The Curriculum compass provides an overview of the learning outcomes, pathways, and content that are the backbone of the developed collection of materials and activities for teaching for values in design. Click on any of the learning outcomes to see a list of teaching activities that support the students in attaining that specific learning outcome. For more information about the pillars, the design phases and the SOLO taxonomy levels, see the background information below the compass.
The Curriculum compass functions as a navigating and planning tool for teachers. It is developed to assist teachers in selecting teaching activities that support students in attaining specific learning outcomes. Click on any learning outcome to view the teaching activities associated with this outcome, or visit the teaching activities to browse and filter a listwise overview of all teaching activities. As a navigation and planning tool, the Curriculum compass connects broad learning outcomes with concrete teaching activities developed to support the specific outcomes in different ways. Teaching activities are furthermore connected to suggested assessment activities that support teachers in judging whether the learning outcomes were achieved.
Combined, the different cells of the Curriculum compass aim to develop students' knowledge, skills and attitude in depth as well as broad ways and create conditions for students to critically reflect upon values in design and become responsible designers. Teachers can use the Curriculum compass to 1) select specific stand-alone activities, 2) create in-depth learning pathways, or 3) give students a broad foundation.
Overall, these learning outcomes are topically distributed over three core competency pillars, temporally distributed over design phases, and organized in order of level of understanding using the SOLO taxonomy to visualise how students’ understanding of values in design develops from a simple to more complex level throughout the design process and across the three pillars.
The Curriculum compass uses three main pillars to structure the teaching activities: Ethics and Values, Designers and Stakeholders, and Technology and Design. The three pillars aim to cover what we consider the main knowledge and skills for becoming a responsible designer: the theoretical background, a focus on different stakeholder needs, as well as the skills to actively engage with technology and values in the design process.
The Ethics and Values pillar explains the underlying theoretical foundations that students need in order to take ethics and values into account, both in their methods and in their design process, as well as in taking responsibility for their end product or service.
The Designers and Stakeholders pillar addresses methods and processes for students to ethically engage with different stakeholders and their values, acknowledging that they themselves are stakeholders too.
The Technology and Design pillar addresses methods and processes that allow students to practically design and evaluate products and services with values in mind.
The difficulty level of the teaching activities is set by The Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy. This is a five-tier hierarchical framework for structuring learning outcomes. The SOLO taxonomy provides a tool for defining curriculum objectives, intended learning outcomes, and evaluating learning outcomes based on these objectives.
Progression can be defined as moving up in SOLO levels, from unistructural, to multistructural, relational, and up to extended abstract level as the highest level. Each level in the SOLO taxonomy is represented by a number of verbs that can be used to formulate intended learning outcomes, as in the Curriculum compass.
One aspect of a task is picked up or understood serially, and there is no relationship of facts or ideas.
Two or more aspects of a task are picked up or understood serially, but are not interrelated.
Several aspects are integrated so that the whole has a coherent structure and meaning.
That coherent whole is generalised to a higher level of abstraction.
This meta-design phase is important for students who are about to start designing with values. Through teaching activities in this phase, students gain theoretical base knowledge of different approaches and frameworks for ethics and values in design. Building on this theoretical understanding, the students will be able to carry out the activities in the following phases more effectively.
In this phase, relevant information is gathered around the initial design brief. This includes information regarding direct and indirect stakeholders, their values and the relationships and tensions between them. The values of the designers (students) themselves are also analyzed and reflected upon.
In this phase, research findings are clustered. Insights evolve and potential areas of opportunity are identified. Students build the foundation to frame and specify the initial design brief.
In this phase, students generate value-sensative ideas based on their reframed design brief through different ideation activities. Moreover, students choose ideas to produce in the form of prototypes.
In this phase, students test their prototypes with a focus on values. The values are embodied in the prototypes, and, one by one, they are investigated together with stakeholders and reflected upon in order to improve the design solutions.