Abstract
Collaborating with public or private sector organizations in project-based courses equips design students with key skills to future-proof their careers, but this gives only one side of the story as the key feature of these partnerships is that they are mutualistic collaborations. However, the benefits to organizations of collaborating are not fully explored. This paper presents a case study of partnerships with four different public organizations in a service design course over a five-year period. It argues that collaborating in project-based courses serves as risk-free experimentation and paves the way for organizational learning. The paper first reviews the existing research on collaboration in design education and organizational learning. Then, three types of learning that emerged from the data are analyzed. Next, the steps to successful collaboration are discussed, noting the ups and downs of managing the project partnerships. Finally, the challenges of teaching a collaborative project-based design course are discussed.
Keywords
design education, design management, organizational learning, service design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.670
Citation
Boztepe, S. (2022) Organizational learning through collaborative project-based service design course: The flip side of the coin, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.670
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Organizational learning through collaborative project-based service design course: The flip side of the coin
Collaborating with public or private sector organizations in project-based courses equips design students with key skills to future-proof their careers, but this gives only one side of the story as the key feature of these partnerships is that they are mutualistic collaborations. However, the benefits to organizations of collaborating are not fully explored. This paper presents a case study of partnerships with four different public organizations in a service design course over a five-year period. It argues that collaborating in project-based courses serves as risk-free experimentation and paves the way for organizational learning. The paper first reviews the existing research on collaboration in design education and organizational learning. Then, three types of learning that emerged from the data are analyzed. Next, the steps to successful collaboration are discussed, noting the ups and downs of managing the project partnerships. Finally, the challenges of teaching a collaborative project-based design course are discussed.