Course Kit Concept
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The concept
Goal: To freely plan a transdisciplinary course/module/unit that responds to a given societal challenge to generate change and impact.
You will combine design thinking with creative teaching and learning using the CourseKit cards and board as tools to help you playfully plan. Remember, there is no right answer and you will need to rely on your intuition and sense of creative flow to inform which cards are used and when to create your course. Don’t worry if there’s confusion – this is a healthy part of the creative planning process – just try to keep moving through it together!
The outcome of your planned course can be extremely open: a public performance, a group portfolio, an actual product, a company pitch or a community intervention. Assessment can be dropped or performed throughout the course.
Players: Work with at least two experts from different disciplines, ideally with tertiary level teaching experience. Don’t forget to consider your group — are there enough mixed disciplines around the table to really push you out of your comfort zone and into transdisciplinary collaboration? If you are playing solo, are you ready to criticise your own thinking and be surprised?
The Double Diamond: The consecutive parts of the double diamond are: Discover (divergent), Define (convergent), Develop (divergent again) and Deliver (convergent again). This means that your participants will first start to ‘discover’ and explore the challenge more widely and deeply, define the real problem, develop various ideas and finally choose a future solution.
Remember, participants should begin with open dialogue to generate multiple ideas, then critically converge through dialogue again on a particular set of ideas and reflect on their ethical value. Using these as a starting point allows you to encourage further possibilities from which participants then refine and move towards a particular response that has the capacity to make meaningful, ethical change and finally, for participants to share this solution by the end of the course/unit/module.
Keeping a Logbook: Through the process, you’ll gain valuable insights for yourself and from others. Have a digital or hand-held notebook/logbook by your side to note (visual/verbal/audio/playful/emotive) anything useful – or seemingly not at the time. Don’t debate them, just note observations and later reflect. This can help course development.
You can access the toolkit here.
For feedback about the toolkit please email
sciculture@um.edu.mt