Industrial design education in a post-industrial age : redefining learning from transmission to transformative and expansive learning

This article narrates on the process to redefine learning from transmission to transformative and expansive learning as part of implementation of a new constructionist industrial design curriculum launched on 2016. Interest is placed here on examples that demonstrate today essential need for crossing boundaries for design education and professional development. They dealt specially with bridging the physical and digital divide in a discipline that has been traditionally bound to its assembly and manufacturing industrial age roots and needs to find a new value for itself in this 21st century. Content shows preliminary work that belongs to a larger research to be published in the future. Redefinition counted greatly on expected designers’ “elastic mind” that would allow participants (lecturers and students) to adapt quickly. The program presented a cultural and epistemological change from learning by skill transmission to learning by social and experiential transformation and expansion. It followed up on Bauhaus, HfG Ulm and Malmo Schools of Design legacy as it moved further than Dewey’s learning-by-doing to Papert’s constructionism, and more recent manifestations of the open school movement. Particularly it aligns with critical pedagogy, critical design and critical making, and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and design, and mathematics) principles supporting participants to implement CDIO (conceiving, designing, implementing and operating) framework. This approach validated design by probing and proving practically how it is implemented and operates rather than considering it as done at concept proposal stage