4IR

Exploring the potential of design thinking in the age of fourth industrial revolution in South Africa

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Design Education Strategy

Design thinking (DT) has recently re-emerged as an essential mindset and skillshift for modern organisations seeking to improve innovation performance in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). However, despite recent popularity and success especially in the tech industry, DT has lacked critical academic engagement and scholarly enquiry especially in Africa. Hence, this paper sets out to provide empirical evidence on how DT can help create opportunities and innovation in an AI/Algorithm-driven 4IR era, and why the design curriculum in higher education should be updated to include DT competencies.

COVID-19 lockdown music lessons: Digitalising for online music learning

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Photography, Film & Multimedia

With the COVID-19 outbreak, universities worldwide have moved towards online learning or distance education. Despite pioneering work by distance learning institutions globally, the digital platform remains unexplored, particularly for online music teaching and learning. Face-to-face teaching for practical based subjects is challenging due to COVID-19 protocols.

A systemic framing of the challenges faced in design education during the COVID-19 lockdown

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Software, UX & Game Design

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the deep cracks of inequality within the South African educational system (Gustafsson & Deliwe, 2020). The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) has presented a range of new technology applications (Lacy, Long, & Spindler, 2020). These technologies can be leveraged to provide more equal access to the technology needed for remote learning (Du Preez & Sinha, 2020). This paper uses a systemic design approach to reflect on the challenges faced in design education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Student feedback on the online learning experience during the COVID-19 lockdown was reflected on. Observations were organised in themes and then explored using the first step of Namahn and shiftN’s Systemic Design Toolkit (Van Ael & Vandenbroeck, 2016).

Masking-up with 4IR fashion design education: A retrospective analysis

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

For decades, studio-based pedagogy, grounded in socially-engaged, constructivist learning spaces dominated design education (Crowther 2013; Shreeve, 2015). However, the global pandemic forced design education to align with the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and move towards interactive digital technologies and online teaching and learning methodologies. Positioned in the space of 4IR, the move to digital technologies is required to digitally streamline and integrate human-centred opportunities for inclusivity guided by technological advancements (Chuo 2019, pp. 107).

Digital design ethics

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Design Education Strategy

As a socio-technical field, design has always been intertwined with the industrial revolutions. During the continuous growth of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) in South Africa, it is prevalent for design education to reevaluate what is taught to young designers.

4IR, the photographic curriculum and the South African higher educational context: A case study

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Photography, Film & Multimedia

From inception, the Camera Picture, being a technological medium, has been inherently in a volatile relationship with innovation that required a constant re-structuring of the academic curriculum in the formal education of the practitioner to embrace the possibilities offered through new imaging technologies, a process which occurred over a period of decades, sufficient time to adapt and engage in a meaningful manner with the discourse of both making and teaching.

Critical design futures: Challenging the gender data gap through pedagogy

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Design Education Strategy

As we enter the era of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) faced with potential ethical and security risks, ensuring sustainable and inclusive innovation within the design industries will be essential. However, this proves unlikely when the design industry itself has inherent biases and inequalities.

Preparing the future workforce in African universities of technology: A case of new media art as a mutating discipline in the 4IR

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Design Education Strategy

The industrial revolution, a steady process of change that started in the eighteenth century, has been characterised as presenting different phases. The fourth phase (4IR), which signals an unprecedented convergence of physical, digital and biological spheres into technological forces, is transforming jobs faster than employees can adapt, and setting the base for a different kind of skill. Hence, everyone, including arts and design educators, are asking similar questions about its potential challenges and opportunities in their fields, particularly in the African universities of technology that place emphasis on career-directed courses.

Lost connection: Reflections on online jewellery design teaching

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

In this paper, four educators teaching undergraduate jewellery design and manufacture recount our adaptations to online learning during the COVID19 lockdown, and how this impacted our ideas about lecture content and delivery. We look at the possibilities for online study in jewellery design in relation to the developments of the fourth industrial revolution, such as blended learning, simulations and computer-aided design and manufacture. We share adaptations that may serve educators in distance or blended learning scenarios. However, the lockdown created difficult learning circumstances in South Africa in which we often ‘lost connection’ due to high data costs and inequalities in students’ living conditions.

Towards 4IR and African scholarship: Exploring research capacity in the widening discipline of communication design

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Media & Communications Design

Scholarship has many dimensions, such as the scholarship of research/discovery; the scholarship of integration, application, and teaching; and the scholarship of public and democratic engagement where knowledge is co-constructed. These broader notions of scholarship challenge the traditional understanding of a university and position scholars and researchers in a broader socio-economic, historical, and cultural context. Design as a field developed and widened as a result of new challenges and opportunities – for example the fourth industrial revolution – and changes in the discipline.

DEFSA conferences

DEFSA promotes relevant research with the focus on design + education through its biennial conferences, to promote professionalism, accountability and ethics in the education of young designers. Our next conference is a hybrid event. See above for details.

Critical skills endorsement

Professional Members in good standing can receive a certificate of membership, but DEFSA cannot provide confirmation or endorsement of skills whatsoever. DEFSA only confirm membership of DEFSA which is a NPO for Design Education in South Africa (https://www.defsa.org.za/imagine).