I am excited about my new fall course, titled Education by Design. This is a heavily reimagined version of a class that I taught a couple of times at MSU and once here (last fall at ASU). The MSU version that I co-taught with Danah Henriksen received First Place (in the Blended Course category) in the 2013 MSU-AT&T Instructional Technology Awards.

This is the course description that I just shared with the students at MLFTC.

DCI 691 is a course about design. Design as a way of thinking and as a process that values collaboration, context, and diverse perspectives. Design as an approach that generates creative solutions to complex (wicked) problems of practice, particularly in education.

Design is both a noun and a verb, a product and a process. Design is central to the construction of any process or artifact—be it a website or a car; an ATM machine or educational policy. Design touches on many different disciplines—science, technology, engineering, education, psychology, sociology, organizational behavior, and art, to name a few. A multi-dimensional issue like design, particularly in education, requires a multifaceted approach. As a class, we will do many different things this semester. We will read, discuss, analyze widely from research and theory. We will examine design practice, and build new conceptions through exciting mini-projects. In particular, we will seek to ground our understandings and learnings into an open-source book that we will co-create.

Drop me a note if you want to learn more about this class.

Finally, below is a typographical design based on, what I believe, is one of the greatest and most insightful quotes about design.