Units
Design and Sustainability
Unit code: DEB100
Contact hours: 3 per week
Credit points: 12
Information about fees and unit costs
This unit, with its special focus on the role and impact of designers to shift society toward a more environmentally sustainable way of living, introduces you to essential academic and professional skills and practices for learning to become a designer.
Availability
| Semester | Available |
|---|---|
| 2013 Semester 1 | Yes |
Sample subject outline - Semester 1 2013
Note: Subject outlines often change before the semester begins. Below is a sample outline.
Rationale
It is increasingly important for designers to account for the environmental implications of their design decisions. Since sustainability and a related understanding of systems-based approaches is a growing area of expertise for designers, this is the content area with which you will begin to practice your thinking, research, and communication and teamwork skills in this first semester, first year unit.
While reflective practice and critical thinking are important for learning in general, designers work using particular
- conceptual and creative strategies
- research methods
- thinking skills
- collaboration and teamwork approaches
DEB100 will help formulate your understanding of both the generic and specific approaches while building capacity for success in your studies. The skills and concepts you acquire will form the foundation for becoming a designer.
Aims
DEB100 will provide you with a foundation of understanding the relationship between design and environmental impact and the learning skills to make a successful transition into your design education.
Objectives
On completion of this unit you should be able to, at an introductory level:
1. Explain what design thinking is and how it distinguishes the design professions from other fields.
2. Apply the processes of reflective practice and critical thinking to your learning about sustainability and its implications for design.
3. Illustrate, using researched examples, the effects of design thinking and processes on environmental outcomes.
4. Gather, process, communicate and reflect upon information using a selected range of academic and professional techniques.
5. Participate effectively in a team.
Content
In this unit, we introduce you to the professional issues that are most compelling to the designer, but we also introduce to you important skills that will help you understand and approach the academic expectations that are part and parcel of university-level studies in design.
Topics covered in this unit include:
- Sustainability for designers
- Critical thinking and effective thinking: logic, accuracy, significance, breadth, depth, fairness
- Design thinking skills and strategies (including precedent-based design approaches) in engagement with environmental issues
- Information retrieval and evaluation for designers
- Research methods for design
- Working as a designer; ethics, values, codes of conduct, legal frameworks
Approaches to Teaching and Learning
Teaching Mode:
Hours per week: 3.5
Lecture: 1.5 hrs
Tutorial: 2 hrs
Material in this unit will be presented in lectures, active tutorials, online activities and through independent learning projects, which are undertaken in teams in and outside of normal class time. You'll also keep an individual design and sustainability learning diary in which you'll record notes, sketches and reflection on issues and tasks. You will participate in project-based and tutorial teams, which will assist your learning and provide a support network.
- Some tasks will be open ended requiring you to make choices and set your own goals.
- Some tasks may be directed while others will focus on problem based learning strategies.
- Some tasks will require critical thinking, professional reflection and debate.
Assessment
You'll be required to complete three graded assessments: information literacy skills quiz, precedent-based sustainability project and learning diary.
LATE ASSIGNMENTS
An assignment submitted after the due date without an approved extension will not be marked. If you are unable to complete your assignment on time, you should submit on time whatever work you have done.
Faculty Assessment Information
To access the Creative Industries Faculty Assessment Information please refer to the Blackboard site for this unit.You will receive extensive feedback in this unit because of its overarching importance to the rest of your studies and professional skill development (critical thinking, teamwork, communication). The diagnostic test feedback (oral and written) will allow you to focus learning on key skills you need for the rest of the course. In tutorials, project and portfolio activities, you will receive oral and written feedback from tutors and peers throughout the semester (including as part of the assessment activities themselves).
Assessment name:
Quiz/Test
Description:
Quiz on initial concepts/skills covered in first 4 weeks for early feedback
Relates to objectives:
3,4
Weight:
20%
Internal or external:
Internal
Group or individual:
Individual
Due date:
Week 4
Assessment name:
Project (applied)
Description:
Design knowledge acquired from studying precedents arguably assists in the design thinking and reasoning processes a designer employs. This project asks you to undertake precedent-based analysis in order to resolve a new challenge.
Relates to objectives:
3,4,5
Weight:
40%
Internal or external:
Internal
Group or individual:
Group
Due date:
Week 11
Assessment name:
Reflective Journal
Description:
A weekly professional diary in which you record and respond to a series of activities and questions, including issues arising from your group project.
Relates to objectives:
1,2,3,4
Weight:
40%
Internal or external:
Internal
Group or individual:
Individual
Due date:
End of Semester
Academic Honesty
QUT is committed to maintaining high academic standards to protect the value of its qualifications. To assist you in assuring the academic integrity of your assessment you are encouraged to make use of the support materials and services available to help you consider and check your assessment items. Important information about the university's approach to academic integrity of assessment is on your unit Blackboard site.
A breach of academic integrity is regarded as Student Misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties.
Resource materials
Set Text:
Thorpe, A. (2007). The Designer's Atlas of Sustainability. Washington, D.C.: Island Press
Recommended Text:
Wallace, A, Schirato, T, & Bright, P. (1999). Beginning university: thinking, research and writing for success. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Risk assessment statement
You must complete a General health and Safety Induction online.
Disclaimer - Offer of some units is subject to viability, and information in these Unit Outlines is subject to change prior to commencement of semester.
Last modified: 23-Oct-2012
