024) Re-imagining and Reaffirming Design Pedagogy. In: DRS 2024: Research Papers :. DRS2024 Boston: Design Research Society Conference 2024 . Design Research Society, USA. ISBN 9781912294626

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Abstract

This paper considers how we can adapt higher education (HE) design pedagogies in response to the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. We focus on the authors’ own HE institution and describe our work through the first half of 2023 to understand the impact of these tools on how our students approach their work, and to adapt our design pedagogies in response. This paper includes accounts of student attitudes to these tools, and the outcomes of our own experimentation with contemporary GenAI tools (ChatGPT4 and MidJourney v5). We identify 10 challenges for design pedagogy that span assessment, student learning and teaching delivery, foregrounding the unique ways GenAI tools could disrupt the learning that takes place in a student design project. In response we present the adaptations adopted by our institution for the coming year, and speculate about how future pedagogic design projects could be structured to best support student learning augmented by GenAI.