Units

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Sample subject outline - Semester 2 2012

Note: Subject outlines often change before the semester begins. Below is a sample outline.

Rationale

'Designers today increasingly work in teams, collaborating to create processes and products that reflect the different kind of expertise amongst the team members - and designers who are not skilled as collaborators are increasingly unlikely to be successful.' (from the definition of 'collaborative design', in Erlhoff and Marshall's Design Dictionary, 2008) This is a collaborative project unit for the disciplines of architecture, industrial design, interior design, and landscape architecture and is a core unit of DE40. In your 6th semester, you will work together to apply the principles, skills, and knowledge acquired in your discipline and learn from the exposure to alternative approaches to designing.

Aims

The unit aims to give you the opportunity to explore and test concepts and processes of inter/cross/trans disciplinary design from within a multi-disciplinary design team setting. You will also have the opportunity to develop an understanding of the designer's expertise as locating, organising and integrating knowledge and information from different discipline areas in order to make an effective design proposal, provocation, or polemic. In so doing it provides the opportunity for you to appreciate the relationship of your core discipline knowledge to that of the other disciplines and afford you a setting where the impact of different discipline knowledge needs to be considered, negotiated and adjusted into a robust collaborative process. This should build your capacity to tackle issues relevant to the contemporary and future world in a competent and innovative way.

Objectives

On completion of this unit you should be able to:

1. apply design thinking skills and methods to a specified design challenge in an integrated and holistic way (design as integration)
   
2. effectively relate and apply your understanding of your design discipline to a common project or problem in a multi-disciplinary team context (designing in collaboration)
   
3. apply an effective process to manage a project from briefing to delivery (managing teamwork)
   
4. collaboratively articulate in two and three dimensions, orally and in written form, different design propositions generated out of your multi-disciplinary team process (communicating as a team)
   
5. apply a process to critically evaluate your experiences as a member of a collaborative design team (understanding your effectiveness in a collaborative work setting)

Content

Collaborative Design is project-based, and supported by a framework for managing, enacting, interpreting and understanding your individual and team design processes.

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

Teaching Mode: Hours per week: 4
Lectures/talks: 1 hour
Tutorial/studio meetings: 3 hours
Additional workshop use as required: up to 3 hrs/week
One day field event (installation of projects) Friday in week 9

Learning Approaches
Your learning in this unit will be fostered predominantly by project-based learning in the studio setting. You will work throughout the semester in a small multi-discipline team. Your work in the project space will be supported by project-related talks, unit podcasts about collaboration in design, team coaching and workshops. From time to time your team will be required to display work for critique in a group situation giving you the opportunity to explain your ideas and their implementation in your project work. Formative feedback will be given at key times during the semester to foster the development of problem-based learning projects.

Assessment

Assessment tasks are designed so that you can demonstrate:

• effective strategies and tactics for working collaboratively to produce required outcomes


• understanding of your own discipline-based design processes from a comparative basis with those of other disciplines


• critical assessment of and reflection on your capabilities with design-based teamwork and project management

Formative Assessment:
Formative assessment is all about letting you know how you are progressing with your work in the unit and how your work can be improved. In DEB601, formative feedback will be offered by the design leaders and coaches during the semester at key times to assist the development of your understanding and the completion of your assessment tasks. This will occur through face-to-face discussions and written preliminary assessment of work in progress.

Summative Assessment:
Summative assessment is about grading you. When we assess your work summatively, we are focusing on outcome, standard and comparison with criteria. For each of your assessment items, you will have a 'map' of criteria and described standards from which to work.

Assessment name: Design
Description: This item includes assessable components of design proposal and design delivery.
Submission: In-semester milestones will vary according to individual project requirements.
Relates to objectives: 1-4
Weight: 50%
Internal or external: Internal
Group or individual: Group with Individual Component
Due date: see details above

Assessment name: Report
Description: This item is an evaluation of your team collaboration, according to specified collaboration theories. It will take the form of a report.
Relates to objectives: 2 & 5
Weight: 40%
Internal or external: Internal
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: End of Semester

Assessment name: Poster Presentation
Description: The project poster serves as a visual summary of your group's design activity and will feature in an exhibition at the end of the semester.
Relates to objectives: 1 & 4
Weight: 10%
Internal or external: Internal
Group or individual: Group
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

No Set Text
There are no set textbooks for this unit. Specific papers and other resources will be available from the Course Materials Database (CMD) and the DEB601 Blackboard site.

Risk assessment statement

The unit may require you to participate in a site visit for analysis and installation purposes, of both a supervised and a self-guided nature. A risk assessment for these activities has identified only low impact risks. You will be provided with relevant safely guidelines prior to any activity. You will be required to obey all safety guidelines and directions while participating in field activities.
Depending on your project option, you may also need to construct objects in the school workshop facility. Participation will require previous attendance at an induction course offered by the school workshop staff at the beginning of semester. You will be required to comply with safety clothing requirements, and with safety directions given by workshop staff.

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: 31-May-2012